BURNING UP

I have my sister’s ashes in a cardboard box in a cheap velvet bag. They were returned to me this week. I’d forgotten she was away.

She died suddenly, unexpectedly, all the euphemisms, some fifteen years ago. The police hammered on my door a bit after two in the morning. I found my dad pacing in the lobby of her building. The coroner was already in her apartment, leaning over the coffee table she probably hit on the way down. Grey shag piled around her like an old cloud.

There’s not a moment, I don’t think, when we’re not either packing up, or unpacking.

When I retrieved that taped box last night, its heft surprised me. I tried (self-consciously) to assess the moment’s weight. Then I dropped it back into the bag so perfectly that all the air at the bottom was pushed up and out at once, like an exasperated breath in my face.

It is hot in my apartment. There’s a mouse trap under the counter, with peanut butter smeared over its copper lever, and half a chicken in the fridge. An unsteady fan oscillates in the bedroom.

There were some old photos packed away with those ashes. One has us as a family huddled in the doorway just outside Oxford. I glower unhappily at its heart, and my sister is front and centre in an orange anorak, eyes closed, arms crossed. Lay her down and she’s already in her coffin.

None of us have a clue what’s coming, of course, but when I look at this snapshot my dad is always back there grinning.