Slipping Away

It’s been four months and fourteen days since time started slipping backward. We’re all moving forward into the past, and my wrinkles still haven’t gone anywhere. I shouldn’t be surprised. It took my daughter years to wear these grooves into my face.

As the sun rises in the west, I pull on the butterfly print blouse Teresa bought me for my fortieth. Not my favorite look, but it made her smile. Down in the kitchen, I put together some cheese sandwiches and stuck them in the picnic basket with the pudding cups. Vanilla was always her favorite. I stick the basket in the back seat. The shovel and rope ladder are already in the trunk.

I drive east out of town, the sun still rising behind me. Past Jackson’s Pharmacy, slowly pulling itself down, brick by brick. Jackson and a couple of construction guys are out there desperately fixing whatever work time had undone while they slept. Past the burned-out meth house that time hasn’t touched yet, and may not. When all this started, we listened to dozens of bickering scientists, and anyone else with an opinion to yell, try to explain why some things moved backward and others didn’t. Tried to explain why we all weren’t just walking in reverse and speaking gibberish. But for all those glorified laws of physics and nature, randomness was always the law of the universe. Patterns were just eons of lucky breaks.

At the edge of town, I keep my eyes glued to the road to avoid looking at the playpark. I know the scene. Everyone knows the scene. No one talks about it sober. Little toddlers dodding around while their mothers fail miserably to put on a brave face. Watching them get younger, regress, day after day. We’re all living in a slow-motion horror show. Just a little different than the one before everything changed. Right now, I’m grateful for it.

I pull into the Greenville Cemetary, grab my picnic supplies, shovel, and ladder, and lug them down the hill. Across a row of tombstones, I see groups of workers digging. There’s even a couple of backhoes. So impersonal. Not how you should dig up a loved one you haven’t seen in a while.

In front of her tombstone, the grass has died away, gone back to seed, inviting my shovel’s steel bite. Part of me had hoped the dirt might just throw itself back out of the hole. No such luck. So I dig. I dig and dig and dig as the clouds roll in from the east, opposite of what they did that day. The day that’s seen fit to roll back around with its thick gray accomplices. In the first days of the slip, people wondered if the rain might flow up from the ground and back into the clouds. Instead, the weather just came back at us from another direction. Now weather forecasters are just glorified almanacs, reminding you of what you’ve already seen. At about 2:34 pm, it will start pouring. Hopefully, I timed this right.

My shovel clunks against the outside of the oak casket, chipping it, as it starts to drizzle. I toss the rest of the dirt away by hand, treating my baby’s resting place as gently as I can. The rain picks up and I slip against the dirt walls climbing up the rope ladder. The rain starts pounding me clean and rinsing away the rest of the dirt from Teresa’s casket. I lay out the blanket, placing the basket in the corner, just like she loved. I put on the butterfly blouse, which goes translucent from the rain, and wait. Four months and twenty days ago the rain, a deer, and thin brake pads took my reason for living. I wonder, will we cross paths with that deer again? Is it’s mother waiting for it’s scattered, scavenged bones to find their way home?

Now I wait. Wait to hear scratching, the ripping of satin. Wait to hear my baby’s cries as she comes back into this world. Wait to rip open the casket, clutch her broken body to my chest, and mix my cries for help with hers, screaming for someone’s aid in getting out of this muddy pit. Then, we’ll lay out on the blanket, tears of joy and pain and horror. Leg bones and hearts knitting back together. I push aside thoughts of what will happen a little over twenty years from now when time again comes to claim my baby. Focus on the coming days as her body heals and once again I’ll need to care for her every need. For now, I’m just grateful.

Grateful for that first cry of life reborn. Until we all slip away.