What Happened, Meghan?
A letter to a girl I love, whose death is still a mystery
Dear Meg,
So, it’s been a year.
I’ve learned the way I react to loss is strange. I hardly blink. Like the road I need to take is closed and I just hop on a detour, bypass all the parts of my life that lived down that road, the parts of me I’ll never be again because you’re no longer here.
I’m so used to everything being something, I don’t know what to do with absence. I guess I’ve grown used to it now, used to thinking of you as a headline and a memory and a story I have to tell again and again: She was my best friend. She went missing in a park one day. It took them five months to find her. The autopsy results were inconclusive.
That last one, that’s why I still can’t quite let go.
Come on, Meg. Inconclusive? That’s rude. A year goes by and not even a clue what really happened? Just a text left on read, forever. I can’t help but laugh because it’s just so you. There was no other end for Meghan Marohn but a mysterious woodland disappearance that could never be explained. It’s got all that Outlander energy. “Sing me a song of a lass that is gone,” she slipped through the veil up into the sky one day.
It’s fitting, but I really hate the silence.
I thought you’d have something more to say. One last communication, made through the coroner’s office, to at least let us know you didn’t suffer. Did you suffer? That’s the part that keeps me stuck. I need to know what happened. I want to pass you on, release you like a dove into the air and trust in the breeze to take you from me, but I can’t let go like this. All the not-knowing. Tonguing it like a canker sore.
What the hell happened to you, sister?
I knew the news was coming the day before I got the call — the email, actually — the one that said you were dead. I’d felt you stirring in the air. I knew you were coming back to conclude the story, to replace a question mark with a period.
I said then that I’d go to Ireland in your honor, but I haven’t gone yet. When the flight rolled around I was sick, again, and it seemed prudent to postpone, but the truth is I’ve been waiting. I’m not ready yet. I’m waiting for something that feels more like closure than we have.
It took them five months to find your body, what they found of it, so I can understand why an autopsy wouldn’t show much — but that does not make it okay. I wanted more from the great state of Massachusetts, believe they could conjure a whole story from skull and bones, but that’s kind of magic isn’t for the coroners. That magic is reserved for the likes of you and me.
But you’re gone and I’m still here and I don’t have a map. I still don’t know where closure lives or how to get there.
They say there was no foul play, and I believe them. Your dad’s still calling them, you know, trying to get answers, and as you might expect, the cops are still acting like cops. Nothing. No prints. No DNA. Sit tight. Tight lips.
We were always better off without Massachussetts.
They said you didn’t have your shoes on. I’m glad, like that time your mom spoke to my mom from beyond the grave and told her to tell you to go barefoot. But then I wonder — why? It was freezing. Why? No one has answered the question.
They said there were traces of THC in your remains — how they found that from a skull and a few other bones without any other clues, I don’t know, but cops are cops. They’ll sniff out drugs before they solve a damn thing. The detail made me laugh. You ate too many edibles. It’s part of why you were scared all the time — not the whole story, it’s never the whole story, but they really didn’t help.
(Apparently I’m still trying to get you to eat more protein, even when you’re dead.)
But then again, maybe they did help. I think they’re helping me.
Because in the story I like to believe in, you were high as a kite and out walking in peace when you saw something pretty. Maybe it was a doe, or a fox, or a heron — Virgo animals, for you. Maybe that’s why you ended up down Fox Run. Whatever it was, you followed it off the trail and it led you somewhere magic, some special place that was light and full of warmth. You were always between the worlds, but that day, especially so. You didn’t know where one world ended and another began. The ice on the barren trees lit them up silver and gold when the sun broke through the clouds, raining riches, a different kind of abundance from the summer.
I think you followed footsteps off the trail and ended up down by some creek. Somewhere, in the hushed voices of the wind in the woods, you heard your mother laughing. It made you laugh too. It made you laugh and laugh and laugh because we’re oh so very small and our lives are so very short and this world is so much bigger than we thought. Away ahead of you it all extended like a hallway, everything an optical illusion. You could refocus and see only flat, but there, if you looked just right, an infinity opened up.
And then, maybe, your ulcer started bleeding. Maybe it had been bleeding for a while and you didn’t feel it. The world all looked so dazzling and white because you were losing blood, fast. That’s why it kept sparkling. That’s why it kept calling you. That’s why you could see that infinite hallway — because your body had already left itself behind.
And then, I think, your mother took your hand and wrapped you in her arms. She came like a rainbow through the clouds, telling you, “Forget the socks!” like she had before. You’d been too serious, far too serious, to hear her from down here. Everything had hurt too much. Everything was scary.
But on that Sunday afternoon in March, you couldn’t stop laughing. You felt the weight lift from your chest as she led you down the hall. You didn’t feel yourself fall to the ground, didn’t notice your eyes close, didn’t get cold when the ice storm blew in that night. You were already at the other end, laughing with your momma, singing Joanna Newsom, finally in full possession of your very own harp.
You didn’t even notice it come and go — death, I mean. You were laughing and dancing and all of the sudden, the veil was behind you.
That’s the story I want to tell. For now, perhaps for always, it’s the only one I’ve got.
I think that’s what you wanted me to know that night, the first night when I knew deep down you were dead. It was like you cleared your throat, almost awkward, abashed. “Sorry, sister… I won’t be seeing you in May. I won’t be moving out to Washington. I kinda… died.”
I think that’s why a part of me couldn’t mourn. Maybe it’s more than waiting. Maybe you wanted me to be happy, and that’s why a part of me can still only chuckle tell you in return:
“Well, sis… it happens. Thanks for letting me know. I still love you. Don’t worry. I’ll catch up with you someday.”
