A Passing I

i.

They met in a beauty parlor.

He’d taken some friends’ kids there for haircuts. She’d noticed him, but he seemed to get along so well and seemed so comfortable with them that she’d assumed they must be his.

A year later they were engaged.

ii.

I remember he’d sit against the wall in our eighth-grade science class and make the sound—obnoxiously loud—of a truck downshifting. It was an uncannily accurate representation. I think the teacher hated when we’d urge him on, to get his bwrrrr to shatter any sort of classroom atmosphere she may have had that day.

He loved to laugh. It was like a bark—short and piercing.

iii.

She spoke almost without plan. She moved loosely in time, reciting people they’d met, places they’d gone, but always emphasizing how much people loved him, and, without really saying it, how much she loved him.

It was almost like watching a life collapse, a private moment that had to be spoken to us so that we would understand.

iv.

I didn’t know until tonight he’d been adopted. He never spoke of it.

v.

Her face was almost radiant when she spoke, alive and beautiful. When she finished, it died.

She stepped away from the mic and walked, tears, head down, into shadows.

vi.

I didn’t go see him in the casket. I prefer to see him differently.

Light a candle to remember the dead.