Poppy

He sat there. In that place.

The lookout point that hung over sweeping wildflower fields nestled into canyons. All glowing with the sun and whatever force makes things beautiful.

It was one of those spots where someone has said, “Here look at this, it’s nature, it’s pretty, it’ll take your breath away. And fill you with a sense of peace.”

At these places we’re supposed to stand and be at peace, there’s always a fence, he thought. A barrier. A phone number—you are not alone, call 1-800…

At these places we’ve created for people to see how stunning the world is, we’ve had to build a cage to prevent them from jumping.

From dying.

There was one here. On white metal, atop a pole driven into the earth. The words like the reflection of sun on glass—jutting out to burn the closest thing it can reach.

But he wasn’t going to jump, he wasn’t going to die. Today.

When the virus first arrived, it felt like someone else’s warning. It felt like somehow it wouldn’t touch them. But like a smothering, death grew closer in a heavy, quiet way until it arrived.

When he was young, his grandfather said death and taxes were all life promised. Everything else was up in the air.

And in the days since Poppy–as they called him–left this world for another, carried there by the virus, it felt true; everything was suspended there in the air. It was all near enough to see and upon close examination, mirrored what it had always been but the winds sent it all swirling around him until it grew so close it was hard to breathe–in a quiet, heavy way. Like the ocean clutching at his feet on the sand until the pressure snapped and it all floated back, retreating into the sea.

Now sitting on the lookout point, the wave came again.

The canyon just beyond the barrier fence called for something to swallow, the flowers no longer wild but like those from hot houses on caskets of the ones who jumped into the canyons when they thought they had nothing and no one.

Just 10 months ago, the world was the world. Ten months ago there were movies and restaurants and canceled dates on Thursday nights; early Friday mornings in the office, handshakes, Saturday morning farmers’ markets, Sunday morning choirs, hugs. Ten months ago the sirens weren’t so loud, heartbeats weren’t so dull and the air was safe to breathe without fear it would nestle and rust into the corners of your lungs until you became one of the hundreds of thousands. Like Poppy.

If it wasn’t the virus, it would have been the cancer, he said one night, garbled over the phone–alone in the space where only the virus was allowed in between the doctors in spacesuits who could do nothing with the everything of it.

Before the virus, Poppy was in a room in the house in a bed where he held court. The memories of his life fluttering around them like the autumn shedding, leaves piling up around them to be jumped in, regaled.

Brooklyn wasn’t always the way it is now. Neither was the price of gas, the quality of cars, or malteds. For that entire month he had driven from restaurant to restaurant, slipping through drive-thrus in search of this memory for Poppy. An ice cream adjacent drink you had to eat with a spoon that made the nerves at the bridge of your nose flinch deliciously.

The closest he ever got was a convenience store slushie.

Day after day, Poppy would drop his jaw mid conversation from his spot under his heating blanket, an infomercial bouncing from the TV, and wiggle his bottom lip asking if a slushie sounded good. In the way a toddler asks if their parents would also like for Santa to arrive in the hours before sleep on December 24.

Fluttering the pages of the black notebook against his thumb, he looked out again over the canyon. When they went through Poppy’s things it was more of an auction than a yard sale–whoever was willing to pay the highest price secured the item but it wasn’t money due. Only audacity was accepted. The audacity to note with the height of entitlement that as the first born grandson, this of course, belonged to you. War medals, knickknacks, a coin collection. All of it went to his brother with very little question.

But the book, he got to keep. The book, he asked for.

It held, in perfectly organized columns, the names and numbers of the entire family and anyone on the block Poppy may call to save him–from a fall. From loneliness. Some pages detailed his credit card account numbers, the balance and the last payment made. All up to date. Others showed different debts.

Running his hand over the highlighted columns that showed money still owed he found his name.

“Slushie: .88 cents.”

Pay your debts, Poppy would say. We collect memories, not things. We do right even when others do wrong. Stretch the truth, don’t break it. If you’re going to gamble, make a bet you can defend. Put others before yourself. Build a mind you can trust. Work hard and save your money. Loyalty over profit. Give your word with the same weight you’d give your soul. Do for others more readily than you’d take for yourself. Humor will chase tension even when given a late start. What you give to one, you have to give to the rest. A respected man is worth more than a wealthy one. Help, don’t harm. Participate in decision making. Love your country with open eyes, not blind ambition. Be intelligent, not just educated. Use common sense. Love is in action, not words. Count everything twice. Do what you say you’re going to do.

He didn’t care about the medals. About the coins. For a month he sat in a room with Poppy as he poured the last of his life out for him to absorb and carry on. He locked up every story and memory, etching the lessons into his subconscious where they would become habit.

And one day when the virus receded like the water in the waves, he would build those habits into a life worth being absorbed. His brother, he thought, could keep the money.

We collect memories. Not things. And Poppy had filled his account.

Night was inching up from the canyon below. The white of the sign was lit by dusk now and the flowers shrunk where they had stretched into the sun.

The virus hadn’t taken him. But the grief of it had settled in his lungs where the sickness wouldn’t. Still touched. Still changed by this thing that has stopped the world.

But the sun, he thought, would come again.

In 12 hours it would rise over the canyon and make everything glow again; waking a world that would have to accept the haunting of the virus as in inheritance.

One it tucked into its subconscious where it became a habit, not a hassle to be kind. To forgo ego. A world he could find his place in by doing right when others do wrong, use common sense, make bets he could defend.

The sun, he thought, will rise again and one day when it does a marquee will go up and people will sit in the dark together to watch a story play out on screen. They won’t cancel Thursday plans anymore and early Fridays in the office will come with doughnuts and gratitude. They’ll shake hands. Hug.

The world, he thought, is grieving. This, he thought, is grief.

But in the days since Poppy left this place, they tell him it will fade. It will grow quieter until the screams are whispers and life fills again into a new thing that fills the cracks with joy.

Joy, he thought, cometh in the morning.

Flicking the pages from cover to cover, the black leather of the spine cracking, he hoisted his body and book, in conjunction, from the ground. He would go from here.

He would live from here.

It was a fluttering that caught his eye. Like a leaf from a tree.

He pinched the paper between two fingers, lifting it from where it fell, tucking the notebook under his arm.

A check. His name. $20,000. Poppy’s handwriting in the memo.

“I knew you would keep the book and no more. Get a slushie.”