Do you think there was some sort of funeral for Dani? & do you think Jamie invited Daniâs relatives
It isn't a real funeral. Not really. She deserves better, deserves more, deserves an endless procession of flowers and well-wishers and love. It'll never sit right with Jamie, that she can't give that much.
(It'll never sit right that Rebecca got the three of them sitting stone-faced on that sofa with a bottle of wine passed between them, either. That Charlotte and Dominic are little more than the memory of empty boxes and shuttered rooms. That Hannah got a crackling fire and the thin sense of otherworldly dread as a goodbye. Who ever gets what they deserve, when it's all down to ashes?)
It isn't a real funeral, like she deserves, but Jamie can't. There's too much to it--too much paperwork, and international questions asked and avoided, and the omnipresent sense that changing a single detail of the final bed Dani built will ruin it all. Set the curse back in motion. Awaken old ghosts. Close the door for good.
She can't do it. She can't. The best she can do is this:
It's Owen. It's Henry. It's the three of them, sat on her sofa, staring stone-faced and steely-eyed. It's a bottle of wine passed between them, surrounded by the quiet unblinking misery of a week without Dani Clayton in this apartment. Cigarette cartons, discarded laundry, books picked up and set back down without really being noticed--Jamie's starting to wonder if this is what her normal looks like, now. Cluttered. Chaotic. Irrelevant.
She deserves more. A sunset and a seascape. Rolling hills and granite markers. A family singing of her triumphs, memorializing all the parts of Dani Clayton the world is colder without. All the parts. How she laughed when she slipped in the shower. How she teased Jamie's hair into tiny braids while she slept. How she kissed, how she tangled their fingers during a movie and their legs during sex and their hearts the minute she looked up in that kitchen once upon a summer day. How angry she grew when customers spoke down to her, and how misty she became when one asked hopefully after engagement bouquets. Dani Clayton contained multitudes, so many variations, Jamie's terrified of forgetting even one. Remember, she commands herself. Remember everything.
She deserves that. The woman who saved Flora's life. Who saved them all that summer, in ways she couldn't begin to predict. Who saved Jamie, and loved Jamie, and belonged here with Jamie even when she worried the heart of Dani Clayton had run thin. She deserves to be remembered.
It's the least of it, what she deserves. And Jamie wonders--if Karen Clayton would come if called; if Judy O'Mara would become more than a yearly postcard 'round Christmas; if the kids, now grown, would look at photos of Dani and find that summer rushing back to meet them. Jamie wonders. Jamie knows it'd be the right thing to do, at least to try.
But Jamie is tired. Jamie is not sure, a week later, she really even climbed out of that lake herself. She's still back there, maybe. Down in the depths, maybe. Curled with her head on Dani's still chest, her arms stubbornly locked around Dani's rigid frame, maybe. If she closes her eyes, she can taste the brackish water, can feel the acid burn of tears in her throat and oxygen straining in her lungs.
Dani Clayton deserves better than all of this. But Jamie is only human. Only one woman. Only lost, now, and mourning, and miserable.
"To Dani," she hears Owen murmur. She's gone too long without uttering a word. She can't find them in her, the voice for the memories she can't afford to lose. Owen understands, his big hand folding over her knee. Henry understands, his water glass raised in silent salute. They're maybe the only two people left standing who could begin to see what she does, looking around this hollow apartment.
"To Dani," Henry murmurs. Her throat threatens to close. The wine bottle raises, shaking so hard, she nearly drops it; she lowers it back to rest against her thigh just as quickly.
To Dani, she thinks, unable to say it. Unable to admit it, even now. A part of her is still back in that lake, a part too big to live without, and even here--wrapped in Dani's favorite jumper, staring at the ring Dani presented within the root structure of a struggling plant--she's not sure how a person is supposed to keep going. How a person could be asked to keep going.
Dani deserves a funeral. A whole day of it. Drinks and eulogies and embraces that stretch on just a little too long. Family. Friends. She deserves it all.
She deserves it, but Jamie has only been living without her for a week. One week. It's not so long, and it's an absolute eternity, and if she doesn't admit it aloud...if she invites only these two men to keep vigil...if she sits on this sofa with a bottle of wine and Dani laughing at the back of her mind...
If she doesn't let it solidify, who's to say there isn't still time?
If she doesn't let it harden around her, who's to say it might not still change?
If she doesn't engrave it in stone--couldn't the universe still, like shards pasted back into a shattered mirror, take it back?
It isn't a real funeral. It isn't. So, maybe. Maybe, one day. Maybe, if she only believes hard enough.
For the record, this is what Dominique Moceanu had to say about that Olympics. Tumblr wonât let me repost the video, but she landed on her head on the beam.
Gymnastics STILL has no mechanism for an athlete to pause and get medically evaluated after a fall without penalty. Even for possible concussions. So if you hit your head, your choices are keep going and risk serious further injury or stop and get absolutely crushed in scoring. The FIG is totally fine with a 20-minute scoring delay, but we canât have delays for athlete health and safety.
Just adding what most of you probably already know: Simone Biles has been experiencing what gymnasts call The Twisties, which is a suddenly loss of physically knowing where you are at every single millisecond as you twist at high speed in the air, and fixing this problem takes lengthy rehabilitative training. This is very dangerous at any level of gymnastics and extremely dangerous for elite competition.
Elite gymnasts have died or have become permanently and severely disabled from bad falls.
She is doing the right thing for herself AND for the sport and, yet again, setting a precedent advocating for the safety, health, and well being of elite gymnasts.
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