It’s a strange thing when someone dies on the day you were born. For the rest of my life my birthday will not only mark another year that I’ve lived through, but another year that he’s been gone.
I’m still processing this as Dallas drives me home from the hospital. He’s already on the phone with the funeral director and discussing our appointment to pick out flowers and a casket for Papa’s funeral. Just like when we were kids, Dallas steps in and saves the day, protects me from having to handle the painful details. He reaches over and squeezes my hand while he continues his call.
The words he’s saying barely penetrate my grief-stricken haze.
Staring out the window while the rain trickles crisscrossed paths down into my line of sight, I see the field of dandelions surrounding the pond past Baker’s Point. Most of the bluebonnets are gone by now, but the dandelions live on.
“Dandelions are tougher than they look,” Papa told me one afternoon when I was making magical wishes on them, much to my heart’s content. “Dandelions can thrive almost anywhere, Dixie Leigh. They don’t get to choose where they grow.”
Something had made him sad when he’d spoken to me that afternoon. I always remembered the frown lines around his eyes but I never understood why he’d looked that way until now.
He’d heard me. The last wish I’d made before he spoke was for my parents back—for me and Dallas to get to go home. My heart aches so deeply, I have to place my hand over it to keep it from bursting apart.
Dandelions didn’t get to choose where they grew and neither did I.
I’d been blown from my pretty little life into a completely different world. One that was much less polished and a hell of a lot humbler.
Had I been raised in my mother’s home I would’ve gotten piano lessons from the most expensive teacher she could find—probably some stuffy tie-wearer who didn’t know bluegrass from rhythm and blues. As it was, Nana taught Dallas and me both on Saturday afternoons and then made us practice what we’d learned all week long, an hour after dinner every night.
My mom would’ve sent me to some artsy school when I showed interest in the violin, probably would’ve signed me up for cello lessons, too. But in Amarillo, I woke up at the crack of dawn while Papa was still having his morning coffee and perched my happy ass on a cracked concrete garden bench in the backyard and waited. He’d amble out when he was finished with his second cup. I got a few instructions and a firm pat on the head before he went back inside and I spent the rest of the day practicing and making all the dogs in the neighborhood wish they’d been born deaf.
A sob catches in my throat and my breath hitches loudly. Tears are coming down faster than the rain and I don’t know if it’s because I feel guilty that Papa died alone or because at some point I stopped wishing for my parents back.
“Dix? You all right?”
Removing the evidence of my meltdown with both hands, I turn and force a smile for my brother. I hadn’t even realized he was no longer on the phone.
“Yeah, I’m good. It’s just . . .” I glance out the window once more, swallowing the heartache gathering in my throat before I can finish. “You ever wonder how our lives might have turned out differently if Mom and Dad hadn’t . . .” Another swallow and I can almost breathe normally. “You know.”
Dallas is quiet for a beat before answering me. “No. I don’t. Not really. No point in that line of thinking. They died. Nana and Papa raised us. That’s just how it was.”