i remember

going to the flower shop on my 17th birthday and asking to go into their cooler so I could smell all of the flowers. And I stepped inside, and breathed in deep, and it wasn't the same as when there are flowers sitting there on the table waiting for you to lean in and inhale them, but they were still flowers, and it still made me happy.

I remember going to my biological grandfather's wake with my grandmother, driving for 3 hours to and from, and then going back the next day with my father to the man's funeral and not being a bit sad, but going because my family needed me. The man only sent me one card in my entire life, and the man spelled my name "Hilery." I remember being angry when there were all of these people there who the man loved and who loved the man when the man couldn't even pick up the phone to call his own children. I was angry when I met my father's half-brother who looked so much like him, and I was angry when one of the constituents of the church at the funeral said that it sure was a shame that his biological family never showed the man any love.

I remember going to my real grandfather's funeral, and being so sad that I felt like I literally could not stand up. But since I was not blood, since I was just Carol's granddaughter, I had no right to sit in that front pew, even though he was the only man who was there for me other than my father. I remember seeing him on his deathbed, still sniping at my grandmother that she made his grits too hot even though he was too weak to open his eyes. I remember seeing him laid in his casket in a marine uniform with his Masonic ring, and I remember the tombstone where he was buried beside his second wife, though he lived with my grandmother from the time my older brother was born.

I remember standing in front of the tattoo parlor, wanting to add his name to my tattoo, but being unable to walk inside. I didn't want to associate him with so much pain.

Every day that I wake up, I think about the people in my life who died before they could have made a difference, or the ones who were alive and should have made a difference but didn't. And I wonder how much my life would be different if life had gone the way it does in movies, if it weren't a messed up game of mix and match and if everything smelled like flowers on the coffee table.