I had imagined that saying goodbye would be the hardest thing I ever did.
I had no idea how wrong that was.
I stood beside Jessi's coffin with one hand resting on the polished lid.
The room was quiet.
I could hear the air moving through the vents.
There was also the faint rustle of my sleeve whenever I shifted my arm.
I remember those sounds because there was nothing else.
No visitors.
No telephone ringing.
No Arthur asking me to be reasonable.
No Patricia reminding me that Jessi needed rest.
For the first time in months, nobody was between me and my granddaughter.
And yet I was afraid to lift the lid.
I had seen Jessi that evening.
I already knew what she looked like.
The white dress.
The carefully arranged hair.
The stillness.
I had looked once and then turned away because I couldn't bear it.
Now I had returned on purpose.
I wanted to remember her face.
I wanted to touch her hand.
Most of all, I wanted to apologize.
There were so many things I should have said while she could still hear them.
I had stood beside her bed and let other people tell me when to leave.
I had watched her weaken and accepted explanations that never seemed to explain enough.
I had allowed my fear of offending Arthur and Patricia to become more important than my fear for Jessi.
That was the truth.
It was unpleasant.
But there was nobody left to protect from it.
I gripped the brass handle.
It was cool and smooth.
I pulled upward.
The lid was heavier than I expected.
For a moment I had to use both hands.
The hinges made a small, strained sound.
I stopped lifting until the noise faded.
Then I raised the lid the rest of the way.
Jessi lay on white satin.
She looked much smaller than the coffin.
That was the first thing I noticed.
There was so much empty space around her.
Her dress was white, with lace across the front and sleeves.
It had been arranged carefully.
Her dark hair lay smooth against the pillow.
Someone had brushed it until it shone.
Her hands rested together over her chest.
Her face was pale.
There was makeup on her skin.
Too much makeup, I thought.
It made her look older in a way that was difficult to explain.
Her cheeks had been given a little color.
Her lips looked carefully shaped.
But none of it made her look like Jessi.
I knew why people did those things.
They wanted the family to see a peaceful face.
They wanted death to look less frightening.
I understood the kindness behind it.
I still wished they had left her alone.
Jessi was six.
She had never needed makeup to look beautiful to me.
I leaned closer.
“Hello, sweetheart.”
My voice sounded strange in the empty room.
I waited, although I knew she could not answer.
It was a habit.
For six years I had spoken to her and expected some little response.
A smile.
A question.
A sound of recognition.
Now there was only silence.
I bent farther over the coffin.
“I should have spent more time with you.”
The words came out before I had decided to say them.
I looked at her hands.
They were folded so neatly.
Nothing about her had ever been so neat when she was well.
Jessi had always been a child who moved.
Even when she was sitting, something about her remained busy.
Now she was completely still.
I touched the satin beside her shoulder.
“I know you were tired.”
My throat tightened.
“I know everybody said you needed to rest.”
I stopped.
I could hear myself breathing.
It seemed too loud.
I had wanted to speak plainly, but now I could hardly find the words.
I thought about that afternoon when Patricia had refused to let me enter the bedroom.
I had walked away because I didn't want an argument.
I thought about Arthur's irritation when I mentioned the specialist.
I had decided not to bring it up again.
I told myself I had respected their wishes.
But what had Jessi wished?
I had never really been given the chance to ask.
I looked at her face.
The makeup had settled into the fine lines around her closed eyelids.
Her dark lashes rested against her cheeks.
I remembered the last time I had tried to talk with her.
She had looked exhausted.
Her eyes had struggled to stay open.
I had wanted to take her hand.
Patricia had been ready to bring her back upstairs.
I had stepped out of the way.
That memory hurt more than almost anything else.
Because I could still see Jessi being moved away.
I could still see myself standing there.
Doing nothing.
“I should have tried harder.”
I said it quietly.
There was no one to hear the confession.
That made it easier.
Then the tears came.
I had cried earlier, but those tears had felt distant somehow.
Now I was standing close enough to see the tiny shape of her nose.
Close enough to see where the lace touched her neck.
I cried like a grandmother who finally understood that she could not ask for another chance.
One of my tears fell onto the satin beside her head.
I tried to wipe my face with my sleeve.
It didn't help.
I leaned down and moved a loose strand of hair away from Jessi's cheek.
I had done that hundreds of times when she was younger.
Sometimes she had complained.
Sometimes she had leaned into my hand.
I reached for her face without thinking.
