Four Seats

Pose this question: In the lifeboat, there is room for four people. Who are they?

Easy. This first two seats go to Sara and Dylan. Because I could not continue to live without them. We lose people; sometimes to death, sometimes to hurt, and sometimes to attrition. But there are precious few who would leave us with our breath stilled, our hearts cleaved, our minds incapable of a coherent thought.

My mother died on All Saints Day. And I have not functioned in the world in the same fashion since. My early testament is buried. No witnesses are left. She would have been the third into the boat.

Instead the third and fourth seats remain empty. It is as if there are tiers of loved ones in our lives. The top tier is reserved for Sara and Dylan. I have longed for another to take a place on the highest branch with them but never is there anyone else I would step into the path of the train to save.

I kept going after the loss of my mother. I can take almost anything now.
But there are those two empty seats mocking me. When I think of them, a sea of confused and baffled faces swim before me, confused that I would hesitate. My sister, Pam, is laughing that I should be confused at all. My brother, Michael, is disappointed but nodding in his own rationalization. David, the middle child, tells me it’s okay, he doesn’t mind. He does but he doesn’t even know that he does because he just wants it to be okay.
There are some shadows in this group. Mark, my first love, is a faded gray image, standing on the swinging foot bridge, leaning his hand on the railing, his hair falling onto his forehead, and he’s smiling. I would have certainly put that young man on the boat. That was such a time of absolute certainty, and I wronged him in it.

Maybe I’m saving the fourth seat for what comes next. Maybe there are only two seats on my lifeboat. But if life is going to offer four, then I want four. Even if it means that they will be so precious to me that without them, my breath would still, my heart cleave, my mind become incoherent.