A Memoir by Erin Hall

The Monday after dad’s funeral, mom and my brother go back to work. They want to escape the rot consuming the house – flowers no longer in bloom, dad’s empty chair. I do not. I sink into the new abnormal like loose ground – a haven to burrow. Get some sleep, people say – but my limbs twitch in protest, fight off rest that will convert days and move life forward. I need to keep time still, dig deeper. Get outside, people say – but the neighborhood is alien without dad moving through it, and each draw of fresh air sends wildfire rippling across my chest, filling me with rage. I pack the dirt around me with eager handfuls.

In the evenings there are visitors and dull chatter over wine – enough to spread the numbness to new corners of my body as if it’s the spring rain pooling into the curves of our yard, weighing me down in thick mud so I stop stirring. But when night comes and everyone else slogs to their rooms, I don’t go to bed. I slither into dad’s chair and press my imprint into his as if I could still feel him, marvel at the stretch marks in the leather broken open from the weight of his once full body. I trace my calf to his, drag my finger along the shoreline until the tide stole him like clumps of sand. All I can do is lay there in what’s left of this island of suffering. 

I hold time captive in the dark, days cascading as I lose count, becoming years. But the dirt shifts from life stepping into rhythm above, and I’m slowly nudged to the surface like a seed with promise. I go to dad’s chair, sit upright, admire the dirt pressed into my palm, turn over the sharp edge of each grain housed in the folds of my hand – this grief, a garden for tending. Now I prune the thicket crowding the soil, like memories of sweatshirts draping wide over dad’s shoulder, skin thinly sheathed over his protruding collar as if its parchment paper. I feel my way through the brush and pluck each stubborn weed until dad and I are whole again. Only then can I sit quiet at its edge, toes slipped into the soft ground, plotted for growth. 

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Erin Hall is a writer currently living in Chicago. She has been previously published in the Deep Wild Journal, Detroit Metro Times, Huffington Post, Multiplicity Magazine and TodayShow.com. Find her on X at @ErinHall802 or at ehallwrites@gmail.com.