Questions for Marianne

On your sixtieth birthday, you left us, and I'm left with so many questions.

Did you sleep well the night before?

What time did you get up?

What did you eat for breakfast? 

Did you savor every bite?

Did you wash your hair? 

Which outfit did you put on? Did you choose it carefully?

Did you notice that it was a glorious day, in the sixties that morning, warming up to the low 70s by the time you lay down on your bed, pressed the muzzle into the underside of your chin, angled carefully toward the brainstem, and squeezed?

Did you walk out into the yard earlier that day and look up at that perfectly blue sky?

Did you feel the sun on your face?

Did you walk around your house saying goodbye to precious things? Talk to photographs? Curse anyone?

How many times did you write and re-write the note, the one that said we had till 4:30 to wish you happy birthday?

Did you miss your kitties, the ones you had re-homed in May?

Did you go outside and hug trees? Smell the earth? Say goodbye to all those plant babies in your lovingly tended garden?

Was there anything we could have done to change your mind? What if I'd carried through with those plans to visit that same week, after four years of talking about it? What if my friend in Ashville hadn't needed me to postpone, or what if I'd come anyway, just to meet you face-to-face for the first time?

And what about all those questions I never got to ask, all those details about your being I never learned?

What was your favorite ice cream flavor?

Your shoe size?

Your favorite subject in school?

Would we have sat on the porch talking long into the night had I visited?

What if I'd asked you more follow-up questions after you (seemingly) turned the corner in the spring?

What if I'd sent a birthday card or called that morning?

What if, instead of forgetting it was your big six oh, Nicole had thrown you a party? 

What if we all had treated you with as much thoughtfulness and consideration as you did us?