Chapter Ten
Well before the wasting disease took him, when he’d known the shape his end would take but still had his remarkable wits about him, Rose’s father had gotten the entirety of his affairs in order.
Every detail of his end-of-life plan seemed to Rose perfectly ordinary, except for one.
“I’d like my funeral to be at the ski lodge,” he’d said.
“And please don’t feel a need to speak, sweetheart.
By the time I’m gone, you’ll have done much more than you should have. More than any child should.”
His death had left her raw, overwhelmed by feelings she couldn’t yet name with no place to put them.
As the day of her father’s celebration of life drew closer, she found that not only did she want to speak; she needed to.
Something shifted the moment she put pencil to paper.
Writing didn’t make the loss easier, but it gave it structure.
Each line brought her a little closer to the truth, each revision closer to saying it aloud.
The weather itself seemed to approve of her decision to share.
Frost settled overnight, and by midday, ice still clung to the patchy earth, putting off the illusion of snow without any of the inconvenience.
The sea of people staring back at her with the earnest, drooped expressions required at a funeral were largely unfamiliar.
It’s one thing to understand that one’s parents have lived an entire life before you were even a thought, and wholly another to see for yourself the cast of characters that once populated it.
Rose felt a rush of pride that her dad was the kind of person who could summon such a turnout.
They were packed in like sardines on rickety folding chairs, their black clothes washed out by the dirty gray of the carpet.
The lodge was not designed for this kind of thing the way a church was. But it was what her father had wanted.
“Thank you all for being here for my dad’s celebration of life,” Rose said.
Standing in front of all those people was not dissimilar to the rush of performing—adrenaline and grief activated her nervous system all the same.
She wished her father could see what the small, shy child he’d known had become.
“I wasn’t surprised my dad’s last wishes had something to do with the mountains, and if you’re sitting here today because you knew him, I imagine you aren’t surprised, either.
I can trace my earliest memories to a mountain just like this—though smaller and much less expensive.
I was three or four, and he’d bought me a pair of plastic kiddie skis.
I’m sure he did what fathers do and placed me between his legs so he could help me manipulate my skis into the shape of a slice of pizza, but that isn’t the image that stuck.
The memory is of me, falling face-first into the snow, and him calmly picking me back up and pushing me forward so I could try again.
If you’ve ever learned to ski, or ride a bike, or drive a car, you know failure is baked in.
A thousand children have learned this same lesson from a thousand mothers and fathers: When you fall, you get back up.
“When I got a little older, my dad took me to the back woods. It was the kind of cold that you can feel in your eyeballs—below freezing by at least four degrees. In the back woods you have to make your own trails, but by that point I was a damn good skier. My dad made sure of that. I was confident and careful and had just mastered the black diamonds on the small ski mountain near our house. But even good skiers fall. I nicked a rock and keeled over like I had when I was three, face-first. My dad, who’d been a few turns behind me, kicked his skis off and sat next to me in the snow.
I was cold, and sad, and my face burned.
I wanted to leave and get back to the car as quickly as possible, but my dad asked if I would just sit a minute. ”
Rose closed her eyes and she was there again, scraped cheeks and all, her father’s gloved hand on her shoulder.
“And that’s where he taught me his favorite word.
Apricity: the warmth of the sun in the winter.
‘When you are as cold as you are,’ my father said, placing a hand on my snow-burned face, ‘there is something remarkable about leaning back into the sun.’ We sat there together a long time, feeling it.
“Apricity. It’s a word that tries to wrap language around a feeling, and I’m almost certain it’s a word you’ve never heard before. Because this strange and beautiful and archaic word was forgotten. The way my dad forgot me.”
Rose wondered whether she’d imagined the crowd’s collective intake of breath. She’d gone and done it, gone and named the big, terrible thing.
“I railed against it as though my anger could reverse his diagnosis. My dad never did. He read books, and told stories, and called friends, and marveled at the life he’d lived while he could still remember it.
There are many who think that strength can be measured in muscle, tendon, and blood.
My dad taught me that true strength comes from some hidden core—a physical reflection of the soul.
At the end, his body decaying and mind all but unknowable to me, I would sometimes catch a glimpse of the man he’d once been.
A familiar movement. The first few notes of a well-loved melody.
A particular sparkle in his eye that had always been reserved just for me.
Those glimpses were the warmth of the sun in the darkest of winters.
I learned to lean back and wrap myself in them.
“I loved being in the mountains with my dad,” Rose said, voice catching.
“I’m grateful to be here, in the mountains, remembering him with all of you.
And I hope that now that I’ve given you the gift of a word to attach to a pleasant feeling, that you’ll notice more readily when you experience it.
My dad told me about the forgotten word, then I told you, and now it’s not quite so forgotten.
” Rose looked out through the large glass windows, then to the back of the room, where Landon and Poppy sat like anchors, letting her drift slightly but not far enough to disappear.
She decided she’d said what she needed to and folded the paper twice over.
Two sentences, left unsaid: “I wouldn’t wish the pain of being forgotten on anyone. It is the worst pain imaginable.”
“Poppy couldn’t stay?” Rose’s mom asked, nearly tripping over her feet at the stove.
In the sea of people at the ski lodge, Rose hadn’t seen her mother’s pale face and vacant eyes.
She hadn’t given Rose any indication that she’d heard her eulogy, either, but that didn’t settle the matter for her.
Her mom had stopped commenting on anything Rose did a long time ago.
“It’s Thanksgiving on Thursday,” Rose said, aware the holiday was nowhere on her mother’s radar. “She’s got family to travel to.” Family who would not just care if she didn’t show up, but would consider it a devastation of the highest order.
“Well I, for one, am glad it’s just us,” Landon said, the golden retriever that he was.
“Not glad that this is the occasion that made it happen,” he clarified unnecessarily, “but glad to meet Rose’s mom.
” He aimed the comment directly at her, but Rose’s mother didn’t look up from the pot of boiling water.
Rose should have prepared him for this, she realized.
She’d had years to come to grips with the steep decline of her mother’s interest. Instead of responding, her mom took a long drink from the chipped blue mug she’d been clutching since Rose and Landon knocked on the front door more than an hour ago—Landon’s blubbering mess of condolences a foil to Rose’s stoicism—then bumped her elbow on the pan handle.
A red welt immediately formed. It was a side effect of the clear liquor she thought so inconspicuous, but that Rose knew well.
“Christ!” Rose’s mother yelled. “Jesus, that’s hot!”
Landon shifted in his chair like he was preparing to stand and offer support but Rose shook her head and mouthed, She’s fine. Help would only make her angry. That was a side effect that Rose knew well, too.
They sat in silence as her mother drained the pasta in the sink, transferred it back to the pot, and added a bottle of Ragu to the warm noodles.
Rose thought longingly of the dining hall, with so many options she could indulge her every whim daily.
Her mother plopped the bowls in front of them hard enough that sauce slipped onto Rose’s black skirt.
At least mourner’s black meant it wouldn’t show.
“Was this Rose’s favorite meal as a kid?” Landon asked, digging in as though her mother had prepared filet mignon with truffle butter.
“Sure,” her mother said. “Might have been.”
Rose’s chest deflated at the same time Landon’s did.
He tried several more variations, probing for insights a boyfriend might want to know: What was Rose like when she was young, were there any embarrassing or incriminating childhood pictures in the house, how did Rose get her name?
Rose was surprised to find that the last one had legs.