Megan, a short Memoir
Megan
October 21st, 2010, 7:45 a.m.: I wake up. My fiance Aaron squeezes me tight before telling me he thinks my phone has been blowing up with calls. My bare feet slap onto hardwood floors as I drag myself to the kitchen. Mom has called me eight times, starting at six a.m. What the hell could she want on this early Thursday morning? I decide to call back in a moment. Allow myself to wake up a little, use the bathroom, splash cold water on my pillow-line smudged face. I go outside with a cigarette in hand and light it. I dial Mom’s number back on the porch. She answers with a rough voice.
“Maranda,” she starts. “You’re sister Megan passed away last night.”
Just like that. No warning. No safety bars to hold on to. I feel the tears and I walk towards the road as if I am in a trance. You’re lying, Mom. Tell me you are lying. Megan. No. I wail at the sun.
My wooden bones give out and I collapse to the muddy ground. I feel like glass shards are crashing straight through my heart. There is no turning away now. I placed my phone in my pocket as I run into my apartment and into Aaron’s arms. Those arms wrapped me in a tight embrace different from love.
In a haze, I shower and call one of my two jobs. Aaron talks to them for me. I can’t say the words and make it a reality yet. He calls my second job and they think I’m lying. As if I’m one of those high school snobs saying she didn’t finish homework because her seventeenth grandmother died. Yeah, my invisible dog ate my uniform. I can’t come to work.
Aaron and I get into his car. He puts his IPod on shuffle and a song Megan and I love comes on. And after that. And a third time. I feel her around me. I wonder if IPods can be possessed. As we pass all of Pepperell and enter Lunenburg, I notice my eyes still leaking like broken pipes. Had I become that numb to not notice the tears?
All I know is I am walking into my parents’ house and being overwhelmed by hugs, wet sleeves and cheeks, and sunken-ship faces. The previous night, Dad asked me to stop by Meg’s apartment and see how she was doing. She wasn’t answering her phone or the knocks on her door by her scumbag boyfriend. Aaron and I were seeing the movie Red with his friend. Though the movie played, something made me feel completely numb. No laughter, no concern with the movie plot. Completely numb. We passed by her place. I called her. No answer. I thought she was sleeping. We never stopped to visit like we usually did.
Dad knew. He knew by me not visiting her I avoided seeing her on the bathroom floor, naked and exposed to demons. I hug him the most. Almost as if years of not really talking much suddenly disintegrate. Now we are Father and Daughter, not just friends in passing.
I will remember the porch. Aaron and I stand here, staring at the yard. I pull out a cigarette, not caring how much I smoke today. In New England, snow is not normal in October. Today, it snows for about thirty seconds and immediately stops. We are astonished. It has to be Megan. I look to my beloved and he has a soft smile chasing his lips. He knows what I’m about to say. Megan loves The Nightmare Before Christmas and wants to marry Jack Skelington. She would make it snow before Halloween.
I believe it is Friday. I believe that today is the day we bury my sister. Or is it cremate? Mom wants it this way. She doesn’t want to see her child under dirt before her. I get it. I do. But now there won’t be a time in my later life when I can bring Megan sunflowers – her favorite – or leave her little notes as she used to do for me almost daily. And when I reach her age – thirty-three, I can’t jokingly say I am older than her.
The newspaper reads, Megan Patricia Cucchiara: born November 11th, 1976, died October 21st 2010. I can’t read any more.
In long hours, I enter a blur of a funeral parlor in Leominster. I hear my oldest brother Mike tell my other older brother Matt that we look like a Mafia gathering. Italians everywhere. All of us in our finest. Me in my black blazer from god-knows-what department store for I have no idea what I paid: an arm, an ear, my big toe. My oldest sister Melisa stands near Mom and Dad. This is the receiving line, but all I am receiving are dirty handshakes from people who never got together with our family.
These people, no matter how related or associated, would never understand the pain pushing my heart down with its hammer fists, or the burning in my eyes that now cried dust, or the choking vine twirling around my ribcage every time I breathe. They could not wrap their eight pound gray ribbons of knowledge around it. Part of me hates them today. Part of me wants them dead instead.
