I Fed Him to The Fishes

January 19, 2011

          My heels sank into the carpet-like grass and I knew I’d have to scrape dead-people mud off them once I got back to Elise’s apartment. She and Stephen lead us past the rows of headstones and family crypts. I stayed a few steps behind and kept my father’s slower pace.

         He stopped at the marker of an old neighbor and made a comment about the weather. Then he took hold of my hand, his slightly shaking.

         “I’m glad you did this,” he told me, his words briny with held-back tears. “Your mother would have appreciated it.”

         “You can’t know that,” I said, instantly resorting to my hardheaded practicality. I softened my tone and let myself imagine with him. “I think it would have been comforting to her.”

         I watched the muscles of his jaw slowly release. “I love you, Nadia.”

         “I love you too, Dad.”

         We reached the stone.

Dylan Miller

1990-1997

So Small, So Sweet, So Soon

         The lettering cut sharply into the dark, reflective stone. No dirt had found its way to the crevices yet. This area of the cemetery felt claustrophobic compared to what we passed; the memorial stones were set closer to each other, with no bodies below.



         We dropped my father off at the diner, where he immediately found three old friends brunching at the counter. He invited us to stay with him, but we knew he really just wanted to hang out with the other old men, so we politely declined and piled back into my car. We hadn’t told my dad, but we weren’t finished burying Dylan.

         I drove to the lake. We were the only ones on the frosty beach.

         Elise handed me the small urn.

         “Do you want to say something?” Stephen asked me.

         I breathed twice through my nose.

         “Dylan... you were my baby brother.” I paused, thinking of how selfish I had been. “That’s the way I always thought of you. In terms of me.” I took a few more shallow breaths. “I hated myself for losing you.”

         “But this isn’t about me.” I pictured Dylan, and where he was.

         I popped the the lid off the urn.

         “You’re somewhere else now. Someplace better. I just hope that it is a better...” I searched for the right word, “existence than my family could have given you.”

         I tipped the urn until the ashes fell out. They were immediately picked up by the breeze and carried to the surface of the water, where they sat like uneaten fish food. Not the way cremated remains behaved, but Elise, Stephen and I knew that I was not scattering a person. I was scattering the police reports, the newspaper clippings, the baseball game tickets.

         The evidence.