Yesterday, we all went to Sunday mass at the St. John’s Church in Holyoke. (Such a strange word, like Sacred Eggs.) It’s built on a hill overlooking the river. And behind it is a cemetery laid out in front of a pure stand of white oak trees. I had thought for a while that I’d like to be buried with my folks in the Texas panhandle, but yesterday morning, with the sun on the trees and grass, the entire valley stretched out below, I knew that hill was meant to have a stone with my name on it. Last night, after we put Leo to bed, I told Jimmy. I tried to do it in an offhand sort of way, but I suppose that was the worse route I could have taken on this point. He’s convinced the next operation will be the last and we’ll have beaten this thing. But I know I won’t see Leo turn six.

Some days this knowledge can send me howling into my pillow where Leo and Jim can’t hear. But other times, like now, when for some reason there’s not much pain to speak of, I can feel almost okay about having to go so soon; I’m convinced there’s something ahead for me I’m supposed to get to, and the only way I can escape feeling heartbrokenly guilty about this belief is by telling myself that lightning won’t strike twice in the same family and that when I’m gone, my husband and baby will live long and glorious lives, and when they’re done they’ll join me and I will have had plenty of time to prepare them a heavenly home.

But the abdominal pains change everything; I imagine Jim remarried, maybe with more children, and Leo a grown man with his own family, and then who would I be making a heavenly home for? My husband’s new wife? Their kids who I would be no kin to? I’m forced to adjust my vision, which isn’t hard because my view is not at all fixed-not a common trait in a Baptist girl from Texas.

What I truly believe is that no sooner am I put in this earth, then I will be of it again. Like so much milkweed. Daddy would turn over and do push-ups in his grave if he knew I thought this. Mama too. Sometimes I think of joining them and I’m elated and bemused all at once; I think of those long quiet nights on the porch outside Hartley under so many stars so close to the ground I thought one night I could see the rings of Saturn. Mama used to fan herself with the almanac cover and Daddy would smoke his cigarettes and rock back on the legs of his cane chair. When they spoke at all, which was seldom, they talked of the heat, Mama’s allergies, George and Gracie Bums, current events like who bought a new tractor.