She Lives In You

My daughter doesn't completely understand how Noni's husband could get married. Noni died, it seems to this eight year old, just last month. In fact it has been many months. I remind her of the time that has passed, the holidays we have noted Noni's absence, whether or not her living self would have been at the table. Many months. Still.

The child walks a while without saying much, then says she feels okay about the wedding, really. "Actually, I don't think Noni would want him to stay sad for her." This is true. Indeed, when Noni recognized that she was terminally ill, she urged her husband to remarry, and quickly. Theirs was a second marriage. Both had lost their first, admittedly more searing loves, before they met. But my daughter doesn't care about those logistics. She cares about Noni. The woman she knew, who smelled like soft leather and roses, who managed a rare mix of elegance and warmth.

"She would want him to be happy..." My eight year old says. "She wanted people to be happy living their lives the way they wanted to live their lives."

I do not go to church. Those few times I have tried, I have failed. So I rely on moments like this to gain a foothold in the spirit world. I am sometimes greedy and clumsy when the opportunity presents itself. "You sound like you have been talking to her," I say. It was not meant to come out as a demand, but must have. My daughter smiled demurely and said nothing more on the topic. This was an entirely appropriate and sophisticated response to my bungling. A response she learned elsewhere.

We carried on home, and by the time we reached the door, she was quietly crying. "I miss Noni," she said. I started to charge in again, I was the child, she the learned elder, and I wanted to know. She looked at me again and said, "I know she's fine, and she has good company. It's just that I miss her."

Before bed, I gave my daughter a small leather pouch that Noni had meant to give to her for a Christmas she never reached. "Thank you," she said. And then she rubbed the red leather with her finger tips, a gesture unmistakeably familiar. This is how Noni rubbed the chair that sits in our living room. The one belonging to her first husband. There were times she traveled all the way to Maine, I swear, just to sit between those arms and feel the memory of an imprint.