Hand-Me-Down Love (5 page)

“
Ya see,”
Meredith said when they were finished. “That wasn’t so hard.”

Marla laughed. “I
guess not. Just a lot of steps with it. I think I can do it again.”
And she regretted saying that, because she knew that the next time
she made gumbo, Meredith probably wouldn’t be there to guide her.

Marla bought the
Peterson’s Guide to North American Birds
and the National
Geographic guide to birds. She put them in a box and wrapped them as
a present for Meredith. Over the next few weeks, Meredith learned the
names of the birds in her yard and she marked them in the book as
part of her life list of identifying birds. Sean got her some
binoculars so she could watch the birds that were high in the trees
or from the window in the kitchen. They put up several birdfeeders in
the back and kept them filled with sunflower seeds. “They like that
the best,” Meredith explained to Marla.

Gradually, and
almost imperceptibly, Meredith began to decline. She got fatigued
earlier in the day. She stopped making supper for Sean. She stopped
keeping up with the house. And finally, she went to bed and never got
up again. Sean and Marla and her parents waited as long as they could
before calling in hospice care and setting up a hospital bed in the
sick room. But that day did come. They could no longer care for
Meredith in the way that was necessary. Meredith needed pain
medication and nourishment. It was a medical situation that her
family did not know how to do.

Marla sat with
Meredith one early summer afternoon as the television blared some
syndicated sitcom. “Turn that off,” Meredith said sternly. Marla
took the remote from the bedside table and turned the TV off.

“
I need to talk to
you,” Meredith said, pulling herself up a little on her pillow. “I
need to ask you something.”

Marla sat in the
wingback chair near Meredith’s bed. “What is it, Merrie?” she
asked.

“
I know that you
and Mom and Dad will be there for each other after I’m gone. I know
that.”

“
Yes,” Marla
said. “Of course we will.”

“
But I need to ask
you to be there for Sean. You, Marla. You. I need to know he’s
going to be taken care of, that you will be there for him after.”

“
I know he’s got
his parents and his sister, and I know they’ll be there,” she
continued. “But I need to know that you will be there. I think you
understand him the same way that I do. He’s going to need you. He
might not know that, but I know that he will.”

“
Whatever you want
me to do, Meredith, I’ll do it. I will be there for Sean,” Marla
said, choking on her words.

“
I know he seems
like a company guy and all of that—a suit—but he’s really very
sensitive. This is going to hit him very hard. I feel that I can let
go if I know that you’ll be looking out for him.”

“
I’ll look out
for him, Merrie,” Marla said taking her sister’s hand. “I
promise.”

Meredith lay back on
her pillow. “Thank you,” she said wearily. “That makes this so
much easier.”

Marla patted her
sister’s arm and reached for the hairbrush. “Want me to brush
your hair?” she asked Meredith, who had closed her eyes.

“
Mmmm,” she
murmured. Marla raised the bed to a near-sitting position and stood
so that she could easily reach Meredith’s hair. Her once-shiny
blond tresses were ashy and dull now. Marla gently pulled the brush
through Meredith’s hair and felt her sister relax as she supported
her head.

A few days later,
the hospice nurse told Sean and Marla that it wouldn’t be much
longer. They all kept a vigil by Meredith’s bed. She spoke her last
words on a Wednesday afternoon. “It’s been fun,” she said. She
never spoke again. She never opened her eyes again. The hospice nurse
watched her vitals and urine output over the next several days, and
finally said it could be anytime.

It was the middle of
the night, about 3:30 a.m. when Meredith took her last breath. She
was twenty-eight years old.

Sean held her hand
and Marla and her parents stood at the other side of the bed,
stroking her arm and holding her other hand. Sean leaned his body on
the bed, on Meredith. He sat there like that for a long time as Marla
and her parents hugged each other and cried. Marla sensed that Sean
needed to be left alone in his sorrow.

Then Sean got up and
left the room. Marla and her parents looked at each other but did not
follow him. A moment later a roar pierced the still night.

Chapter
Seven

Sean asked Marla to
help him with the funeral arrangements. He was so depressed and
unable to connect with anything or anyone, that Marla took the lead,
and Sean approved her choices. Meredith had asked to be cremated, but
she wanted a viewing. “Make sure I look good, Marla,” she had
pleaded one day near the end. “Make sure I’m wearing that blue
dress, you know the one.” Marla nodded. “It brings out my eyes,”
Meredith said and then erupted in laughter. She had a devilish sense
of humor. That might have been the last time she laughed that hard.

The funeral was
held in the little chapel next to the old graveyard. Oak Point
residents had been buried there for two hundred years or so. The
visitation was the most difficult day of Marla’s life, of
everyone’s life. It was so hard to look at Meredith lying in the
oak casket in her blue dress, her hair silky and shiny again somehow.
It was surreal and no one could grasp it. No one could even imagine
how this had happened to their Merrie, to them. Sean stood sentinel
by the casket during the entire visitation.

His parents and
sister sat on one side of Sean during the funeral, and Marla and her
parents sat on the other. Sean’s mother held her son’s arm and
Marla gently put her hand on his other arm. A pianist played “Morning
Has Broken,” Meredith’s favorite hymn and one that had special
meaning to her at the end of her life. People stood and spoke about
Meredith, about what a great person she was, always smiling, always
willing to help people out. Meredith’s husband and family knew all
of that about her, but they also knew her so much more, as a wife, a
daughter, a sister. Their hurt was deeper than the ocean.

After the
funeral, Sean drew Marla aside. “I don’t think I can go to your
parents’,” he said. “I just don’t think I can handle it.”

