May Day

I remember making May Day baskets in first or second grade. Little paper baskets of little paper flowers that our teacher explained should be left secretly on someones doorstep. I left mine for Mrs. Stone, an elderly woman that lived alone on the corner across the street.

May Day has changed forever for me since we held Katie's funeral on May first. There is no good day for a funeral, but irrationally I wanted to limit the damage by holding her funeral on Friday, April 30. Someone explained that Saturday would be a more convenient day for people to attend, and I gave in. There really is no good day for a funeral, or good month. Several days later we went and lifted Katie's body one more time for cremation. Just the five of us, one last time, so May would have contained an unchangeable moment anyway.

And every month since then has contained the absence of her presence...her voice, my god what I would give to talk with her one more time, to hear her laugh. Just seeing the word silent on the spine of a book in a store today brought her lifeless shell to my mind. That's not the way I want to remember her. I want to remember her eyes looking back at mine or see her laughing and goofing off with her brothers. I want to watch her dance and hear her clarinet.

Katie told me on the phone that she had some May activities she wanted to do with my kindergarten class. She said her friend Kelly had told her something about a dance with ribbons and a Maypole that she had done in kindergarten, and they thought it would be fun to do with my class. She was coming home in May.