Death and Life and Marriage

Death lingers. Every time I open the coat closet, I see the pee pads we used when Pete stayed here. Why haven’t we thrown them out yet? And yet I can’t seem to. As I’m rearranging the bookshelf one day, I open an old book of Hayden’s and see his pawpaw’s signature and endorsement. I think of my aunt every time I put candy in the glass dish I have of hers, the ding of the glass lid bringing me back to her living room. There are photos and letters, and small momentos scattered everywhere from people who were once here and are now not.

My best friend, M, dad died recently, which is why I’ve been thinking about all of this. There are lingering traces of him, too, gifts and reminders in our home. The moose hook from when he and Hayden went on a trip to Colorado, and he told him, “You always have to bring Briana home something everywhere you go.” His old golf club. An amethyst gemstone from their land. Memories are the real clingers though. Before we were old enough to drive he used to take us on late-night trips to Jack in the Box in high school, laughing manically in their minivan. The epic party he threw for our dance team. The time I had dinner with him and his wife again after so many years, now an adult. The times he dropped M off at my house in his giant Tahoe, like we were still schoolgirls needing a ride, despite being in our 20s. I hesitate to talk about his passing, even here, because death is not cheap gossip. But maybe talking and writing about it honors the dead, shows the world what loving someone means to us, what life lived means to us.

At his funeral in Galveston, M let out a guttural cry. I couldn’t see her, but I knew it was her. The sound filled the room, and I squeezed Hayden’s hand. The last time I heard a cry like that was in Mexico City with my family. We were at a restaurant when one of my uncles stepped out and didn’t return. My mom knew something was off, and as we left, my uncle found us to share that their brother had passed. My mom made an earth-shattering yell that turned into a cry. My dad caught her before she fell to the floor. That cry still echoes in my head sometimes.

After the funeral in Galveston, Hayden, my sister, and I went to the beach; it felt like the only right thing to do in that moment, to look at the boundless sea as someone leaves us. I dug for shells, looking for one to symbolize her dad. The color of the ocean looked like a deep blue, or was that later, when we were driving over the bridge to go back home? The clouds broke and I felt warm sun on my skin. I let it hug me.

—

Hayden’s grandma died about a month later. She died after we learned we were expecting, just a month before our wedding. She was in her 90s. She was a force. Always keeping busy, mowing her farm lawn, golfing with her best friend, singing in church, there was a designated time for everything: when she would watch her show, her time on Facebook, etc, even if guests were over. She used to mail Hayden clippings of random news headlines that reminded her of him from newspapers or magazines she was reading. I thought of David Whyte, the poet, when he said he likes to think of death from old age as making way for the new generation, how the old are leading the way, making space here on earth because when it’s someone’s time to go, they’ve done all they can here.

-

Hayden and I got married on a random Wednesday at 3:30 PM this past April. It was raining all morning, which made it more romantic and special. It has been 12 years since he first proposed to me, he at the young age of 19, me at the young age of 20, saying Yes. We have tried planning a wedding a few different times in our relationship, but it got overwhelming, and life got in the way. I never felt like marriage was the start of a relationship. Truthfully, I never felt marriage as anything other than a legal stamp of what was already real, which is probably why we were never in a rush. But the past few years have changed, and we have been ready for the next phase in our lives. I always said I wanted to get married in my 30s because I knew for me, having kids would come quickly after. So we decided on a courthouse wedding. We wanted something that felt like us, something small and intimate, something cost-efficient, something low-maintenance. Everything was pretty easy. Hayden wore one of his classic old suits. I found a dress at Abercrombie on sale for $100. Then I went to the fabric store and found this piece of fabric that I wanted to drape over myself. I got 2 yards for $40. I painted my nails (pretty badly) the night before a pale blue, for something blue, and I wore pearl earrings my aunt gave me from Mexico. I tied my hair up last minute. And M made these beautiful flowers for me. Everything fell into place perfectly.