The memories are hazy from here on. I know I pray in front of the open casket. I kiss her on her icy forehead. I know Megan’s skin is wax-like and her hair is braided. I know I owed her a mix cd and this was the last one I could ever make her. At least the funeral parlor allowed this. Creep by Radiohead plays. Memories take me under the tide.
Our younger years consisted of making bracelets and necklaces together, painting, singing Muppets in her room while coloring. She once told me Gonzo was actually the size of an ant and lived in her rug. He could jump into my ear and take over my brain. She also taught me to believe in myself. I looked up to her through everything: Megan’s artistic times, her first baby boy at eighteen, her second baby boy a year later, her escapes into beer after being emotionally abused, her escapes into beer after being physically abused, the rehabs, the child service visits, the boyfriends turning things around on her, and the time someone close to our family taught her how to snort pills. I looked up to her through it all because when I was around, she was still Megan. Deep inside, a flower bloomed when I came around. She was still her true self when I was near.
She was Megan.
I am soon plummeted into a horrific experience of laying a blanket over her casket and reading some psalm from the Bible.
“This is a reading from the Book of the Ter . . .Tara . . .fuck.”
Yes, I just cursed at church. And yes, my Italian Catholic family is shooting me down with laser-beam pupils. Just when I think things can get worse, they do: the funeral is over. Megan is gone.
October 21st, 2011, 11:00 p.m.: I am snuggling on the couch with Aaron. Today is a year from my best friend passing away. My sister is still gone, but her presence is not. Over the past year, I hear our favorite songs on the radio when least expected, I smile at sunflowers waving at me on sunny day drives, and I can’t help but laugh when I see a Natural Ice beer can crushed against the parking lot of the gas station I work for. That was her favorite. I guess it tasted like water. I see her at least once every two months in the quick face of a woman walking on the street or a dream I have. I will always have this hole in the corner of my heart. I miss my sister. But every night, we are connected. Following her old routine, I make a wish at 11:11p.m. I know she is next to me, making a wish too.
October 21st, 2010, 7:45 a.m.: I wake up. My fiance Aaron squeezes me tight before telling me he thinks my phone has been blowing up with calls. My bare feet slap onto hardwood floors as I drag myself to the kitchen. Mom has called me eight times, starting at six a.m. What the hell could she want on this early Thursday morning? I decide to call back in a moment. Allow myself to wake up a little, use the bathroom, splash cold water on my pillow-line smudged face. I go outside with a cigarette in hand and light it. I dial Mom’s number back on the porch. She answers with a rough voice.
“Maranda,” she starts. “You’re sister Megan passed away last night.”
Just like that. No warning. No safety bars to hold on to. I feel the tears and I walk towards the road as if I am in a trance. You’re lying, Mom. Tell me you are lying. Megan. No. I wail at the sun.
My wooden bones give out and I collapse to the muddy ground. I feel like glass shards are crashing straight through my heart. There is no turning away now. I placed my phone in my pocket as I run into my apartment and into Aaron’s arms. Those arms wrapped me in a tight embrace different from love.
In a haze, I shower and call one of my two jobs. Aaron talks to them for me. I can’t say the words and make it a reality yet. He calls my second job and they think I’m lying. As if I’m one of those high school snobs saying she didn’t finish homework because her seventeenth grandmother died. Yeah, my invisible dog ate my uniform. I can’t come to work.
Aaron and I get into his car. He puts his IPod on shuffle and a song Megan and I love comes on. And after that. And a third time. I feel her around me. I wonder if IPods can be possessed. As we pass all of Pepperell and enter Lunenburg, I notice my eyes still leaking like broken pipes. Had I become that numb to not notice the tears?
All I know is I am walking into my parents’ house and being overwhelmed by hugs, wet sleeves and cheeks, and sunken-ship faces. The previous night, Dad asked me to stop by Meg’s apartment and see how she was doing. She wasn’t answering her phone or the knocks on her door by her scumbag boyfriend. Aaron and I were seeing the movie Red with his friend. Though the movie played, something made me feel completely numb. No laughter, no concern with the movie plot. Completely numb. We passed by her place. I called her. No answer. I thought she was sleeping. We never stopped to visit like we usually did.
