Inside the bag was a small scroll wrapped with black ribbon. We set it aside without taking off the ribbon and unrolling it. Next was a little pink bag with something round inside. Shakily, I opened the bag then felt wild sobbing beginning in my chest. It was a circle of white clay with a perfect impression of Penny’s little paw, so tiny it looked like a puppy’s. But then again, she had always been a puppy, in size and in spirit.
All of us were crying hard. Madison took out the next tiny envelope and looked inside. It was a lock of her hair, golden brown, and I knew it had come from the back of her neck. By the time we got to the tiny mahogany box at the bottom of the bag, we were all sobbing so hard none of us could take it out, so Madison gently repacked the bag with the scroll and the clay and the envelope holding the tiny scruff of hair.
It was impossible to believe my Penny, such a bundle, was reduced to a tiny bag like the kind you might use to carry a gift for someone’s birthday or anniversary.
All that mattered was this: Penny was home again.
84
Two weeks later, at the end of March, we had an unexpected early burst of spring.
We wore cardigans instead of parkas; I got out my sneakers after the dregs of dirty snow melted in one warm afternoon.
With the unseasonably warm temps and painfully brilliant sunshine, blossoms sprang up everywhere: yellow and white daffodils, pink and deep-purple tulips, blankets of light-blue forget-me-nots. Skeletal, dry gnarled branches were suddenly forsythia bushes, ground cover greenery gave us clutches of violets, a rhododendron bush came out of nowhere.
I hated the flowers and everything beautiful that reminded me of Penny. But being outside and working until every muscle in my body ached helped clear my mind. Ian and I raked up nearly ten bags of leaves and dry vines, tied loose branches together with twine and left them at the curb to be collected by the DPW. Ian cut down a scraggly pine tree near the front steps with snaking roots cracking our driveway. When he thought I wasn’t looking, he wiped tears from his face. I worked until my arms were so sore, I could barely lift my coffee mug.
I knew very little about gardening. In a nutshell, I knew perennials came up every year, start seedlings indoors, move them outside to acclimate them, transplant them, and wait for blooms. I spent so many hours outside that my knees were embedded with grime, I had half-moons of soil under my nails and smudged dirt all over my face.
I planted what I liked—deep-orange poppies in an old metal watering can, a bright-red azalea in a silver bucket slightly green with age, purple coneflowers whose centers matched the ledge I painted on the porch.
I dug, weeded, and pruned every weekend in the spring. I uprooted squares of sod and put them down in a patchwork pattern in the mud beneath our picnic table. My yard had been in a constant state of disarray since I’d moved in, I realized, and although I didn’t really care what it looked like, tending to it kept my tears at bay, at least for a little while.
I found a bag of bulbs I’d brought years before still in their original paper bag. The bulbs had slender green stalks, the earliest beginnings of leaves, exposing its vast root systems and bulky bulbs entwined forming a mass like small potatoes. I gathered them up and dug a few inches into the soil to the dirt to plant them, not knowing what might blossom and not caring, either. I unearthed so many fat worms, I considered opening a bait shop.
My work was frenetic, I went for hours hacking out crabgrass and weeds, digging up soil and turning over sod, grooming the edges of flower beds, trying to identify flowers by their leaves. I carried my trowel in my back pocket in case I saw a stray dandelion or clump of crab grass. I bent over the ground not even trying to hide my ass from the world, ripping out the knees on all my jeans, splattering bits of wet dirt in my hair and ears.
Everywhere I looked, I saw Penny. I saw her traipsing happily around the backyard like a sheep in open pasture. I saw her nosing through the pile of twigs and grass. I saw her lying in the sun. I was grateful, so grateful, that Penny had been by my side through the divorce. I was still burning with fury that she was taken away without warning, without any signs, without any logic. Out of nowhere.
Penny had gone on her own terms. She didn’t have to grow old and slow down and get rheumy eyes and diminished hearing. Maybe she was sparing us that. I thought that was incredibly brave. And one day I would be thankful, grateful to her for making that choice all alone. My Pen-Pen.
I couldn’t turn away from the fact that I still had mothering to do. Ian had told me seeing Penny’s body was the biggest shock of his life, and I wanted to show him that nothing in life, not even staggering loss, was insurmountable. Maddy asked me to get matching tattoos inside our wrists, Penny’s name with a heart at the end. I was giving it serious thought. Nothing could possibly make me happier than looking at her name every day.
Change was inevitable and out of my control.
I was working hard to trust the universe, even when it made no sense to me.
I was alone that spring, by choice. I didn’t want anyone around who would try to talk me out of my grief or try to make it all better. I didn’t expect to be alone forever, but to a great
