STILLNESS AND LIGHT

For September in Seattle, it was an unusually cool afternoon. Things had just wrapped up at the cemetery. My wife, Gwen, hadn’t really wanted a service or burial at all. She’d already walked down the hill to our car. I stayed behind looking at the little mound of earth beneath which our son, Ben, lay. He’d passed away the day after his fifth birthday. A bird called in the tree behind me: a raven, perhaps, or a crow.

The next morning, I arose ahead of Gwen, as usual. By the rise and fall of her back, I knew she was awake, too, and like me, had been for some time. I dressed quietly, then went into Ben’s bedroom. I picked up his stuffed elephant from the head of his bed; its right ear was worn bare from where he’d always held it. I replaced it, left the house through the back door, and started along the cracked sidewalk. The rain that had fallen throughout the night had stopped, but the streets were wet, the sidewalk was wet, the grass was wet, the leaves on the trees were wet.

I walked