What I Think of After
Sean Renshaw
I think of how, over the coming months and beyond, my two-year-old niece will ask, “Where’s Uncle Sean?” She’ll want to look at birds. She’ll want to strut-totter across the lawn in a pendulum of two, wide-legged, stiff-kneed, a Timon shadowing her Pumbaa. She’ll want to peek up from beneath soft lashes, flash a wait-till-you-hear-this-one grin, crack a poop joke, and bask in the guffaw of an audience who gets her. She’ll want to be wrapped in a cocoon of calm, gentle strength.
I think of my brother-in-law, ever hungry to conquer the next hill, and how, over his lifetime, he’ll feel suddenly lost. He’ll look to the door, for his big brother to come through it. So they can build a coffin for a winged being, so he can witness the tenderness of a heart whose beat he’s known since birth. So they can share Coke Zeros and get-this observations and it’ll-be-fantastic plans. So he can, being seen, feel full.
I think of my sister and how sweetness and light recognize sweetness and light. Thick slices of chocolate cake and German pancakes and the word “babies” shaded with a triple blend of love and wonder and two hard bs and a certain kind of tiredness that wants relief of someone who’ll step in quietly will make her turn to an empty spot on her couch, at her table.
I think of the little one, just learning to crawl, and how her body’s memory bank will carry forever the shape it made to snug just so into a curved arm.
I think of the sphynx cat who missed making her prowling grounds a heartspace once devoted to a bird called Thor. She’ll be soaking in sunlight. The shadow of memories not made will pass through her. She’ll flick her tail and turn her naked belly to a man-with-a-bird-on-his-shoulder-shaped cloud reaching to stroke her.
I think of the hand that won’t thump the table in mock protest of a “trick question” at trivia night, the mind that won’t spit out facts mine never held, the laughter that won’t boom out like a bass drum, the voice that won’t say, “Look who’s here! It’s Aunt Holly,” and ask me, in a quiet moment, meaning really, “How’s it going?”
I think of a family gathering—mother, father, brothers, sister, loved ones—without a whisper of warning and how it will all seem, at once, like details viewed through a microscope and like waiting for the moment you can sit up, rake hands through sweaty hair, and say, “It was just a dream.”
I think of Hawaii. I think of how our brains can’t tell the difference between sand between our toes and the spray of a turquoise ocean misting the face in our imagination. I think how hope packing its bags and traveling to a place it once couldn’t imagine itself going is, well, everything. How it’s like a spot in the yard where you stood shoulder to shoulder saying farewell and made space, once more, for more of each other’s fullness growing in. It’s like the spot on your couch filled with someone who loved your kids like you do. It’s like the paths we tread in each others’ hearts that never grow over, how we can return to them to find and be found.
To Sean Renshaw, a man who loved his family and the little things of this world.
I think of you.
And I think of how dearly you will be missed.
Yes, he's gone now, yet here he is on your page, in your space, so special you wanted to share him with us. And now we care about him, too, and care about your family as they grieve, and care about you, too, dear Holly.
As I deal with my own grief I finally realize it's meant to be shared. Grief is universal. We're all affected by it in our lifetimes, and there is comfort in knowing we're not alone in understanding how brutal the deaths are, yet how necessary the memories.
We need to remember out loud. Or on the page.
And you did it beautifully here. ❤️💔❤️
What a beautiful meditation on the lifelong presence of an absence. Sean was what my mother called a rare spirit. I’m sorry for the void this loved and loving man leaves in your family’s world.