To Do List at Your Brother’s Grave by Cathy A. E. Bell

Cindy Shebley CC




To Do List at Your Brother’s Grave 

1. Observe the surroundings. Breathe in the vastness of this place called Higbee, Colorado, far from any town.  See the ranches and winding dirt road.
2. Look up at the rock plateaus and across the fields to Purgatoire River, such a fitting name for a place that feels in-between and forgotten.
3. Take it all in. This will only be the second time you’ve visited the cemetery since the funeral two decades ago.
4. Rub the tip of the juniper tree and smell your fingers. Remember: this land is inside you. Not the way it was to your brother who lived here and roamed the canyons on foot or rode his horse up on the bluffs. The land was really inside him, but he is gone and all that's left is the land. You hope you live inside this land or that it can live in you. It’s the only way you know to find your way back to your brother again. 
5. Think of the last time you saw your little brother alive, here, across the river. Mom’s wedding day. She married Ed—one husband after your brother’s dad, two husbands after your dad. 
6. Be thankful you have a photo from that day—your mom’s four kids. You’re all in jeans and boots, arms around each other.  Two light skinned, two darker, marking your mother’s first two husbands.  You all look like your mother.​

      7.  Think back to your young, teen-brother’s shy smile or his open mouth laughter. Think about his mischievous brown eyes, or his shiny               cowboy belt buckle.  Try to believe he was happy that day--especially when he snuck onto the back of one of the Clydesdale horses                  (used earlier to pull the wagon of guests across the river) and wandered off with his little cousin on the back.  
      8.    Clear the dirty stuffed dog, cherub statue, and silk flowers from the head of his burial spot.
      9.    Sweep the small, white quartz stones off the top of the dirt with your hand.
     10.  (Perfect the ground.)
      11.  Ask your living brother David to carry the gravestone from the car to the plot. The granite is heavy, but he is tall and strong.
      12.  Dig three inches down with a shovel so his new 16” x 10” x 2” granite gravestone will settle into the hard earth.
      13.  Tell your little brother out loud you are sorry you couldn’t afford a bigger stone.
      14.  Help David set the heavy slab into the clay soil and try to make it look like this stone has been here as long as your little brother                         has:  22 years.
      15.  Make sure not to disturb the rough, jagged rock that your mom’s husband carved with “Mike.” Your stone is not meant to replace                      his stone. It is meant as an affirmation of his full name: Charles Michael Trujillo. It is meant to reveal his birth and death dates (1979                – 1993) so the creators of the graveyard website know he is not just “?, Mike” and he is not a “baby” just because people leave him                     stuffed animals. You need them to know he is perpetually a teenager, a boy halted by his own hand as he was blossoming into a                           man. 
       16.  Gather the weight of things not said.
       17.  Place that weight on the foot of his grave.
       18.  Acknowledge you didn’t know how unhappy your mom’s wedding made your brother until you saw him crying behind a truck-sized                  boulder after the ceremony. Someone told you later that he didn’t want his mom married to anyone but his father. But you never                       asked him yourself.
       19.  Admit how powerless you felt when you saw a woman you didn’t know put her arms around him.  She seemed to already know why                   he was sad. He leaned into her.
        20.  Make excuses why you, the big sister, didn’t comfort him instead:  
                         a.  You lived hours away in Denver.
                        b.  Your mother disowned you often. Sometimes one or two years went by without contact. You never wanted to be away for                                     so long.
                         c.  You felt so disconnected from his life and too absorbed in your own.
          21.  Be honest. (That was the year you did a lot of coke.)
          22.  Say out loud the things you should have said that day:
                          a.  Are you okay?
                          b.  Can I hold you?
                          c.  Tell me what hurts.
          23.  Disconnect the images of his death from images of his life. Try to remember his long, dark lashes or the smell of his sweet, earthy                       breath or the way he giggled when he was being playful or naughty.
          24.  Hope your mother doesn’t know you’re the one who laid this stone. You wouldn’t want her taking it away out of spite.
          25.  Place the weight of his life down at the foot of the grave. One pound for every year: Fourteen pounds.
          26.  Sit down next to the headstone and try not to replay that last day of the wedding over and over in your head.
          27.  Read aloud the poem you wrote and had engraved on the stone.  With a clean cloth, polish away the earth.​

            29.  Now stand and wipe the clay from your hands.
            29.  Notice the lightness in your arms and breathe in the sage, and the clay earth, and let this land live inside you.





After “Things To Do Today” by Joe Wenderoth


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A Colorado native, Cathy A. E. Bell now calls North Carolina home. She works at Appalachian State University’s Hickory campus as an academic coach and instructor and coordinates the Student Learning Center, where students receive tutoring support. Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Hippocampus Magazine, and Full Grown People. She shares her life with her husband, beloved fur babies, and many flower gardens. A visual artist and writer, she believes art saves lives.  


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