Chapter 21
DUST TO DUST
The morning of Uncle George’s real funeral dawned gray and drizzly.
We had decided to meet—where else—at the Frisky Cricket, or at least what was left of it.
Dad and I drove in the Cadillac together, me behind the wheel and Dad holding the urn in the passenger seat.
He wore a navy PFG fishing shirt with his favorite khaki shorts and boat shoes.
He hadn’t shaved in a week, which I think was another form of revolt against my grandparents, and the stubbly beard rounded out his face in a way that suited him.
We listened to old-school country music on the drive, Loretta Lynn’s rich voice warbling through the speakers.
Dad riffled through the glove compartment, popped an Altoid in his mouth, and immediately spit it out.
“Stale,” he said, chucking the mint out the window. “He must’ve had these in here for years.”
We both laughed. It was so very Uncle George.
We parked in the ruins of the Cricket’s parking lot next to the other funeralgoers.
Hannah and Baker stood by the Subaru, talking to Aubrey, while Midas leaned his bike against an unscathed tree.
Hatch arrived last, jumping out of his Volvo.
He wore one of his standard stretched polos, but the ring of keys was gone from his belt loop.
“Let’s get this over with,” he announced, and everyone rolled their eyes.
We gathered near the remains of the Cricket’s front door, treading carefully around the loose pebbles and debris.
Two weeks later and the air still smelled like smoke.
Two weeks later and I still couldn’t believe my waterfall was gone.
The loss of it pressed on my chest like a barbell.
But then I glanced at Hatch’s clean belt loops, free from the weight of so many burdens, and the pressure loosened the tiniest bit.
There we were, a ragtag family trying to make sense of this man we missed, this man we resented, this man we loved.
And maybe my grandparents had been telling the truth on that first night I was home: Maybe Uncle George had wanted a big sendoff.
But I hoped he would have wanted this, too.
Even if he hadn’t, that was okay. The rest of us wanted it, needed it.
We were taking our grief into our arms, making it our own, because it was the living who had to make sense of the legacy.
I clutched the urn to my body, pushed it right up against my sternum like the pressure might loosen the ache in my chest. Dad stood on one side of me, brushing his arm against mine, while Aubrey stood close on my other.
“Someone should say a few words,” Hatch said gruffly.
We all looked at Hannah, the most expressive member of our group. She nodded, but just before she opened her mouth, someone else spoke.
“I’ll do it,” my dad said.
He stepped forward, cleared his throat, and folded his hands. We waited.
“We’re here for George,” he said after a moment.
“A good man. The best man some of us knew. People out there, people who didn’t really know him, they treated him like a king …
but George knew he was just an ordinary guy who’d been blessed with a talent, not because he was anything special, but just because life works that way sometimes.
He never thought he was better or worse than any other person.
He simply loved people. He loved each of us. ”
Dad cleared his throat roughly. I put a gentle hand on his back, and he kept going.
“He was simple at his core, and he understood the simplest rules of life: Do the best you can with what you’ve got, and love people while you’re at it, even if you don’t always know how.
I’ll miss him every day. I know we all will.
I hope he’s found peace up there, and that he’s doing crosswords and swimming laps and eating all the peanut brittle he could want.
” Dad paused one final time. “He had a big heart, big enough to bring us all together. That’s what will stay with me more than anything. ”
He wiped his face on his hand, then looked expectantly at me. I handed him the urn and hoped he could feel my heart coming with it. Dad seized a handful of ashes, tossed them about like a farmer sprinkling seed, and stepped back into the circle. Tears streamed silently down his ruddy cheeks.
It was my turn next. I dipped my hand into the urn, rubbed the ashes against my fingertips, felt the final physicality of this person who had been so very, very real.
I stepped forward and held the ashes in my fist. My throat was tight.
My eyes burned. The words wouldn’t come to me.
All I could do was drop the ashes from my fingertips, grains of sand slipping away, meeting the earth he had built his legacy upon.
“Thank you,” I managed through tears. I hoped it was enough.
Aubrey went next, quiet and thoughtful. Her eyes were dry, but there was a depth to them that knocked me breathless.
She sprinkled the ashes dutifully and said, “Thank you for playing fetch with Magnolia. I wish I’d known you better.
” She drew back into the circle with her cheeks tinged pink.
I put an arm around her waist, and she let me.
Midas was next. “George taught me a lot about what it means to be a man,” he said through tears, and Hannah choked quietly on a sob.
“He was tough, but gentle—strong, but fragile—confident, but also humble. All the contradictions, all the things we try to balance all the time. I loved him. I’ll always love him.
” He grabbed a fistful of ashes and scattered them across the dirt.
Baker shook out her ashes with trembling hands. Her eyes were red and watery, but her voice was steady when she spoke. “You meant more to me than you’ll ever know. In my heart of hearts, you are the person who married us.”
Hannah heaved a great, ragged sob as she stepped forward, her whole body shaking with grief.
“I love you, G,” she said around a sob. “Thank you for—for showing us how things could be. Thank you for giving us this home. Thank you for being exactly who you were meant to be, even if you didn’t always show it.
” She paused, scattered his ashes, and sniffed.
“And I’m sorry about that time I made fun of your Minions shirt, but it really was stupid. ”
We laughed. Hannah stepped back, squeezed the urn tight to her chest, and passed it on to the final person in our circle.
Hatch inched forward with his eyes on the dirt. For one long, unbearable moment, I thought he was going to crumble. Then he turned the urn upside down and shook the rest of the ashes onto the ground.
“Don’t be a stranger,” he said tightly, and then melted back into the circle with a great, watery sniff.
The birds sang in the tree line. The morning sun broke through the clouds, warming the crowns of our heads. We breathed in the stillness, in the promise of the day.
“I brought glitter,” Midas said suddenly, as if we were at a party and he’d forgotten to mention the potato salad.
Hannah laughed a great, affectionate laugh. “Glitter?”
“George added pizzazz to everything. Figured if we were scattering his ashes, we should scatter some joy, too.”
Wordlessly, we took handfuls of rainbow glitter from the plastic tube in Midas’s backpack.
We scattered around the property, weaving between the remains of the Frisky Cricket, past patches of burnt grass where any young queer person might have had their first kiss, past barren spots where an older queer person might have had their first real one.
Soon enough, Hannah and Baker were spiking glitter at each other like it was a snowball fight, and Midas was screaming at them to stop, and Hatch was traipsing off with a shake of his head and a piece of glitter caught in his bristly white beard.
Aubrey held my hand as we walked in tandem through the ruins, dropping glitter in every crevice of the earth, knowing full well that try as they might, the construction crews and university henchmen would never get every last shred of glitter out of this place.
I am gay, I am here …
We are here …
We are here …
And someday, a Rustin quarterback might show up for his first practice on this field, wondering when he should tell his coaches and teammates, wondering if he should tell them at all, and his eyes might fall upon a stray speck of pink glitter, and his brain would not recognize it, but his heart might know on some deep, instinctive level that we had been here before, that we would always be here, that as long as the earth kept spinning and the footballs went spiraling through the air, we would never, ever be lost.