Permanence in the Place We Store Sensation

A year later, on ashes and wind

We were in it for the wind. The way it rushed at us, blurred our edges, blew right through to the insides of our cheeks. We ran straight down, our skin flapping like a sail that could catch. Like we might lift right off that sloping sand. 

We trudged up so we could fly down. Breathless at the top of the dunes, we looked out over the bay and swore that it was endless. Our toes sank through the sand. Someone said “ready,” and then “go!” And then the wind took us. We flew. 

Sometimes I wonder if we store sensation in a separate part of our brains. If we have a place for memories that can be seen or said and another entirely for those that can only be felt. Like how hot air, that sticky mid-summer heat, can turn cold if you run at it hard enough. I wonder if there is a special place where we store memories of wind. 

***

It is the day before the day that we will spread my mama’s ashes and we are eating dinner at a square table with a lazy susan. Glass bowls of butter spin around. We tug the meat out of lobster tails and then dunk until that meat turns glossy. 

“Who is going to want a bag of ashes?” My mommy asks. I suck a skinny leg. We wonder if we’ll need to go to the grocery store to buy ziplock bags and if we should buy the sandwich size or the snack. “We’ll grocery shop in the morning, spread in the afternoon,” my mommy concludes. We laugh. What the hell are we even talking about right now. 

It’s been just over a year since the day my mama died. We are out on the east end of Long Island, on the stretch of land where my mama and her brothers spent all their summers, in a house that peaked over the edge of Peconic Bay. Hydrangeas line the wooden steps to the sand and the air holds onto salt like it is precious. As kids, we raced down the dunes, the wind blowing our cheeks into a grin. 

***

There are nights when I wake up with a chest ache. It’s this sinking, concave feeling and it hurts me from the inside out. 

A few weeks ago I was driving and I remembered a story about my mama that I hadn’t thought of all year. It was from the spring before she died, when she had grown attached to a pregnant bunny nesting in the dirt of our backyard. She loved to watch this bunny grow bigger, loved to watch from the window as it hopped its bloated belly across our grass. When the bunny gave birth, my mama fell for its babies too. They were small, unformed creatures. Pure, pink potential. Every time she called me we would talk about her bunnies. They were starting to grow fur.

The story I remembered was this: our dog, Scruffy, found my mama’s bunnies in their nest one morning and tore them all to shreds with her terrier teeth. My mama saw blood, red against green. She saw the mangled bodies of her baby bunnies, all their skin and guts and almost fur, and she screamed so loud her voice broke. Four neighbors came sprinting to our yard. “What’s wrong!” They all shouted. “My bunnies,” my mama cried. She cried so hard she lost her breath. 

I was driving down a tree lined back road in the Berkshires when I came across this memory. It arrived in my head, three dimensional. It felt like catching light. I pulled over to write down all the details I could remember, like the number of neighbors that came running and the flowers that were in bloom when my mama’s bunnies died. It was early spring, skip laurel season. 

I think my chest ache hurts like fear. I am so afraid of losing memories that can be seen and said.

***

It is the morning before the afternoon that we will scatter my mama’s ashes and we have just returned from the grocery store with sandwich sized ziplocks. Also twelve farm stand corns, a red onion, six cans of beans, two and a half pounds of flank steak, and trays of frozen puff pastry which we’ll roll out for an heirloom tomato tart. 

I am slicing the onion when my mommy calls my name from the laundry room down the hall. I leave my knife on its wooden cutting board and make my way towards her. I open the door. My mommy is in her Hoka sneakers, her blue and white striped shirt. Her voice, its faded Long Island accent: “Ok Jess, I’m in here with mama.” 

On the counter across from the washer and dryer is a plastic bag of ashes. Beside it are nine sandwich sized ziplocks and a silver ladle. 

