This Is Us
The River
Bridges between me and those I’ve lost
When I got through the cold they made me swim in a river, and I forgot his name. I forgot all the names. — Sarah Ruhl, ‘Eurydice’
I cared for both my boyfriend and my mother in my house. My boyfriend died in his hospice bed in my living room. Afterward, whenever I stepped onto my patio, I passed through the physical space where he sighed his last breath as I held him in my arms.
Most nights, after helping my mother to bed, I’d stand in the salty air, staring out at the lights reflected in the marina. If I turned and caught my reflection in the sliding glass door, Dan stood near me. Less than two years later, my mother left this life too. For months, whenever I sat at my dining room table, I felt her next to me.
In the beginning of their absence, I spoke to my mother and to Dan, and they often spoke back. My mother was no stranger to communing with someone on the other side. Months before she died, she conversed with her deceased twin sister every evening. I witnessed her in this eerie borderland, hovering over her martini glass as if it were a crystal ball, her head bobbing in and out of sleep. Their conversation seemed as real as my conversation with my…
