He Died Early

He died early, too early for one so young, they’d said,

long before seatbelts had laws to keep us secure,

suspend us upside down in rolling over,

bruised, perhaps, and banged up

and broken, but living, still -

that all came later, too late for him –

and they drove all night, leaving in darkness

to arrive just as the sun rose on the new day,

to comfort their grieving family needing them,

even as they needed comfort themselves, trying to stay strong

through their tears, for them, for each other.

That night his room was shut against his dying, the door

pulled to and latched, though not locked, just shut

and they left it that way, fearing to enter,

not sure of what nor why, but keeping it shut in,

that eerie quiet that accompanies death, the quietude of absence.

They slept that night holding each other tight

in the twin bed that had been hers for the years

before one another, before him even, holding each other,

shutting out their fears behind the door to his room,

the room next to the one where they huddled,

both rooms shrouded in silence but for their tears falling,

tears released now in their weakness, away from family

for whom they have remained strong, denying their own grief.

And in the morning, their eyes bleary and heavy

with restless sleep and the long day ahead, bucked up

and brave, they emerged, the doors wide open, theirs and his.

Neither admits to a nocturnal journey, nor a simple walk

in their sleeplessness, neither noting the other’s leaving,

the click of a door opening or the creak of hinges, long unused,

swinging back, not even the groan of shifting floorboards

as if someone has walked across them, as they have for years,

for as long as she can remember from her childhood, knowing,

but not acknowledging when their parents checked on them

or giving away their sneaking in, caught and in trouble,

but not this night, no squeak, no groan, no presence,

but the open doors, doors shut tight, shutting out their fears.

And for many years, years passing after the funeral,

their grief turned to quiet resignation of life and death,

no one, even the young taken too early exempt from this,

for these many years they wondered, wondering still,

who had opened the doors, theirs and his, undetected,

checking on them in their grief and restless sleep,

one last moment, “it’s ok now.” For there was,

somehow, a comfort there, a comfort unexplained

by that open door, a brief moment of sorrow removed,

a knowing, a sensing, a still voice, soft, unheard.

Do the dead, perhaps, come home, then, one more time

before leaving, if leave they must, come home one last time,

to bid farewell, to leave us alone in our grief,

our grief too much in our attempt to stay strong?

Or do they come home to remember, to remember home

and who they are, what they are leaving behind and who,

those memories that even death cannot take, to soften

what comes next, that last leaving, leaving us behind,

death but a place of memories brought to life, remembering?