Is there a limit to what the brain will accept as real? Are there sensations, like the feel of ash pressed between a thumb and forefinger, that the brain just can’t catch its grip on? I rub the shards of my mama’s bones that land on the counter, as we spoon pieces of her into ziplock baggies, between my fingers. I want to absorb them through my skin. I want to put them on my tongue and taste them, to swallow. I want to store my mama somewhere more permanent than memory.  

My mommy and I fill nine ziplock bags. We hold them up to the light and hope that they are even. I wonder what bathing suit I should wear to spread my mama’s ashes in the bay and decide on the black one because it covers the most of my butt. Please, tell me what part of the brain a thought like that even comes from. 

***

All year, I have been so lucky. I move into a beautiful apartment, one that is under market price and above my favorite bookstore. I get a new job, one with a great team and work I genuinely care about. I win an essay contest judged by my favorite author, it never rains when I have plans outdoors, and I swear my subway seems to arrive just as I enter the station every time. 

I joke-not-joke that my mama is up there pulling some strings. 

My sister is awarded a journalism fellowship in LA, a new neighbor quickly becomes my mommy’s close friend, I read a novel about a ballerina and then find I just love doing ballet. I lay in the park and the sun is hot when I need it to be hot, shade when I need it to be shade, I sip lemonade from the stand at the farmer’s market on my block, it is a summer evening and we are listening to James Taylor, we are eating cold pizza, we are eating a cucumber that we grew in this backyard, we are laughing and dancing and there are string lights everywhere I look. I hold hands with the people I love, sing all my favorite songs in the shower, and when I rest my head on people’s laps, their fingers know exactly how I like my hair stroked. I kiss the Patti Smith album that hangs on the wall beside my bed and when I place my mama’s ashes into the ceramic honey jar that I’ve decided I’ll use as her urn, they fit just right. I feel lucky every day.  

***

We are scattering my mama’s ashes. 

Slow down. 

Feel the water, warm and bath like against the skin of your feet, your ankles, your calves. See the sky, crowded with clouds. See them dripping. Rain. Tears.  

There is wind. Can you hear it? 

Wade deeper. Press your body against your sister’s. See your mommy. Her bag is open. She is bent over the water, the wind is carrying her ash across the surface, clouds of bone are forming beside her knees. Watch these clouds disperse. Disappear. Everywhere, just water. Waves. Cry. 

Cry for letting go. 

Know that some things can’t be seen or said.  

Open your bag and give your mama to the wind. 

When we finish scattering my mama’s ashes, the sun breaks the cloud cover. It dances across the water and dapples us in light. My mommy has brought nine bottles of bubbles and we hold the wands before our lips and blow swarms of iridescent spheres into the air. Bubbles because joy. Because laughter. Because what the hell are we even here for if not this. We blow bubbles and we play Patti Smith songs from the speaker on my phone and we dance beside the sun in the water that my mama will rest in forever. The dunes are right there. 

***

The day before we scattered my mama’s ashes, I stood atop the sand dunes and looked out over the bay. My chest ached for a memory. I wanted to see my mama’s outfit, hear her voice, know the season, the flowers in bloom, the number of us standing atop the dunes beside her. I wanted the joke she had told, the length of her hair, the order in which we all flew down this sloping pile of sand. 

All I could think of were those dead bunnies. Maybe only loss itself has permanence. 

***

It isn’t a memory, but I remember it every day. I can’t tell you where we were or when or how, but I know that it happened, and it happened all the time. 

My mama is bald. Her head is shiny in the sun. Somewhere there is music playing. All around us, friends and sand. Watermelon juice runs down our cheeks. We hold each other’s hands. It never rains when we have plans outdoors. We let the sand take our toes and the water lasts forever. 

In my memory that isn’t a memory, we are dying and dancing. We fling our arms into the sky and Patti Smith is there to catch us. We are light as bubbles. We are buoyant, iridescent, bouncing. It is a summer evening and everyone everywhere is catching their subway at just the right time. We are dying and loving. Dying and grateful. Dying and lucky, so lucky. We are lucky every day. 

We are flying down the dunes, making our own wind.