After Turtle Lake

for Cathie

Who can say why these things happen? My 2000 Toyota hit 100,000 miles on the way to Turtle Lake for your funeral. Zeros lined up like pineapples on your behalf but you weren’t there to watch the coins spill into my hands.

“Life is short!” you told me. “Buy a horse!” I grip the sheepskin wheel cover think of your saddle pad. What was so important that we did not keep our coffee date last winter?

Farm equipment slow moving to the point of tedium. Double yellow lines. Where on that two lane trunk highway between Stillwater and Forest did I start reading the mile markers?

When did I begin to keep score? Birthdays in one column, funerals in the other— the rituals of death overtaking the rituals of life three to one, just as I was told to expect.

Why did the flowers smell like the opposite of garden? We sing “Morning is Broken.” We sing “Happy Trails.” The stories are all we take home. The stories, they stick to our bones.