“
It’s okay,”
Marla reassured him. She wanted him there but she didn’t think it
would be right to try to persuade him to go. She knew how much pain
he was in. “What about your family?” Marla asked. “Do they want
to come or are they going back to your house with you?”

“
My sister’s
going to go, but my parents want to come back to the house with me,”
he said, staring past Marla’s shoulder and into the chapel where
people were slowly leaving. “I don’t want to be rude,” he said
softly.

“
Everyone
understands, Sean. Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll come over
later, okay?”

Marla rode to
her childhood home with her parents. The white Victorian was on Oak
Point’s original street, which was lined with live oaks draped with
Spanish moss, and azaleas of every color bloomed profusely every
spring. When she walked into the house, Marla was overcome with
melancholy. This was where she and Meredith had been sisters. Where
they had played hide and seek, where they had built a tree house in
the backyard, and, as they got older, where they learned how to use
make-up and helped each other get ready for dates. Where they shared
secrets as children, then as teenagers. Marla wasn’t sure she was
going to be able to handle it.

Cynthia had
arranged for serving dishes of food and a big pot of gumbo, because
she knew Meredith would have wanted that. People mingled and ate and
drank, moved outside to the patio. It seemed almost like a party, and
Marla had a hard time with that. But she knew that this was the way.
The way people celebrated a person’s life. The way they said their
final goodbye.

After talking
with the guests for a little while, Marla wandered upstairs. She
walked into the room she and Meredith had shared when they were
little. Later, it had become Marla’s room when Meredith demanded
her own space. Two twin beds still sat against the far wall, covered
with white chenille bedspreads. A dark mahogany table was between the
beds, as it always had been. Her mother had painted the room a light
gray color since Marla moved out. But she still could envision the
lavender walls she had chosen as a pre-teen. Marla lay down on the
bed that had been hers. She thought about Meredith and their life
together in that old family house. And then she slept.

When Cynthia
woke Marla, it was dark outside. Marla was disoriented and didn’t
know where she was for a moment. “I’m sorry to wake you up,
honey,” Cynthia said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have. But everyone’s
gone now and I know you were going over to see Sean.”

“
What time is
it?” Marla asked her mother.

“
It’s eight
thirty. You’ve been asleep for quite a while.” Her mother sat on
the side of the bed and began to weep softly. Marla sat up and put
her arm around her mother’s shoulder. She began to cry, too.

“
It’s the
hardest thing in the world to lose a child,” Cynthia said. “It’s
not natural. It shouldn’t be.”

After a few
minutes, Cynthia told Marla that if she was going to see Sean, she
should get going. Marla got up from the bed that had been her comfort
through countless nights and years of her childhood. “You’re
right, I should go. I promised Merrie.”

Cynthia looked
at Marla, questioningly, but she didn’t say anything else.

“
Mom, is it
okay if I leave you and Daddy? I know you need me too.”

Cynthia didn’t
respond right away. And then she said, “I wish you would stay here
forever. I want to hold on to you. I don’t want to lose you. But I
think Sean needs you right now. It’s what Merrie would want.”

They walked
down the staircase with its polished wood banister and Marla held
onto it as she descended. She hugged both of her parents goodbye and
walked outside to her car where she had parked it before going to the
funeral. The night was clear and dark and the stars winked in the
sky.

Marla pulled up
in the driveway of Meredith and Sean’s house and walked to the
kitchen door. Sean’s parents saw her and opened the door.

“
He’s
asleep,” Sean’s mother said. “I gave him one of my sleeping
pills. I don’t think he’s slept for days.”

Marla nodded in
understanding and moved to the table and sat down. Sean’s mother
got her a cup of tea.

“
How is he?”
Marla asked.

“
He’s not
good. I’m pretty worried about him,” his mother said. “I’m
going to stay with him for a while. But I know the time will come
when he’ll want me to leave so he can grieve alone. And then I’ll
have to go.”

Marla sat with
Sean’s parents and sister for a few more minutes, sipping her tea
but not tasting it or enjoying it. She got up from the table. “I
think I’ll just look in on him before I go,” she said. She walked
into the hallway, past the spare room with the hospital bed, and
quietly opened the door to the master bedroom. Sean lay on the bed
fast asleep. Marla wanted to comfort him, but she didn’t know how.
She needed comfort herself.

Chapter
Eight

A week after the
funeral, the ashes arrived from the crematorium. Marla went to the
funeral home to pick them up. They were in a plain white box. Marla
picked the box up and it was heavier than she expected. Inside, the
ashes were in a plastic bag. That didn’t seem right. Meredith in a
plastic bag. Meredith wanted her ashes scattered in the bay, and
Marla wanted to do that as soon as possible. Get her sister out of
that plastic bag.

Marla knew she
couldn’t take Meredith’s ashes to Sean’s in a box that looked
like something ordered from the Internet. She went back to the shop
and went up to her apartment, carrying the box like a treasure. The
china cabinet in the dining area was full of family china and various
vases. Marla opened the cabinet doors and reached into the back of
the top shelf, careful not to knock into the china in front. She was
reaching for a Chinese vase with a top. Meredith had always loved the
piece, which had been in the family for over a hundred years. Marla
pulled the vase out of the cabinet. It was dusty and she took it into
the kitchen and washed it in the sink. When it was completely dry,
Marla put the bag of ashes inside and put the top on.

Marla drove to
Sean’s house, because now it was Sean’s house and not Meredith’s
anymore. His mother greeted her at the kitchen door.