compendium

still i rise

still i rise
i rise / i rise / i rise

Christmas happened in the time between Dad leaving and Mom leaving.

It was just three of us; four of us, if you counted Grandma's ashes on the mantle, which I didn't, since those ashes were older than petroglyphs. She died before I knew her. Mom, William, and I went out and sawed down a tiny, sparse little sapling with stingy branches and porcupine-like needles. It barely reached Mom's shoulder. It was very fun, in spite of everything, because it was so shockingly and lucidly cold, and we struggled quite a lot with the actual action of sawing, and William nearly decapitated himself, and the tree almost fell on me, and after it all Mom hefted the tree up onto her shoulders and marched to the car with the most triumph I had ever seen her wear.

Later, Mom put the heat on full blast and made hot apple cider. We locked the doors and shut the windows and pulled out the television wires and cut short the unctuous voice of the bad-news reporter on the radio and made our own little reality. We pretended there was a fire in the grate, because we didn't want to risk that. Even I, so unforgettably enchanted by fire, was terrified of the thought of it in my own house.

(And yet I kept the lighter standing upright on my windowsill.)

Mom and I sorted ornaments on the rug while William strung the spheres all across the little tree. Tinsel. Gold and silver. Even the profound fairy lights. At the end we stuck a star plucked from the heavens of the sky on the thin top of the tree.

When Will and I left the tree was still standing, decaying, fading as tips of burnt orange overwhelmed the previously bright green, dying just as suddenly and abruptly to parallel the other in that house.

The candles were my tribute to William. The celebration of Christmas was our tribute to Dad. The death of that tree was what remained for Mom, for it would stay there as long as she would, and she would not leave alone.

It's nearly impossible to imagine, but none of us really do.