Descriptive moment

I walked into the funeral home--a thing I knew nothing about because at age nine, I had never been to one before. No none had died before. I don't remember any other room in the building, or the building from the outside, or even the drive to get there, or the flight from Denver to Detroit, or the drive to Stapleton, or packing for the trip--only the morning my brother woke me up a few days before to tell me that our grandfather had passed in his sleep.

From the door to the room where the casket was, I remember looking tentatively toward the big box surrounded by flowers and, in my memory, illuminated by light. I could see his profile. His chest--not moving up and down as it would if he were sleeping. His skin looked pink, not cold and dead. His eyes resting closed. I had never seen a casket before or a dead person, and this dead person was my grandfather.

I can't remember when I had seen him before that--I think it may have been a while, but the vision I had of him at that moment did not align with the memories I held of him. Galloping down the sidewalk to the park with him walking behind me, pretending my pony tails were reins. How when he visited Denver, he retrieved donuts for us every morning from the donut shop a few blocks away--a shop we rarely went to when he wasn't in town. Silver dollars from him pockets. His two-step shuffling dance he did in our foyer, humming and smiling. The joyful glint in his eyes. How he said he was only resting his eyes when we caught him asleep in his chair.

At this moment in that coffin, he was not only resting his eyes. And that was a very difficult thing for me to understand.