Another Ohio Road Trip

I. to the wake

top cash for gold. Dollar General. The Celanese plantpuffing away, exhaling over the river, blowing its breath

past Kingdom Hall, past the C&O cargo train runningcoal cars and graffiti alongside the shore—the water

an indescribable color: frog skin, lake eyes,forest moss, snowmelt, February Appalachian sky.

Then we crossed over into West Virginia and everythingvanished except the asphalt and a blue state police sign.

When your grandmother was dying but no one knew it yet,she woke up in the middle of the night, prayed Whiskey

Tango Foxtrot. Prayed to God the father and the mother.Took the next right onto the exit ramp, and now we're headed

to Ohio to bury her. Look, those icicles hanging from rock-face cliffs bordering the highway were headed somewhere too,

but stopped, got waylaid by the cold. They are totally unlikethe waving blue and silver tinsel strung around the used car lot

perpetually saying good-bye to the industrial flats by the river.To the RV park shuttered for the winter. To the little girl

on the Sunbeam bread billboard who has the same pin-curled hairas your grandmother, looks like your grandmother the last time

we saw her, hunched over and sinking into her couch.Your aunts guided her body up and held her by the elbows

so she could shuffle to the door to see us off. On the billboard,the girl who looks like your grandmother is actually praying,

and next to her the quote not by bread alone floatsin a starry night sky. Bread is elemental, host, Communion,

the body of Christ for your grandmother, who went to Massevery single day, slept with Aunt Pat in the same bed for

sixteen years after your grandfather died. This is my body,which is broken for you. We pass peeling barns flanked by silos,

trotting Amish buggies hugging the road's shoulder.The cornfields of Northern Ohio are littered with golden

husks. Their very slumber is a prayer.

Ii. in the schulte & mahon-murphy funeral home

there's an inexplicable Super Bowl party going on upstairs next to the Children's Room, where I'm sitting watching my younger son drive a plastic boat. I have set up Free Willy on the ancient VCR per my niece's request, but first I had to explain the concept of waiting for something to rewind to the beginning as she had never seen a VHS cassette. How many times did I fix broken mixtapes, wind their innards carefully back into the plastic case with a pencil after the car player mangled them? But this is not a poem about nostalgia for outdated technology.

Downstairs, my husband's grandmother lies propped on a pillow, her hands wrapped in a rosary. Her seven children—including my mother-in-law—stand beside her body, greeting all the people who have come to offer their condolences. Do you remember the plot? I didn't, so I looked it up on my phone: When a delinquent orphan (Jesse) vandalizes a theme park, his social worker sends him back to the park clean up his graffiti. There he encounters an orca whale (Willy), who has also been separated from his family. The whale and the boy form a bond, and with the help of a kind trainer (Rae), Jesse teaches the Willy a routine of tricks.

Because I'm Jewish, wakes are still perplexing to me—these kinds, where people stand in line to file past a coffin with the top flipped open. Do you not know that your body is a temple … ? You are not your own. Marguerite was 101, died in her sleep peacefully at home surrounded by people she loved. Now she's caked in foundation and displayed in the front of the room. Now I instruct my nephew on the right thing to say—I'm sorry for your loss—to his great-aunts and great-uncles. Upstairs, Willy refuses to perform in front of audiences who have come to see him, so the park owner (Dial...