My Cousin’s Funeral

My Cousin’s Funeral

I dreamt once that I was in love with my cousin Rob Campbell. In the dream, he was rosy and cherubic. When we kissed, he was soft. In the morning, my lips remembered Rob’s kisses. I felt the sensation dancing quietly just above my skin, woven and brushed, like a cashmere sweater.

I talked to my dad over instant messenger and told him that I had a dream that Rob was my lover. I didn’t want to tell him this, embarrassed, but something seemed to propel me forward. He typed his response, slowly. I waited. “That’s O.K,” the screen read. “I dreamed a lot about my brother when he died too.”

My grandfather Hank died one day in my living room. He fell out of bed and called to my mom, singing on the night air, “Peggy, Peggy...” No one heard him until it was the cusp of dark and light. There was a moment when he died. He was a fountain of coagulation and mucus. He was very pale and his skin looked like a molded piece of white rubber. I was 16 but I felt like an infant in that moment when my grandfather took his last breath.

At Rob’s visiting hours, there is a reception line. His mother and father and sister and brother stand up next to the casket. My dad and mom—his uncle and aunt—are up there too, along with my paternal grandparents and my dad’s brother Mark. I sit in the back with my brother and his wife and my boyfriend. I watch as the room fills with people. The line toward the casket is jumbled and when people first enter the room, they don’t see Rob. They see Debbie and Paul and Becky and Aaron first. Then, as the line straightens out, they see Rob, white and chalky. I watch as mouths open, lips quiver, eyes close, Rob’s apples jump, breaths halt. I feel bad watching their pain so I watch their hands instead. Hand to hand. Grasping hands of my dad and my grandfather. Strangers. Sweaty hands, clammy hands, nervous hands, sad hands.

At one point, my grandmother leaves the receiving line. She is wearing the purple flowered dress from J.C. Penney that she wore to my high school graduation. “Susan, I’m glad James and I got the flu shot,” she whispers to me on her way to the bathroom.