In the Seattle restaurant, the service worker—the waitress—wore a “St. Ignatius” sweatshirt.
“Is that from St. Ignatius, Montana?” I asked.
“Yes,” the waitress said. “That’s my hometown. That’s where I grew up.”
“Wow,” I said. “That’s where my big sister—“
I paused because I was just about to tell the waitress at 7 a.m. that my big sister and her husband died in a trailer house fire in St. Ignatius, Montana, in 1980. They were too drunk to wake even as the smoke filled their lungs. The waitress was young, born at least twenty years after the fire, so I doubt she even knew about the tragedy. There’s no mythology about my sister’s death other than what I’ve created over the years. I suddenly wanted to tell the waitress that my sister was only twenty-seven when she died. I wanted to tell the waitress that I’m still lonely for my sister but I also wanted to confess that my loneliness had waxed and waned over the decades. I wanted to tell the waitress that my grief was now a tender scar and not an open wound. I wanted to tell the waitress that I vividly remember my sister’s face but can’t recall the sound of her voice. I wondered if waitresses, like hairdressers and bartenders, sometimes become amateur mental health therapists.
Then I decided I couldn’t bring all my grief into that waitress’s life, so I revised history.
“My big sister lives in St. Ignatius,” I said. “She sings in the church choir.”
“Which church” the waitress asked.
“The one by the river,” I said.
The waitress smiled and nodded. There’s always a church by the river.
I don’t know why I invented that particular fiction. My big sister never went to church. But I spent the rest of the day imagining my sister, wearing a long white robe in the deep Montana snow, singing all of us a little closer to Heaven or whatever we like to call home.
For some reason this feels kinda like dream-work... like how in dreams, themes rise up in so many forms for so many reasons, over and over again, with variation. For a couple moments I wondered if the waitress was your grief, all your St. Ignatius grief, your deepest-in grief---after all, "St. Ignatius" was lettered right across her heart... Then I realized that perhaps she's you, you being gentle with yourself; and that she's you right now, serving all of us generous portions of insight into your healing. Yeah, you served me reminders of my own griefs and my own healing scars, all topped with a dollop of hope---I loved the image of your sister singing in all that white, that pure, white snow.
Yeah! Slept underneath one of the concrete benches in a rainstorm in the little area there by the road north in 1972. Knew two Skins from there, Tom Plouffe and Greg (Sundancer)?.
Beautiful, touching story-- yakoke