My Imagination is Anesthesia
Niles Reddick
Folding chairs from the funeral home lined the row of the hardware store my brother managed. The chairs fanned out by the counter, where the funeralist was perched on a stool like a parrot. Her hands clasped together, she waited until everyone sat. On one side of the aisle were bins with bolts, screws, and nails, and on the other side were PVC pipes, flushers, and ball cocks. There was no preacher trying to save souls left behind, no music, no hymns, and no casket where his body would have been emptied and pumped full of formaldehyde on display for one last look at him wearing the dark brown suit he’d squeezed in for our grandmother’s funeral.
His organs had been harvested: skin taken for burn victims, eyes to help a blind teen, and vitals to keep others alive. The funeralist mimicked about yin and yang, peace and love from a Lennon song, and memories I can’t conjure. She wore linen slacks, a silk blouse with flowers, and had teased and sprayed hair to cover a bald spot. I wondered what she was being paid for her pathetic show. I also wondered if my brother’s children would remember this, if our senior citizen parents would ever recover from his death blow, if they might become addicted to the pain killers they swallowed to feed the gnawing emptiness, and if siblings would make appointments for heart checks. I wondered about my time clock when I swallowed my prescriptive cocktail every morning—the pill to keep my blood pressure low, the pill to keep my blood sugar down, the pill to keep my thyroid even.
After the service, we ate barbecue and gulped iced tea as if that would fill our void and keep us nourished. We sat outside in the lumber yard, pallets of pine and oak chopped down in their prime, cut and planed, and stacked in rows for spec homes and apartment buildings in urban sprawl. We had a few laughs at memories relatives and friends shared: him jumping a train to get a ride through town, his hitting a deer that came through the windshield and being more upset about the damage to the car, and his love for tailgating, guzzling beer, and going to football games.
We hugged goodbyes and drove home talking about how good it was to see cousins who didn’t know what to say and were secretly happy it wasn’t them when they have the same genes and live fast lane lives.
Oddly, I wondered if I might run into a scarred person at Wal Mart who has some of his skin, stop at a traffic light and feel his presence because the teen next to me in the Volkswagen has your heart, or see a boy at the YMCA in the pool who has his hazel cat eyes with a spec of yellow and thinks I am familiar. I’ve seen television shows with those experiences, and whether the scenarios become real, my imagination is anesthesia.
Niles Reddick
Folding chairs from the funeral home lined the row of the hardware store my brother managed. The chairs fanned out by the counter, where the funeralist was perched on a stool like a parrot. Her hands clasped together, she waited until everyone sat. On one side of the aisle were bins with bolts, screws, and nails, and on the other side were PVC pipes, flushers, and ball cocks. There was no preacher trying to save souls left behind, no music, no hymns, and no casket where his body would have been emptied and pumped full of formaldehyde on display for one last look at him wearing the dark brown suit he’d squeezed in for our grandmother’s funeral.
His organs had been harvested: skin taken for burn victims, eyes to help a blind teen, and vitals to keep others alive. The funeralist mimicked about yin and yang, peace and love from a Lennon song, and memories I can’t conjure. She wore linen slacks, a silk blouse with flowers, and had teased and sprayed hair to cover a bald spot. I wondered what she was being paid for her pathetic show. I also wondered if my brother’s children would remember this, if our senior citizen parents would ever recover from his death blow, if they might become addicted to the pain killers they swallowed to feed the gnawing emptiness, and if siblings would make appointments for heart checks. I wondered about my time clock when I swallowed my prescriptive cocktail every morning—the pill to keep my blood pressure low, the pill to keep my blood sugar down, the pill to keep my thyroid even.
After the service, we ate barbecue and gulped iced tea as if that would fill our void and keep us nourished. We sat outside in the lumber yard, pallets of pine and oak chopped down in their prime, cut and planed, and stacked in rows for spec homes and apartment buildings in urban sprawl. We had a few laughs at memories relatives and friends shared: him jumping a train to get a ride through town, his hitting a deer that came through the windshield and being more upset about the damage to the car, and his love for tailgating, guzzling beer, and going to football games.
We hugged goodbyes and drove home talking about how good it was to see cousins who didn’t know what to say and were secretly happy it wasn’t them when they have the same genes and live fast lane lives.
Oddly, I wondered if I might run into a scarred person at Wal Mart who has some of his skin, stop at a traffic light and feel his presence because the teen next to me in the Volkswagen has your heart, or see a boy at the YMCA in the pool who has his hazel cat eyes with a spec of yellow and thinks I am familiar. I’ve seen television shows with those experiences, and whether the scenarios become real, my imagination is anesthesia.