Page 127 of Woman on the Verge

I don’t know, Kyle. Why don’t you google how to be thoughtful after a father-in-law dies?

Him:Ok. I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say

Don’t say anything then. I’m used to that

Him: Nic, come on. I’m sorry. You know I’m terrible with things like this

Things like this? Like death? I don’t think anyone is good at death, Kyle.

Him: Look, I’m obviously fucking up here. I’ll call you later if that’s ok?

I don’t respond. Maybe if he calls later, I’ll just blurt it out once and for all: I want a divorce.

Tears come again when Frank leaves. It’s strange that he has been part of this deeply profound part of my life and I will never see him again. I don’t even know his last name. I could ask him for his contact information,but I think we both know that any ongoing correspondence is unlikely. I will miss the essence of him, but will want to distance myself from the memories he elicits.

“Take good care of yourself,” he says before walking down the front steps, steps last traveled by the mortuary workers who took my father away.

“You too.”

Back inside, I find Merry in the walk-in closet of the room where my dad died. It is a closet they’ve always used for storage. She is standing on her tippy-toes, reaching for a giant box on the top shelf.

“Need help?” I ask.

I’m a few inches taller than her. She doesn’t admit to needing my assistance, but doesn’t protest when I pull down the box for her.

“What is this?” I ask.

It’s a cardboard box, formerly white and now yellow. It weighs at least twenty pounds. I place it on a table that was the makeshift hospice-supplies table until Merry completely cleared it earlier.

“Photos,” she says. “We should pull out some good ones of him. I’ll want to do a slideshow at the memorial service. Do you know how to do that?”

I carefully take her wrists with my hands and turn her toward me. I look into her sad, tired, frantic eyes and say, “Merry, we don’t have to do thisright now.”

Her eyes dart away from mine, unable to keep focus.

“I know, I know. I just want to.”

She instructs me to pull down the other boxes in the closet, five in total. She removes all the contents, begins making piles on the floor.

“Are you hungry?” she asks when all the boxes are emptied.

It’s just about five o’clock. We didn’t think to eat lunch.

“I am,” I say, perplexed by the stubbornness of my appetite at a time like this. My dad has died, my world has tilted on its axis, and my stomach continues to growl, reminding me of the necessity of life going on.

“I’ll make some pasta,” she says. “You stay here, start looking through photos.”

I don’t particularly feel like bringing on more tears, but I comply anyway. I sit in the chair next to where my dad’s hospital bed used to be and open a forest green leather album. There are photos of my dad as a twentysomething.Quite a strapping young man,I would tease him if he were here.Ishe still here in some way? I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t googled theories on what happens when people die. Many believe there is a window of time when a person who has died is still lingering, preparing to transition to the other realm.It’s like checking out of one hotel and into another.Someone wrote that in an article I read online. I like that idea.

I flip through the album. There are photos of my dad with my mother, Rose, the woman who carried me and gave birth to me and then died when I was too young to formulate any lasting memory of her. I wonder if there is any truth to the idea of dead people reuniting on “the other side.” I wonder if my dad is with her now, if they are hugging and laughing and dancing a jig.

I doubt Merry would want any photos of my dad with his first wife at the memorial, so I close the album and move to place it back in one of the piles on the floor. When I do that, though, something slides out of it. It’s a black-and-white composition notebook. It literally falls into my lap, and I can’t help but think my dad is, in fact, here.

I open it.

September 16, 1984

Dear Diary,