DRAFT 10… okay, here it goes. I tried to make the ending more clear by rewriting the entire piece. I think it is better, but still needs work. Can you help me by reading and let me know if it is clear? What strikes you? What is confusing? Thank you.
This summer Pat and I drove the Oregon Coastal Highway on a cloudless day. We stopped at least a dozen times, becoming tourists in our home state: in line for salt water taffy, taking pictures at the Devil’s Punch Bowl, hours of remembering trips with our families over time. We were headed for North Bend where I was born, where my mother was raised on a farm, where my father lived with his grandparents. That old, dying mill town, stuck in the 1950’s; it preserves my parents’ younger years in the hard beauty of one corner of Oregon.
We stopped at Horse Fall Beach, right before you cross the Coos Bay and head into North Bend beneath a welcome sign unchanged since I watched it through a back seat window as we drove towards Grandma’s. I had a new reason for visiting: Mom says when she dies I am to mingle their ashes and toss them into the water here at this beach. It was a short hike over the dunes to where driftwood littered the sand; and it was so familiar, that I swear we picnicked beside this very log. I take in the sweep of the landscape in a glance, returning to the car before sorrow can overtake me.
Next we followed Mom’s directions to the farm on Lars Inlet. It was just as she described, only smaller: a few cows, a shelter her father had built for waiting for the school bus, a small house on a hill above the pasture. I smiled. She lived here—that sweet child in braids ran on this ground, carried home her school books to this house, learned to drive on the road we sat idling on. We had to leave too soon, but I felt centered knowing I’d touched my past in some small way.
We used a map to find the cemetery. First a drive by my grandparents’ house, the birdhouses, goldfish pond, and berry vines buried beneath the pavement of a school parking lot, past the church where they married, the theatre where they had their first date, and then a hard right turn up the hill to the house at Sunset Hills Cemetery that holds the records of who is buried there.
“I’m looking for a grave and I don’t believe it has a name,” I said to the woman behind the counter. “My brother was buried here as an infant, before they named him,” I continued. She gave me a sympathetic grimace, but shook her head.
I printed my parents’ names on scrap paper. She went to a room at the back and returned with an index card. The details were printed in fine, even letters: $15 burial, $15 internment, $15 casket, paid in cash April 17, 1961. She pointed us towards the infant cemetery and counted headstones in from the tree of wind chimes left by mourners.
In moments I was kneeling beside a weathered marker, tracing our baby son with one finger, while I held back weeds and brushed the grit from between the letters. In a cool breeze that pulls off the Pacific Ocean, the chimes played one and then another, a haunting, soothing whisper of longing: a lullaby for infants we cannot reach on this steep hillside just above the coastal highway. I was struck by the image of a fragile skeleton huddled six feet below me; I could see curled fingers resting against a tiny skull. I would gather him against my chest if only I could reach him. I know he is bones, or dust; the decades must have eaten his fragile coffin. But I could see him.
I stood and let my eyes take in the stark, simple beauty of this corner of Oregon: dark forests, decaying lumber mills, quiet roads. I imagine my brother’s burial with my father and grandmother watching his coffin sink to earth.
A town of ghosts; why am I here?
Sleep has kept its distance in the months since my father’s been gone. I wake in the black silence of night, knowing I should have called one more time. I walk out into our driveway clutching my robe in both hands, and I spin beneath the stars. In all of night’s still beauty he might be keeping watch.
I knew I would lose him, I could feel it happening, but I still can’t right myself now that he is gone. He would come here to North Bend, I think as I stare into the hills, searching for evidence in the descending night.
He has to be somewhere.
I have to find him.
An hour ago I drove by our old house at the peak of a hill in the center of town. I remembered pushing open a gate and walking across sand to the water. Memory is slippery, but I suddenly felt the chill of sand beneath my bare feet and the wind blowing my hair into spikes against my cheek. I remembered the muffled call of seagulls and the roar of the ocean meeting the shore. I could almost feel my dad walking me to the surf to fish, holding both rods in one hand, his other closing around my tiny fingers as I skipped to keep up. And then it comes. In a rush. First this whispered story across time, then a long, tortured howl for today. I reach for him and feel the vacancy. I’m the balloon let go from careless hands, careening off into the sky without direction until I reach the upper atmosphere and explode into fragments.
He let go; I can’t sustain myself.
My knees shake as we walk to the car. The next morning I can’t bear to leave. I want to ask Dad about burying his only son. I want him to take me around this town and tell me stories. I’ll listen well this time, I promise. Perhaps there are right ways to grieve, and I just can’t find them. I circle the same thoughts: I’ll never be anyone’s little girl. No one will call me Penny Pooh, Penny Poodle-do. We had a relationship forged in fire and loss—missed years—which made each moment poignant as his health failed. As I sat by his bed in intensive care he reminded me, “Penny, my Penny, you are so precious.”
I face the Oregon Coast Range, remote and still, between the fast-moving Umpqua River where we once baited hooks to catch summer steelhead, and the middle fork of the Coquille River where as an eager boy he ran along its banks. I want those moments back. I feel the breeze swoop around me and hear the long, slow cry of a gull as it rises out of sight.
