and now they have funeral clothes

I drove the route in the dark for the first time because that’s what the phone in my hand told me to do. The road never before taken is called the Legacy Parkway. It's twenty minutes from my driveway, but I had never never been on it. 

It’s used to offset the heavy traffic coming in and out of North Salt Lake, but it cuts through a wetland and shouldn't have been built. 

In the dark, it's like driving through Night Vale. The blackness out the driver’s side window is the end of the world. On the other side, the lights of the oil refinery blaze like the Emerald City. And I was driving between them, running clothes to the hospital where a mother was dying. 

I never met her. 

I never will.

She had been dying for months. Her daughter is dating my daughter. They are the sweetest couple. Nineteen and eighteen, Lily is the youngest soul I have ever met. While my child, Beach, is older than the whole wide world. Together they make me hopeful for humanity. 

The drive was painful, not just emotionally but physically. The broken patella and the two torn meniscuses under my black leggings didn't like to be bent for such a long time. I felt old and fragile. I felt faceless under the black eye. Still nursing the bruised pride from tripping over my dog while running on Thanksgiving morning. Landing hard with two knees and one side of the face on the asphalt. I came around already on the phone, calling my daughter in tears for help. Two things I never do, are cry and ask for help. 

I remember feeling so alone.

Everyone was off somewhere. My partner of nineteen years, Colby, was away in the mountains of central Utah hunting on a deprivation tag, an antlerless elk. My oldest daughter now lives in Scotland, getting her Master’s degree. My son and his wife and daughter were miles away in Alaska, building their own life, and my stepson was in school with his girlfriend in Moscow, Idaho. The girls were spending the holiday at Lily’s dad’s, an hour away in North Ogden.

We raised brave, adventurous children. And as a result, I spent three days alone with ice packs on my knees and a set of dogs who didn’t understand why I cried when they bumped my knees with their noses.       

And then I was driving because Lily’s mom was dying. 

First, I drove Beach to Lily’s work in North Salt Lake and dropped her off so she could take a sobbing Lily to the hospital in Ogden. Then I returned later that night to bring them clothing. Handing it off in a dark parking lot. The hospital lit like a white city behind them as Lily told me the funeral with be Tuesday and that her mom wanted to be buried with her blanket. Her children had bought her a new one and wrapped it for Christmas. It was a present that would never be received. 

She died shortly after midnight, leaving five children without a mother. And I kept driving the fifty-two-minute between North Ogden and Salt Lake. Picking up and dropping off. Once again, I am stepping in to help raise another motherless daughter. Me of all people.  

I drove alone to the funeral of a woman I had never met and listened to each of her children say what a great mom she was. How she lived for her children. She would have done anything for them. 

Funerals aren’t like weddings. You’re not allowed to object. You can’t raise your hand while standing at the graveside and point out that she would have done anything for her children… except stop drinking, even if it's true.

I know. I’m such an asshole, but I’m surrounded by motherless children of alcoholics. I’m a little jaded and tired of doing all the driving. And grateful at the same time. 

I took the Legacy Parkway on the way home even though my phone said it would take three minutes longer because I wanted to see it in the light. As it turns out, the side of solid darkness is not the end of the world. It is a field of golden grass that stretches so far it seems to go on forever. It looks like a place someone could completely disappear. I make a mental note to take my dog there when I can walk without pain again.  

All of life is an exit. Long or short, graceful or grotesque. A million hellos and goodbyes. There are so many things you only do once. You may not recognize them as they happen, but they all get written in the Book of Onlys. 

Those one-time moments are like the tick of a clock. 

And now they have funeral clothes because you are only a child once.