They put you into the ground on a Thursday, when the skies of Ontario are October purple and Canada geese honk overhead like some kind of military send off. It’s maybe the most patriotic you’ve ever been, outside that time I was eight and we woke up at what you called the “ass crack of dawn” because I had cried and cried that I wanted to see the rising of the flag at Gage Park. There was sticky red and white cake and you got a beer opener with a maple leaf on it that you’d always use when you grilled corn outside.
No more beer where you’re going.
I spend the day of the funeral huddled in bed in my apartment. I’ve called in sick at the pharmacy, which made me almost-smile. A pharmacist too sick to dole out tiny pink and yellow pills to creepy Mr. Wilson and to Mrs. Barton, who is so lonely it follows her like a sour smell.
I spend the day of the funeral reading piles of magazines. They tell me there is war far away and they tell me the earth is on fire. I wonder what happens to coffins in cemeteries that have been bombed out. I imagine the bones churned up like a plowed field. I wonder what will happen to your bones when the earth heats up, when wildfires spread.
Is there fire where you’re going?
My therapist tells me that grief is a process, but she’s full of shit. When I was growing up, we learned all about the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I don’t believe my therapist when she says that’s been debunked. Calamities have been falling on us forever. Wars. Famine. Death.
“Are you saying people feel differently about grief than thirty years ago? That’s garbage.” I say “garbage” instead of “shit” because I’m trying to be polite. The therapist tucks a strand of black hair behind her ears. “I know you’re angry, but why are you expressing it this way?” I hate the placating, calming tone she uses. Like she’s handing a pet to a dog.
Six months after your funeral, I walk through the Botanical Gardens in Hamilton, where the ground is muddy. Someone has taken off the burlap sacks that covered the plants in the formal gardens and the rose bushes look like knuckles and claws poking out of the earth.
I don’t feel grief. Or sadness. Or depression. And I saved all my bargaining for you when you were still alive. We’d walk through the lilac groves in the Botanical Gardens, you smelling of motor oil and me in a pink dress. “Let’s not go home,” I’d beg. “Let’s stay outside forever, Daddy.”
Six months after your funeral, I wonder if you’re reunited with her. Do bruises drip from her skin? Do you have to answer for every broken bone? Or does she forgive you again and pull you into her lilac perfume?
I hope there’s fire where you are.
A year after your funeral, I have a bug-out bag and t-shirts that have stuff like “Mother Earth is My Mom” and “Live Green” painted on them. I can practically hear you laughing your ass off wherever you are. I remember that—your laugh, sunny as an egg yolk, on Saturday mornings over your coffee and newspaper. The way the sound spread through my bones, warming.
I live with Jay in an apartment overlooking the towering steel plants. They make a sound like the ocean, almost. That’s our joke. I’m pretty sure you’d hate Jay. He has an earring and goes to protests and makes sure we have water purification tablets and uses words like “civil unrest.” His hands are soft and clean from a lifetime of books.
I’m still working at the pharmacy, but Mr. Wilson is dead and Mrs. Barton sniffs at me and asks to speak to Peter, the lead pharmacist now.
A year after your funeral, I have strange dreams. Mom is walking with me through Cootes Paradise. The trees are shadowy and chickadees swoop down to peck at her eyes.
I hold out my hand, full of sunflower seeds, just like you taught me. Do you remember that day in the park, when you cupped my hand gently and taught me to feed the birds? The time you told me I was good at holding still?
But mom in my dream is all messed up in the way you broke her and they go after her. Mom’s hair is matted and her arm is in a weird, fractured angle, like a permanent wave. She doesn’t speak but her breathing is wet and heavy, sort of like yours was the day you collapsed at home and looked up at me. Sort of like the breathing I listened to while I didn’t dial 911.
I don’t think the Botanical Gardens are going to make it either, Daddy. There are too many invasive species, helped along by warming winters. El Niño and big storms push down the trees that have been there since before you were born. They break like bones, exposing pale resin. The lake effect snow piles up on your grave.
Are there trees in the fire where you live now?
Agata Antonow’s work has been featured in the Mile End Poets’ Festival, The Gravity of the Thing, Defenestration, Polar Borealis, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Eunoia Review, and the FOLD (Festival of Literary Diversity) program, among other places. She won the 2021 Douglas Kyle Memorial Prize and the 2023 Alfred G. Bailey Prize from the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick.
Header photo by Ed White, courtesy Pixabay.