My fingers brushed her skin.
I stopped.
There was something wrong.
At first, I could not even name it.
I was still crying.
My hand was shaking.
I touched her cheek again.
It was warm.
Not the faint warmth of a room that had been closed for hours.
Not the warmth left behind by something sitting beneath a lamp.
Her skin was genuinely warm.
I stood very still.
My hand remained against her cheek.
I waited for my mind to explain what I was feeling.
Perhaps I had imagined it.
Perhaps the candles were giving off heat.
But the candles were artificial.
I knew that.
I had seen their little plastic flames flickering among the flowers.
There was no fire beside the coffin.
I looked toward the nearest arrangement.
White lilies.
A glass vase.
Small battery-powered lights.
Nothing that could explain the heat beneath my palm.
I touched her forehead.
It was hotter than her cheek.
I had taken care of sick children before.
I knew what a fever felt like.
And what I felt beneath my fingers was unmistakable.
Jessi's forehead was hot.
Very hot.
I pulled my hand away.
Then I put it back.
I needed to be certain.
I could feel warmth against the entire surface of my palm.
I had not imagined it.
I looked down at her face.
Her eyes were closed.
Her mouth was still.
Her hands had not moved.
But her skin felt like that of a child burning with fever.
I could not understand it.
My mind went back to everything I had been told.
The sudden respiratory failure.
The death.
The preparations.
The funeral at dawn.
Those things belonged to one version of reality.
The heat beneath my fingers belonged to another.
I tried to make them fit together.
They would not.
I had been beside people who had died.
I knew a body did not remain feverishly hot like that.
There had to be an explanation.
I looked at the coffin.
At the satin.
At the expensive dress.
At the perfectly arranged hair.
I had spent the entire evening treating those things as proof that Jessi was gone.
Now I understood they proved very little.
A dress was a dress.
Makeup was makeup.
A coffin was only a wooden box.
None of those things could tell me whether my granddaughter was breathing.
I withdrew my hand slowly.
Then I leaned closer to her chest.
The lace lay flat.
I watched it.
Nothing moved.
I watched longer.
My eyes began to ache.
I had the strange feeling that if I blinked, I might miss something important.
I held my breath.
I counted silently.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
There.
Something shifted.
It was so small that I almost doubted it.
A faint movement passed through the lace near her chest.
Not enough to call a full breath.
Not enough to reassure me.
But enough to make every thought in my head stop.
I stared.
The movement had been real.
I knew it had.
I looked at Jessi's face again.
Then back at the lace.
My heart was beating so hard that I could feel it in my throat.
I wanted to call Arthur.
The thought came automatically.
He was her father.
He should know if something was wrong.
But I did not call him.
I cannot fully explain why.
Maybe I was too frightened.
Maybe I was still trying to understand what I had seen.
Or maybe some part of me remembered all the times I had been told that I was worrying unnecessarily.
I wanted certainty before anyone could tell me I was mistaken.
I leaned farther over the coffin.
The silk lining brushed my sleeve.
I kept my eyes on Jessi's chest.
For a moment, there was no movement.
Then I saw another tiny shift.
A trembling rise.
Almost nothing.
But it was there.
I brought my hand toward her neck.
My fingers were shaking so badly that I had to steady them against the satin.
I remembered checking Arthur's temperature when he was small.
I remembered holding his hand through illnesses and telling him that he would be all right.
Those memories passed through me while I looked at his daughter.
I had wanted to believe he was giving Jessi the same care.
I had wanted it so badly that I stopped questioning what I saw.
Now the warm skin beneath my fingertips was asking a question I could no longer ignore.
I needed to know whether there was a heartbeat.
I placed two fingers gently against the side of Jessi's throat.
I could feel the heat there.
I moved my fingers slightly.
Then I stopped.
Something touched them from beneath her skin.
Faint.
Unsteady.
But unmistakable.
I held perfectly still.
There it was again.
A pulse.
My granddaughter had a pulse.
For a moment, I forgot to breathe.
I had come downstairs to say goodbye to a dead child.
Instead, I was touching the living throat of a little girl everyone had prepared to bury.
And for the first time that night, my grief gave way to fear.
Click here to continue reading: PART 3: My Granddaughter Was Still Alive Inside Her Coffin, but What I Found Beneath Her White Dress Was Even Harder to Understand
I Stayed Behind After Everyone Went Upstairs Because Something About My Granddaughter’s Funeral Had Been Troubling Me for Months
Part 2 of 15
