Henry

Eileen Nittler

I held my son in my arms. Seven pounds, four ounces at birth. Now, nineteen years later, he weighed almost the same, in a box, in my arms.

I buckled my son into the backseat of the car and refused to leave it unattended lest somebody kidnap him. I drove six hours in the rain from California after claiming his body, sobbing as a passenger, and listening to my husband sob as I drove.

I put my son into my hope chest and placed his favorite beat-up sandals beside him. He called them his dress shoes: he preferred to go barefoot. On top of the box were the sympathy cards and copies of his obituary.

I got his birthdate wrong on the obituary. I suppose I hadn’t had enough experience with grief to ask someone else to proofread the words that came across my phone. I didn’t know how far out of my mind I was.

The first time I opened the box of his ashes, several months later, I cried so hard I threw up. I sewed a bag specially lined to carry him, one tablespoon at a time, to scatter him in places we thought he would like, to allow him to travel with us.

The tenth time I opened the box, it wasn’t hard at all. By this point, the bag I had sewn had torn. Now, he was transported in a test tube and left in all kinds of places around the world. If I were mad at him that day, I’d sprinkle some ashes where a seagull had pooped. If I felt motherly, I’d build a shrine of leaves and sticks and arrange a tiny bit of it into the shape of a heart.

He's been to Germany, Mexico, and Belize. To baseball games, mountaintops, and majestic rivers. His ashes are in the glass jewelry we wear, blown by an artist in New England. He's in deserts and churchyards. Friends' potted plants. He's spilled in the glovebox of the truck.

An ounce at a time, he is disappearing from the box, from my arms. It's been years–can we run out of him? And what will the pain be like if we do?