I’ve been thinking about what everyone says, how they say you never stop thinking about your wedding day. I was over the moon on my wedding day, and even the day after felt like a hangover of happiness. Everyone came to the courthouse on time, brought flowers and gifts, and their cameras because I didn’t end up hiring anyone. It was all very last minute, but the joy was seeing everyone cancel their plans and just show up. Even the people at the courthouse were congratulatory and happy. I cried while saying ‘I do’. All of the years we have built together to get here, in this much too big courtroom, with so much court paperwork piled on the judge’s desk behind us, while the judge told us how important this moment was. Seeing the flash of friends’ and family’s cameras go off in the corner of my eye. And all I could think was how much I loved this person in front of me. But after those two days faded, I sort of haven’t thought much about it. It was a beautiful moment but there are so many bigger moments than marriage. Every day together feels monumental. Figuring out life together with a baby on the way feels just as important, if not more.

—

I am 15 Weeks today. Yes, I am in the land of talking in weeks, for non-pregnant/ toddler people, I am in the fourth month of my pregnancy, which is the start of the second trimester. Baby is the size of a pear now! Or a softball, or a teacup from Alice in Wonderland. I am still in shock and terrified of being a mom, of my life changing, of our life changing, but I am also so excited for all the new experiences to come. When I first found out, I had pretty bad anxiety. I had to go for walks often with Hayden to try to calm my nervous system down. Everything felt nearer in that moment. Nearer to death somehow. I thought about how having a child means my parents are getting older, too. Of course, they’ve been getting older, but nothing quite stamps time as having a kid of your own and stepping into the shoes they were once in. Being pregnant has also forced me to face my own immortality. I think about how I will one day leave my child through death, and the child will leave me many times over in life, to have their own life.

The first three months of my pregnancy, I was a shell of a person. I mostly worked and dealt with my nausea with ginger chews and ginger ale, and tried to eat because I was (am) always hungry. I almost cried when it felt like no amount of food I ate would stop the hunger. When I wasn’t working, I was curled up on the couch watching TV, or doom-scrolling on TikTok until I couldn’t stomach any more pregnancy/motherhood videos, so I switched to YouTube. I felt my brain and body rotting on the couch. Who I was seemed so far away. Every time I stepped into my library, I wanted to cry. All my dreams sitting on the shelf, the dust on them making me sneeze, the sun glowing on them making it hard to look away. Looking back on my creative work felt like a graveyard. Of course, I know this is not really true, that I will just create a new normal. Thankfully I feel like I am returning to myself in the second trimester. Everything passes. All feelings. It’s hard to remember that in the moment.

-

I don’t know why certain deaths grab us more than others, I don’t know why the death of my best friend’s dad affected me the way it did. Maybe because he reminded me of my own dad, maybe because he felt like such a rock, such a sure thing that would be here with us forever, and it’s a shocking reminder that we all lie to ourselves constantly. What can be here today can be gone in a second; the whole world can crumble on any random day of the week. Life changes in the instant, the ordinary instant.

-

I’m thinking back to all the vows Hayden and I said to each other over the years without realizing they were vows. For some reason, this one moment keeps popping up in my mind. We went to Galveston one evening and stayed until dark, we were looking for one of the eclipses or super moons or something like that. We took our metal detector and we walked around with it for a while, hoping to find something. We stayed until the dark blue sky turned black and all that was left were the stars and the pitch black sea crashing into the shore as we laid on the beach. Everything felt so loud and immense, rhythmic, like a heartbeat, I felt eased. I don’t remember what we talked about anymore, but it was more about the vow of holding hands, and laughing while we were scared of what we could not see, and being here together, small acts like driving 40 minutes at night to catch the moon in a way we hadn’t seen before.

-

Death
and life
and marriage
how life and death marry one another
Such a lopsided marriage
No one wants death
and everyone wants life
But it is death that makes us realize
how much we want life
It is death that makes us live
So maybe it is the perfect union