You would think that the house of a dying man would be cold and damp, that the wind of death would seep through the cracks in the house, chilling its inhabitants to the bone, that the frame of the house would creak like the bones of the man who built it, that the darkness would blanket the house, and that the weight of the grief would buckle the knees of anyone to walk through its doors …but I can assure you, none of this is true. In this house, a man sits in a leather recliner in the corner, in the house he built, surrounded by three generations of love. 

The old woman massages a pungent salve, methodically working it into the raw and shaking hands of her husband. This disease is one that no salve can cure. She massages his hands anyways. Her daughter stands in the kitchen, stirring a pot of hearty soup, her eyes are full of tears, yet her face holds a sentimental smile. The dying man will take three bites, if they are lucky. She stirs anyways. Children giggle at the kitchen table, unaware of the wind outside, unaware of the darkness. They are the brightest source of light in the house. They shine anyways. The wind of death batters against the walls of love. They are cognizant of the inevitable. 

But not yet.

The old man died on October 16th. On the morning of his death, the daughter called her husband and said, “Bring the girls and come say goodbye.” The girls and their father drove north through a thick fog that dampened the fiery autumn leaves. They spend the day together, sitting by the old man's bed, telling each other stories, crying, and laughing. The old man, now too tired to open his eyes or speak, coughed or sighed occasionally in order to express an opinion. Late in the afternoon, after the old man's granddaughters had gone back to their own home, the daughter opened the big french doors in the living room. They could hear the loons mournfully calling to the old man from the lake. The sun was setting as the wind of death swept through the house. It seeped into every board that the old man laid, before it settled into his chest. The daughter sat down by her father and held his hand. She traced their hills and valleys. The old man sensed the presence of his daughter, his wife in the next room, his family who had come to say goodbye, and he was complete. He heard the loons on the lake and felt the wind on his old wrinkled skin. Then, he took two very deep breaths, let the wind fill his chest, before exhaling a final, satisfied sigh. 

The daughter and her mother spend the next day caring for his body as lovingly as they had in the days before his death. They wrapped him in linens purchased during a honeymoon in Morocco and the mother recalled memories of hot desert nights and the beginning of forever, they covered him in a quilt made by an old friend and the daughter imagined the loving hands stitching together each panel with great care, they placed bottles of amber whiskey and remembered the jokes the old man told when he took one too many sips out of the squat golden bottle, they filled vases with red and orange chrysanthemums, and lit candles that burned deep into the night beside his resting place. 

A grave that faced due west and overlooked the old man's land was dug at the top of a hill. He was carried there by his closest friends on a board carved by his son. The only thing separating his body from the land was the white linen cloth. The sun warmed the faces of his many friends and family, the trees on the hill blazed, vibrant and alive. He was lowered into the ground and the onlookers could hear the loons calling from the lake. As they watched the deep, velvet, Vermont dirt shower down over his body they thought of life and death and the earth and they were not sad.

 They were not sad, for they knew that the old man was far from gone. He was simply continuing to give all that his body could give to the land that he loved. He was simply transformed. They were not sad, for they knew that they could visit the old man any time that they wished, in the evergreens, the loons, the deer on the hill, the beavers in their dams, and in the deep, velvet, Vermont dirt.