The Taxonomy of Leaving

Margaret arranges the three urns on her dining table, finally allowing herself to sort through the debris of three marriages. The smallest urn contains Richard's ashes—her first husband, who forgot their anniversary seven years running. He was like that goldfish they kept in a bowl on the fridge, she realizes now. Beautiful enough from a distance, but swimming in endless circles, forgetting everything he'd learned just moments before, relying on her to change his water, to feed him, to notice when the glass grew cloudy with neglect. She'd flushed the fish down the toilet when it died. She scattered Richard's ashes in the same toilet, flushed twice, and felt nothing but the satisfaction of something that finally swam away.

The middle urn holds Daniel—dangerous, clever, impossible to keep. He was the fox who slipped through her fence at midnight, leaving muddy paw prints on her clean floors and the metallic taste of adrenaline in her mouth. Their marriage had been three years of surveillance cameras and heated arguments about other women, until the night he simply vanished, taking half their savings and leaving only a note that said, "You were too easy to hunt." His ashes she mixed with birdseed and scattered in the woods. Let some other creature deal with him.

But the largest urn—this is what keeps her up at night. David's death had been slow and suffocating, a pancreatic cancer that hollowed him out while she watched, helpless. He was the bear who had lumbered into their life and refused to leave, consuming everything, growing heavier with each passing month until she couldn't breathe under the weight of him. Even now, months after the funeral, she wakes expecting to feel his warm bulk beside her, expecting the bear to still be there, demanding fish and honey and sacrifices she no longer knows how to refuse.

Margaret picks up David's urn, heavy as a newborn, and carries it to the backyard where their daughter waits with a shovel. The bear has finally left its den, and for the first time in thirty years, the house is quiet.