Stories: All-New Tales

THE WORST DAY OF Abe’s life had not been the one you’d imagine, but the one after that, when he went to choose his daughter’s coffin. Sarah begged him to go; said she could not sit and talk about what to do with their daughter as if she were a box of outgrown clothing that had to be stored somewhere safe and dry. The funeral director was a man with a bad comb-over and kind, gray eyes, and his first question to Abe was whether he’d seen his daughter…afterward. Abe had—once the doctors and nurses had given up and the tubes had been removed and the crash carts pulled away, he and Sarah were given a moment to say good-bye. Sarah had run out of the hospital room, screaming. Abe had sat down on the edge of the bed with the plastic mattress that crinkled beneath his weight, and had threaded his fingers with his daughter’s. For a brief, heart-stopping moment, he thought he’d felt her move, but it turned out to be his own sobbing, jarring the bed. He’d sat like that for a while, and then somehow managed to pull her onto his lap and crawl onto the cot himself, as if he were the patient.

What he remembered was not how still she was, or how her skin grew ashen under his touch, but how she had weighed just the tiniest bit less than she had that morning, when he’d carried her through the double doors of the emergency room. It wasn’t remarkable to think that he—a man who lived by weights and measures—would be sensitive to this even at a moment as overwhelming as that one. Abe recalled hearing medical examiners say a person who died lost twenty-one grams of weight—the measure of a human soul. He realized, though, holding his daughter in his arms, that the scale was all wrong. Loss should have been measured in leagues: the linear time line he would not spend with her as she lost her first tooth, lost her heart over a boy, lost the graduation cap she tossed into a silvered sky. Loss should have been measured circularly, like angles: the minutes between the two of them, the degrees of separation.

We suggest that you dress your daughter the way she would have wanted, the funeral director had said. Did she have a favorite party dress, or a pair of overalls she always wore to climb trees? A soccer uniform? A T-shirt from a favorite vacation?

There were other questions, and decisions to be made, and finally, the funeral director took Abe into another room to choose a coffin. The samples were stacked against the wall, jet and mahogany sarcophagi gleaming at such a high polish he could see his own ravaged features in their reflections. The funeral director led Abe to the far end of the room, where three stunted coffins were propped like brave soldiers. They ranged from some that came up as high as his hip to one that was barely bigger than a bread box.

Abe picked one painted a glossy white, with gold piping, because it reminded him of his daughter’s bedroom furniture. He kept staring at it. Although the funeral director assured him that it was the right size, it did not seem large enough to Abe to hold a girl as full of life as his daughter. It was certainly not large enough, he knew, to pack inside the turtle shell of grief that he’d armored himself in this past day. Which meant, of course, that even after his daughter was gone, the sorrow would remain behind.

THE FUNERAL WAS HELD at a church neither Abe nor Sarah attended, a service arranged by Sarah’s mother, who in spite of this still managed to believe in God. At first, Sarah had fought it—how many idealistic discussions had she and Abe had about religion being akin to brainwashing; about letting their child choose her own rainbow of beliefs?—but Sarah’s mother put her foot down, and Sarah—still reeling—was weak enough to be toppled. What kind of parent, Felicity had said tearfully, doesn’t want a man of God to say a few words over her daughter? Now, Sarah sat in the front pew as this pastor spoke, words that flowed over the crowd like an anesthetic breeze. In her hand was a small teal green Beanie Baby, a dog that had gone everywhere with her child, to the point where it was hairless and frayed and barely even recognizable in its animalhood. Sarah squeezed it in her fist so tight that she could feel its seeded stuffing start to push at the seams.

Try to remember, as we celebrate her short and glorious life, that sadness comes out of love. Sadness is a kind of terrible privilege.

Sarah wondered why the pastor hadn’t mentioned the truly important things: like the fact that her daughter could take a toilet paper roll and turn it into a pretend video camera that occupied her imagination for hours. Or that the only songs that made her stop crying when she had colic as an infant were tracks from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. She wondered why he hadn’t told the people who’d come here that her daughter had only just learned how to do a round off in gymnastics and that she could pick the Big Dipper out of any night sky?

Oh, Lord, receive this child of Yours into the arms of Your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the company of angels.

At that, Sarah lifted her head. Not Your child, she thought. Mine.

Ten minutes later, it was over. She remained stone still while everyone else left to get into their cars and drive to the cemetery. But she had worked out something special with Abe; the one request, really, she’d had for this funeral. She felt Abe’s hand come onto her shoulder and his lips move against her ear. “Do you still—”

“Yes,” she interrupted, and then he was gone too.

She walked up to the coffin, surrounded by an embarrassment of flowers. Fall flowers, like the ones she’d had in her wedding bouquet. She forced herself to glance down at her daughter—who looked, well, perfectly normal, which was the great irony here.

“Hey, baby,” Sarah said softly, and she tucked the small green dog underneath her daughter’s arm. Then she opened up the large purse she’d brought with her to the funeral service.

It had been critical for her to be the last one to see her daughter before that casket was closed. She wanted to be the last one to lay eyes on her girl, the same way—seven years ago—she had been the first.

The book she pulled out of her purse was so dog-eared and worn that its spine had cracked and some of its pages were only filed in between others, instead of glued into place. “‘In a great green room,’” she began to read, “‘there was a fireplace, and a red balloon, and a picture of…’”

She hesitated. This was the part where her daughter would have chimed in: the cow jumping over the moon. But now, Sarah had to say the words for her. She read through to the end, going by heart when the tears came so furiously that she could not see the words on the page. “‘Goodnight stars,” she whispered. “‘Goodnight air. Goodnight noises everywhere.’” Then she drew in a ragged breath and touched her finger to her daughter’s lips. “Sleep tight,” Sarah said.