Is there a season for funerals the way there was a season for weddings and baby showers? I look forward to seeing the women with whom I was a girl—for a moment at the back of church, the graveside catch-up. We’ll populate a table at the reception after, crows knowing all the hard parts, the never-finished.
There was a season of brushed silk and feathery lace. Spaghetti straps and that burgundy satin one with the bones and embroidery, makeup appointments for unlined faces. We spent first job paychecks on registry gifts and hometown hotels. Our mothers were little older than we are now. So generous, withholding what they knew.
A car full of laughter on the way to the rehearsal dinner and my bridesmaid said, “Well, girls, this is our last chance. Want to hit the highway?” And I didn’t know for decades, nor did she, that she’d been serious. She left the periwinkle tea-length gown in the childhood bedroom at my mother’s house. Smart enough to know she’d never wear it again. I had thought it versatile. It hangs there still.
She wore a black suit to my mother’s funeral. Drove six hours.
There was a season of baby showers. Light lipstick for the benefit of our mothers’ friends. The good china. Utter ignorance. She left a vacuum-packed tub of maternity clothes on my stoop and I swelled into each absurdity before delivering them to the next one of us.
I remember standing at four sinks before a mirror that stretched the full length of the dorm bathroom. Mascara and eyeliner at 10 p.m. Preparing to stand in a crowded bar shouting, in tiny shirts from the ten-dollar store. That was before the weddings and baby showers, loosening skin and calcium pills, long phone calls while weaving through the aisles at Costco, jobs and children and teenagers who trample our hearts in ways we would never have allowed of men.
Now is the season of mothers’ funerals. Just as predictable. I’ll hustle into the pew next to you, squinting to remember the girls we were. My gray hair and lined face earned. And yours.
Our mothers liked that we were friends, would see each other through. They had the kindness not to say through what. We’ll be at the next one, standing at the graveside close together—as we stood at the bar in our twenties. Knowing more now.