Dad knew. He knew by me not visiting her I avoided seeing her on the bathroom floor, naked and exposed to demons. I hug him the most. Almost as if years of not really talking much suddenly disintegrate. Now we are Father and Daughter, not just friends in passing.
I will remember the porch. Aaron and I stand here, staring at the yard. I pull out a cigarette, not caring how much I smoke today. In New England, snow is not normal in October. Today, it snows for about thirty seconds and immediately stops. We are astonished. It has to be Megan. I look to my beloved and he has a soft smile chasing his lips. He knows what I’m about to say. Megan loves The Nightmare Before Christmas and wants to marry Jack Skelington. She would make it snow before Halloween.
I believe it is Friday. I believe that today is the day we bury my sister. Or is it cremate? Mom wants it this way. She doesn’t want to see her child under dirt before her. I get it. I do. But now there won’t be a time in my later life when I can bring Megan sunflowers – her favorite – or leave her little notes as she used to do for me almost daily. And when I reach her age – thirty-three, I can’t jokingly say I am older than her.
The newspaper reads, Megan Patricia Cucchiara: born November 11th, 1976, died October 21st 2010. I can’t read any more.
In long hours, I enter a blur of a funeral parlor in Leominster. I hear my oldest brother Mike tell my other older brother Matt that we look like a Mafia gathering. Italians everywhere. All of us in our finest. Me in my black blazer from god-knows-what department store for I have no idea what I paid: an arm, an ear, my big toe. My oldest sister Melisa stands near Mom and Dad. This is the receiving line, but all I am receiving are dirty handshakes from people who never got together with our family.
These people, no matter how related or associated, would never understand the pain pushing my heart down with its hammer fists, or the burning in my eyes that now cried dust, or the choking vine twirling around my ribcage every time I breathe. They could not wrap their eight pound gray ribbons of knowledge around it. Part of me hates them today. Part of me wants them dead instead.
The memories are hazy from here on. I know I pray in front of the open casket. I kiss her on her icy forehead. I know Megan’s skin is wax-like and her hair is braided. I know I owed her a mix cd and this was the last one I could ever make her. At least the funeral parlor allowed this. Creep by Radiohead plays. Memories take me under the tide.
Our younger years consisted of making bracelets and necklaces together, painting, singing Muppets in her room while coloring. She once told me Gonzo was actually the size of an ant and lived in her rug. He could jump into my ear and take over my brain. She also taught me to believe in myself. I looked up to her through everything: Megan’s artistic times, her first baby boy at eighteen, her second baby boy a year later, her escapes into beer after being emotionally abused, her escapes into beer after being physically abused, the rehabs, the child service visits, the boyfriends turning things around on her, and the time someone close to our family taught her how to snort pills. I looked up to her through it all because when I was around, she was still Megan. Deep inside, a flower bloomed when I came around. She was still her true self when I was near.
She was Megan.
I am soon plummeted into a horrific experience of laying a blanket over her casket and reading some psalm from the Bible.
“This is a reading from the Book of the Ter . . .Tara . . .fuck.”
Yes, I just cursed at church. And yes, my Italian Catholic family is shooting me down with laser-beam pupils. Just when I think things can get worse, they do: the funeral is over. Megan is gone.
October 21st, 2011, 11:00 p.m.: I am snuggling on the couch with Aaron. Today is a year from my best friend passing away. My sister is still gone, but her presence is not. Over the past year, I hear our favorite songs on the radio when least expected, I smile at sunflowers waving at me on sunny day drives, and I can’t help but laugh when I see a Natural Ice beer can crushed against the parking lot of the gas station I work for. That was her favorite. I guess it tasted like water. I see her at least once every two months in the quick face of a woman walking on the street or a dream I have. I will always have this hole in the corner of my heart. I miss my sister. But every night, we are connected. Following her old routine, I make a wish at 11:11p.m. I know she is next to me, making a wish too.