What Remains

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
—W. S. Merwin, “For the Anniversary of My Death”

My father died on September 18, a day he had walked through 85 times before. He crossed it at the age of three, living in Hershey, Nebraska, cornfields to match the sky in both richness and reach, a stack of white bread on the dinner table every single night; and then again at 21, driving with my mother in a large-fendered car with the radio on and the windows open to a chorus of late-summer frogs; and then again at 36, a man who appeared at home in his body, bore children on his shoulders, dangled them from his arms; and then again at 65, his own children grown and one of them with children of her own, the grass now cut and the leaky roof fixed and the shed in the back yard built, the not-yet-turned leaves still on the trees but the rake standing at attention in the garage. Until the last September 18.

My mother held his hand.

I was not there.

Even though I had been home a week before and would arrive the following afternoon, when my father left this world in a body he no longer recognized as his own, I was not at his bedside holding his other hand, a fact I am still trying to forgive myself for.

Because my dad was there for me. Always. Except when he wasn’t. At my birth, the obstetrician gave him the choice of saving either his daughter or his wife. A botched delivery meant that one would likely have to be sacrificed. My father chose his wife. I do not blame him; anyone would have made the same decision. Or maybe I do. Or did. I once wrote a memoir suggesting that this initial abandonment led to a lifelong feeling of lack. But the longer I live, the more I realize that lack rides beneath the skin of every human; we have a fundamental belief that we are not enough. That’s the thing about growing older: The arc of your past elongates, such that what was once tragedy flattens and mercy becomes the line you discern.

Feather came into this world in late summer, on a neighbor’s farm about a mile from my house. Another foal had lived in Feather’s corral from spring to early summer. I had named him Feather, too. But First Feather left, was sold, I imagine, and a new Feather arrived in July as if fallen from the sky. Feather was the color of bone, with a darker mane that was but an inch or so long. The first day I saw him, his legs trembled when he stood. Just born, he reminded me of myself as an adolescent, knees and elbows unable to find ease, unsure of my place. He stayed close to his mother, his sweet nose nuzzling her belly, always trying to nurse.

I would see them on my runs in the early morning, dawn making promises from behind the nearby mountains. Feather and his mother were corralled in a pen next to the road. Each day I would call to Feather, and within a few days of being born, he made his gangly way to me. I would have to fall to my haunches because he was so small. Through the metal fencing, I would offer my fingers, and he would suck them one by one, seeking milk. His lips were soft like velvet, warm, but he pulled with determination.

The bodies are laid out on tables; black plastic covers them from head to foot. The plastic is not heavy enough to conceal the fact that humans rest beneath. I would know the form anywhere. Six bodies stretch on six stainless steel gurneys in a white-walled room labeled “veterinary lab” on the door. The anatomy labs on campus are being remodeled, so the cadavers have been moved to the vet science building. Everything is temporary.

At one end of the room, two skeletons dangle from an unseen thread attached to the crowns of their heads, and the skeleton of a large animal of some sort skulks behind them—a family out for a walk. Chemicals charge the air, though beneath that smell is the brood of decay, the funk of a cluttered room closed to sunlight and air.

We are handed white lab coats and blue latex gloves. Some of the coats have ribs Sharpied on their backs in an attempt at whimsy. I don’t laugh, though the nine others in my group giggle and point. Most of them are 20-year-old women training to be yoga instructors. I am closer in age to many of the dead than to the young women wearing leggings and holding notebooks. Though I have been teaching yoga for years at this point, my understanding of anatomy remains limited. This is why I am here: to become a better teacher. I have trouble visualizing the inner landscape of the body, get lost between ligament and tendon, concentric and eccentric, have trouble navigating the medial, the distal, and the proximal. As forced air blows from air-conditioning vents in the ceiling and goosebumps populate my arms, I wonder whether the dead can clarify the living.

Above each cadaver, a white board records the name of the individual, the age, the sex, the occupation, the cause of death. All in erasable marker.

“Get into groups of four,” the head of the anatomy lab says. “That way you will get to see everything.”

None of us moves.

“Should we count off?” he jests. But we remain huddled near the sinks. I am normally one to take action. Today, though, surrounded by dead people, I want to remain with the herd.