Jan and Ron and Unanswered Questions

JAN

_____________________

My mother loves me because I have the face of her mother

and the name of her mother

and she says that I laugh like her mother.

My mother loves me because I am her daughter

and I love her because she is my mother

and she gave me her mother’s face

and her mother’s name

and her mother’s laugh.

My mother has all the features that I have

and her mother’s that I will never get a chance to know. 

I love my mother

and my grandmother.  _____________________

Who am I to mourn my mother with

if I do not have a sister?

Who am I to mourn my sister with 

If I do not have a child?

Who is my son to mourn me with 

if he does not have a sibling? 

It will be so.

It must be so. 

I will not have him travel this path alone

when I am set to leave. 

It will be so.

It must be so.

_____________________

On the day of my grandmother’s funeral,

I found a rock in the shape of a heart in the yard.

I remember my grandfather leaning over the couch and, loudly,

whispering to his second wife,

Jan’s dead.

a few days prior.

I remember my sister crying.

I remember not knowing what to feel.

Does it always feel like this?

I remember my mom saying that

they were only five minutes late to the hospital and 

We didn’t get to say goodbye. 

I remember her crying about going into a store 

and not knowing what dress to buy her dead mother for her casket.

She just got so… big.  

I remember her crying into a baby blanket that she had taken out our cedar chest,

my child arms wrapped around her, 

This was her blanket. 

I remember that when my father was in the hospital just a few days prior,

I sat in my uncle's house thinking,

What’s going on? 

That cedar chest now sits in my room,

filled with my own child’s baby blankets and clothes. 

I keep that heart-shaped stone in my jewelry box,

next to the trinkets of my childhood,

my great-grandmother’s jewelry,

the string of white and pink pearls that my uncle got for me on a business trip,

and my dead ex-husband's class ring.

Does it always feel like this?

_____________________

RON

_____________________

Grandpa and I have the same nickname.

They add twelve extra letters to the end

of a four letter name,

sewn across our chests.

With a pat on the shoulder, 

like a snake whispering in our ear.

Hessssssssssssss...

_____________________

My grandfather was named Ronald. 

It’s right there on his urn

that we wrapped in a scarf

next to the Christmas Eve fire

with a Santa hat on top.

(We’re a family of weird people that deal with grief in weird ways.)

They called him “Ronnie” when he was growing up. 

In the planner I have from my great-grandmother,

“Ronnie’s Birthday” is written every March 4th.

In his high school yearbook, 

“Ronnie Hess plans on joining the U.S. Air Force after graduation.” 

is typed in black typewriter ink next to a black and white picture of him. 

He ended up joining the Army. 

It’s too late to ask him why he changed his mind.

His name switched to “Hess”, 

and then “Private”,

then “Dad” and “Husband”. 

“Ex-Husband” eventually. 

Too late to ask him for his stories.

His high school sweetheart wrote 

“Rest in peace, Ronnie” 

in her Facebook status. 

We called him “Grandpa Ron” growing up, 

and I still picture him drinking Pepsi out on his back patio

and cutting his large lawn on his large lawn mower

and hugging his mother when we went to visit her in the house he built for her. 

Towards the later part of his life, 

it changed to just “Ron”. 

I don’t know why we dropped “Grandpa” from his title.

Perhaps the physical distance between us 

made us separate emotionally from him. 

Or maybe “Ron” was just simply easier to send in short form

like in the texts I received from my older siblings one day in December.

>Did you hear about Ron?

>Yeah, poor guy. He was old though.

What?<

>Ron’s dead. 

Ron’s dead.