It's Just a Box

The world doesn’t end when the sun burns out,

or the missiles fly,

or the virus can’t be cured,

not for most of us.

It ends when you answer the door

to find two highway patrol officers

who will not talk to you

until your husband comes.

It ends when you go to the crib

& see he’s not breathing

or feel the babe inside you

no longer kicking,

her heart no longer beating.

It ends

when we cannot find hope,

or see a future,

or any way forward.

The world ends,

but with a comma, not a period.

It waits—it must wait,

who knows how long,

to be reborn.

It’s just a box, nothing more than a bit of thick brown paper folded together. But it makes me tremble. I cannot bring myself to go near it.

What’s the big deal? I keep dozens of boxes just like it in the basement ready for the moment something needs to be stored, wrapped, or shipped. They don’t bother me. I carried this one up the stairs not long ago. I wasn’t afraid of it then. What’s so different now?

All I did was set it on the bed, then went to get my Bubba Keg so that I would have something to drink while I worked. Now I can’t bring myself to go back into the bedroom. My lower lip is trembling, my knees are locked in place, & my eyes are beginning to brim with tears.

Did I just refer to it as “the bedroom”? It’s his…, that is, it was his bedroom. Now it’s not. And all the things that are in there were his…, & now we are left to figure out what to do with them. If I begin the process of deciding what to keep & what to give away, if I start packing his things into this box, does it mean that he’s really gone? And if he’s really gone, what next? Is there any next?

Frozen in place, I find my thoughts drifting back to that day: Monday, April 15, 2013, Tax Day, the day Lincoln died, when the Titanic went down, when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier…, our worst day. Sandra was watching the Boston Marathon on tv when the bomb went off. She rushed over to me in distress to make sure I knew what had happened. I agreed that it was a terrible thing & tried not to dismiss her feelings. But since 9/11, reports of bombings & Americans being killed had become almost a daily routine. They were tragic & I felt for those who died as well as for those who lost loved ones. But the world didn’t stop just because someone died. I left for the office. Sandra stayed, glued to the tv.

I spent Monday mornings at the church. Monday afternoons were for the Food Pantry. We were open from three to five. By two I would be there to make sure everything was ready for clients. After closing at five, I would load the empty cardboard into my car to take to the recycling center just across the highway on the south side of town.

All of that had gone just as any other Monday for me. But as I was heading back to the highway, I heard the sirens. One fire engine sped by, then another, an ambulance, the county sheriff, another fire truck… the line & the sirens never seemed to end. Something had happened out east of town. I said a quick prayer for the first responders & for those poor souls on the other end who were waiting for them. Then I returned to the decision I tried to make most Mondays: whether to go to the movies that night in the next town over. The owner of the theater gave free passes to clergy, so I often treated myself to a show on Mondays. It meant going alone, Sandra preferred to stay home, but that was okay. It usually didn’t matter what was showing. Just allow me to settle in with a large tub of hot buttered popcorn along with an equally large Dr. Pepper to wash it down & I could watch just about anything.

My knees buckle at the thought & I almost fall over. I decide to set the Bubba Keg down on the floor. “If I had gone, I wouldn’t have been home… they would have redirected me from that stretch of highway… I would have been summoned at the theater… Sandra & I would have been twenty-four miles apart….”

I steady myself, but the memories keep flooding through. I had gone home. I asked where Keenan was. She answered he was at Walmart in that next town over picking up elastic & delivering a dress with some garters on which he’d been working for next week’s prom. But his car was still outside, I had objected. Oh, Sandra’s car was gone.

We didn’t think too much of it. He was eighteen & a half years old, about to graduate from high school, & sometimes he just liked to drive her Buick LeSabre. It was a much better car, a much smoother ride, & it had a lot more room to carry things like prom dresses. We picked up pizza from Gambino’s for supper. He could eat when he got home. We’d remind him not to take one of our vehicles without asking us first.

I had gone downstairs to watch one of my movies, I forget which one. Around seven o’clock Sandra called to me from the top of the stairs, a slight waver in her voice. Two officers had come to our front door, but they wouldn’t speak to her until I was also there. We sat down on the couch as they told us there had been an accident involving our son… he’d crossed the center line… it was head on… he didn’t make it.

The world may not stop for everyone when a person dies, but it does stop for someone. Sandra & I can attest to that. She describes it as the only day she never laughed. I’m still haunted by the thought, “If I had gone to the movies that night….”

And now I’m standing here, several weeks later, unable to enter a room & fill a box with some of the things his friends hadn’t chosen by which to remember him.

“By which to remember him?” I mutter under my breath, shaking my head in disbelief with myself. “Why am I worried about dangling a preposition when our son has just died & I can’t even face an empty box?”

Or his room. It is still his room, his room where the souvenir glasses he saved from all the proms he ever attended are still displayed. Where I had once forgotten to knock & walked in on him with his boyfriend in an intimate moment. Where his sewing table continues to hold the garters he was making for proms yet to come. Where the two mannequins he had stolen from a garbage bin & the dress form we had given him still wear three of the gowns he had designed & made. Where the bottle of alcohol he had shared with his boyfriend continued to lay hidden in his closet & would someday make me laugh & remember & be filled with joy & love once more.

This is his room, & it’s going to stay that way a little while longer. Until the pain begins to fade, our lungs can breathe, & the world begins to spin again.

I step inside his room just far enough to pick up the empty box. I pause for a moment to look around. I see the blue curtains made of string he loved so dearly. I see his bed, still unmade, his computer laying at an odd angle atop the covers, the stuffed animals he so treasured.

“The world will spin again,” I think to myself. “Someday.”

“But not today,” I say under my breath, as I turn & carry the box out of his room, back down to the basement.