Rewind: October 3, 2020

A rumbling danced under my feet. A hearse violently reversed towards your tombstone. A myriad of cars flooded into the cemetery. Standing under the tent, my hair growing back thick locs falling over my face again. Clods of dirt lifted themselves, peeling away from your body as if the earth were inhaling backward. Grains streaming upward in thin, whispering threads, retracing the paths they once took down. Loose soil tightened from chaos into structure, settling back into layers it remembered. The dirt rose, composed itself. Your casket comes back up.

My body now subservient to the will of time as I and three others found our way to each corner of that oak-colored casket and walked it into the back of the hearse.

The rumbling magnified as the cars filed out in reverse back to St. Peter and Paul. My attitude is the same: cold, distant, full of resentment. Now standing at the front of the church, still refusing the repast, as suits and dresses huddle backward into the church—suddenly we were walking back down the aisle into the pews. Watching people perform their grief. The same disgust, the same animosity cycling through my flesh.

Not one face was static, expressions circling, reminiscent of a glitch on a computer screen. Glimpses of uncertainty, guilt, fear, sorrow repeating endlessly.

Everyone staring as we reverse toward the car and head home. Entering through the front door, we find our uncle, aunts, and cousin sitting together in the living room. The house is quiet as we sit at the kitchen table, a somber mood floating over us while my father’s tears stream back into his eyes. All his guilt and frustration from the divorce sealed back inside him, his grief no longer visible to us.

His skin grew darker as the red left his eyes. Now white and empty. The confession of love for you never left his tongue. The guilt of letting you go, of letting you die, sealed behind his teeth. Our glimpse at his humanity, stolen from us.

As the day falls back into the night then into day, I find myself in front of you. Your body exposed for all to see. I stood at a distance, unable to move forward. My legs stuck in mud, my spine stiffened, my head bowed. My locs covered my eyes. Disgruntled at your post-death appearance. Your skin was too dark. Your flesh like a freezer burn.

“Who is this?” I thought.

You were on ice for about two-weeks after you died.

Reversing down the hall, my relief doused my wooly crown. I forgot your face. The fear of losing you evaporated. The unlovely, unflattering picture of you disintegrated.

Your casket closed. Your body was sent back to the morgue. The embalming and autopsy undone. I flip back to that day when we last spoke.

In the guest room, on my knees, tears leaking then reversing—the voicemails I searched for, out of fear of forgetting your voice, froze. The phone flew into my hand, placed at my ear. As the morphine flooded out of your system, I heard a faint breath from your side of the line.

The gloss in your eyes, the fog in your mind started to fade. Your heart beats loudly as God opened the avenue for a new way.

Your death date disappears.

Back downstairs at your house, sitting in front of you while you’re sleeping. You were right across from your mother’s room. I couldn’t begin to imagine her wound, the fear of losing a child at eighty years old. Her pain, irrelevant now because miraculously you’re feeling less pain than you should.

A late-game remission was unlikely, preposterous.

The night you came back from that hospital stay—wrists cut from the cuffs was insane.

The restraint put you on edge, your mind in disarray.

You wanted to go home, the doctors and workers barking that you stay.

You told me you were afraid, didn’t want to die alone, away from home.

The wound now healed.

We embraced at your bedside.

At the time, I believed this was one of my last visits. The tears floated off my face and dissipated.

The "I love you's" got refigured, transported to another timeline where we lose you for real.

Your legs restored. Control of your bowels returned. No more diapers, no more shame controlling your gaze.

No more babbling due to cancer cells invading your brain.

The dryness of your skin fell away and the thinning of your skeleton ceased. Your face went from sharp and boney to full and round. For the first time in four months, a smile sat on your face. Though you loved having a flat back, your love handles returned.

Your laughter echoed throughout the house as a full recovery was inbound. Looking up above you, I could see both our souls healing from the fractures.

I thought to myself: “What could this be? That healed you? Was it really God?”

The rumbling returned.

Now, I found myself back in the office, back in accounting, back at Caduceus. The old spotted brown carpet accompanied by a hint of nausea—there was no mistaking it.

Walking out of the bathroom, back down the hall, through the threshold of the fishbowl—I saw you entering. My heart leapt. In my chair now, looking up, meeting your gaze as you stood in the doorway.

“What?” you asked, startled by my focus.

“Don’t you have something to tell me?”

“No, I told you I was running late. Are you okay?”

“Yeah… that was it though, right? Nothing else?”

“You’re scaring me. What else could there be outside of ‘I’m running late’?”

I paused. And smiled. Throwing my hand up. “I’m just making sure.”

You sat down in your chair and it was like any other day. I missed those days. The day you told me, you put on a front. I have to admit it was good, you held it in for a while. I went back to your house after work. You broke the news to Jeff. I remember him curling up immediately. I saw it from the staircase. I sat at the top of the steps and bawled my eyes out.

You found me.

“Don’t do that to me.” Those were the words I remembered.

Walking out of the building, I watched you get into your car. Getting into mine I headed for your place; in the back of my mind I couldn’t trust what I was seeing.

Just as radiant as you’d always been. Healthy, confident, happy, and able. You wore a silky, cashmere-esque navy dress with matching stockings, black closed toe heels. Your nails were violet, just enough to pop against the backdrop the dress created. You wore a silver bracelet with sapphire stones, along with matching earrings.

You had finally returned to form.

Pulling into your driveway, I saw that your front door was open. As I approached it, the rumbling returned. Crossing the threshold of the door, my leg snapped. I collapsed onto the rug. You were coming down the steps as it happened.

A sharp pain ran through my entire body. The pain was unbearable but I couldn’t speak. A dryness crept down my throat, into my stomach, to my arms then my legs. I couldn’t move.

Days later, I woke up in a hospital bed. A doctor stood in front of me. My hearing was hazy, incoherent, muffled, like I was sitting inside a jar.

“We ran some tests. You’re in the late stages of renal cell carcinoma. It’s metastasized all over your body. The most we’ll be able to give you is six months with chemo, three without.”

What an act of God.

The sheer gratitude on my face shocked the white coat. Bliss ran against the burning sensation that was devouring my body. Sharing in your pain and suffering, the quiet surrender of my life for yours. The isolation of taking on death, like Christ.

What an act of God.

For your memory, for your love, I would gladly forsake myself for you.