Eighteen

Today is very much like it was twelve years ago, warm but not hot and cool in the shade, the sky a kind of clear you don’t often get in Cleveland. It felt that way from dawn, and when I went back to check the weather for June 7, 2014, which is a thing you can so easily do now, the feeling was validated. I find myself thinking less of that day and more of the day of her funeral. Sitting with my sister and father, giving them contingency instructions. The masses of people. The words I wish I’d thought to add. The limo ride through so many road construction zones. The thud of earth on urn, mourner after mourner adding a few more clods to the slowly filling grave. Clinging to Kat as we sobbed. All of them almost like things I saw in a movie once, and also absolutely nothing like that. This would be her adulthood. No longer a child, finally, on the schedule that should have been kept. She most likely would have graduated high school a couple of weeks ago, unless the spark in her drove her…