OFRENDA

My partner’s brother Anthonie died in a motor accident on October 4th, 2025. It was not a peaceful death, not the kind of passing you wish for a loved one. He lost control of his motorcycle, skidded off an embankment entering the freeway, hit a light pole, and lay in the shattered edges of his own bike behind a furniture store for hours before he finally died. 

          I’m afraid to put the above on the internet because maybe his family will read it and think I’m cruel for putting it in such stark, ugly terms. That I’m disrespectful for not giving Anthonie privacy in death, the family privacy in their grief.

          I think the dead deserve the truth from us. Euphemisms are for the living. 

          Life went on without Anthonie. But my partner is still there behind the furniture store, waiting for the twitch of a lifeless hand. He sleeps all day and wanders the house all night. He spends hours bathed in green video game glow. He eats at strange intervals; he doesn’t drink water. He doesn’t shave; he doesn’t cut his hair; he doesn’t care what other people think of him anymore; he doesn’t care about anything. He is grief-ridden; in fact, his grief is riding away with him, roaring deeper and deeper into some distant destination of Pure Depression that he will never, ever reach. 

          I have been depressed for almost ten years. I’ve tried dozens of medications; I’ve tried meditation and yoga and controlling how I eat. I’ve lost years to sleep, endless attempts at hibernation. I used to think to myself, once I hit rock bottom, I’ll come back out of this again. After ten years, I know, there is no rock bottom. You can always go lower. 

I’ve never dealt with grief before. My grandmother died when I was an infant, and I was named for her — Alyce for Allison for Ally—but I don’t know anything about her. She fades in the history books next to her husband: Thomas Lardner, six-foot tall, Boston College graduate, FBI Special Agent, served in the South Pacific. Alyce, his wife. 

When he died, the siblings converged in Barrington to clear out the house. I floated between dark, dingy rooms unattended. Light filtered in through the dirty lace curtains; furniture, pushed through the carpet, left its imprints in the worn fibers. I walked through rooms of reminiscing, lives well lived, childhoods spent, and I understood none of it.

          My aunt clicked her tongue to get my attention. Here, she said. This is for you.

I received it, this it, this thing, heavy in my hand. It was a wooden jewelry box with beautiful carvings of clouds, the sun, and the moon. It’s a box of jewels, my aunt told me. This is your grandmother’s jewelry. I opened the box, and the pearls glimmered. I opened the box and felt the weight of an entire life. 

          I don’t know if my grandfather’s funeral service was open casket. I can imagine the body: his face blue, his lips chapped, his white hair combed over neatly. I don’t know if that’s a memory or my overactive imagination.

          I remember Anthonie’s open casket. He did not look asleep. He looked dead. There was something clearly broken about his neck, even though they’d hidden it under a high collar. I kept swallowing revulsion as his family lined up to kiss the corpse. People were going up multiple times, like they’d forgotten to feel something the first time. We weren’t supposed to touch the body, but a lot of people still did. They slipped photos and flowers into his hands; they leaned over and whispered into his ear. It made me flinch; I kept swallowing bile. He’s not there, I wanted to say. That’s just a dead body, and you’re kissing it. 

          One girl in line was drunk and belligerent. Some ex-girlfriend. She kept falling over, and her friends were on either side of her, trying to pull her back to equilibrium. 

All you motherfuckers, she kept slurring. All you fucking motherfuckers.

I carried my grandmother’s box of jewels with me through four moves in ten years. I memorized its contents: four strings of pearls, identical at first glance, glimmering with their own personalities if you took the time to look. A bracelet of turquoise, one big chunk and three smaller strands running off it. Earrings, some real, some clip-on. Big rings, little necklaces, bangles that were just right.

My partner and I were down in San Diego for my little sister’s birthday. Saturday morning, my mom and I went to pick up her birthday cake. Saturday afternoon, my partner received a call from his mom, and his life collapsed around its foundations. 

Mom, he said into the phone. She was screaming as if she had been lit on fire. I don’t know how he dragged meaning out of the endless scream, but I did understand immediately that something had happened, and I knew, somehow, it was Anthonie. Something had happened to Anthonie. I thought maybe prison. In the next second, I was horrified at myself. Compassion had fled, or it occupied a different part of my brain than relentless logic. 

          I left my partner to the collapse of his entire world. I walked unsteadily down the stairs. I told my parents we would have to skip my sister’s birthday plans. We were going back to LA immediately. My voice was very controlled, but I felt empty inside. There were tears on my cheeks, but none of the relief that usually comes with crying. 

          My parents and my sister walked us out of the house. My partner’s eyes were red, and he wasn’t blinking. My sister, freshly twelve, started crying. 

          “Don’t cry about your birthday, silly!” my mom said, passing me lunch in a paper bag.

          “It’s not about that!” my sister cried. I understood. It’s terrifying to see grown-ups cry. It’s like seeing a crack in a boat’s hull you never noticed before. It’s like learning it’s too easy to sink. 

          Five years before Anthonie died, I gave my sister our grandmother’s box of jewels. It was late summer of the pandemic, and we had just started going outside again. My family was moving again, for the first time without me. My sister was eight. She didn’t understand the box’s importance. She didn’t understand either that she was saying goodbye for years, that an ocean would separate us from now on. She just kept dancing through the house full of moving boxes.

          My sister’s tears in the rearview, I drove us back to LA. My partner alternated between staring out the window and making calls to the family. The long, sinuous lines of the 5 freeway stretched out interminably. The sky was a bright, cheerful, screensaver blue; the air was fresh. My partner’s world had fallen to pieces on a perfect day.

          When we arrived at his mother’s house, the street was lined with cars. Mexican families are big families, and they don’t just include blood. The house was full of shaking heads, but the crowd melted when they saw my partner; he was Moses parting the Red Sea. He walked straight from the door to his parents. They collapsed in on each other, crying out with tears. His parents, divorced for decades, united in this terrible grief. 

          His mother had already made up a tiny ofrenda. A framed picture of Anthonie, two candles, a small bowl of water, and a rosary. It sat on the counter in front of a stool, framed by a placemat. His mother sat on the stool in front of it. As if it was a meal she was going to eat. As if she could devour this offering.

          I called my boss just to have something to do outside of the house. She picked up on the third ring, and I explained what had happened and that it would affect the workweek ahead.

 That’s terrible, she said. I’m sorry, she said. You know what’s strange? she said. I just got off the phone with Cathy — my coworker — and her father died last night, too.

          It took a week for the family to see Anthonie. He died over the weekend, and there was all this bullshit the police station or the mortician or someone in charge had to do before he could be seen. His neck was broken, and something about the back of his head was all wrong. They refused to show his family his body until it was all fixed. 

I just need to see him, his mother kept saying. I just need to see my Anthonie. She said it like a prayer. I don’t think she understood how terrible it would be to see him before they put him back together.

          My partner and I were living at his mom’s place by this point. I had my work-from-home job, and it had never felt more stupid. I had to be at my laptop from 9 to 6 every day. But on the day they went to see Anthonie’s body, I was grateful for it. No one could ask me to come, too. 

When they came back, they were all quiet. My partner set Anthonie’s keys on the ofrenda. His mother changed the water. She added another picture of Anthonie. His dimples poked out of the photo like a promise. I’ll never grow up. He was right.

          My sophomore year of college, my uncle Brian died. No one told me until the week after. My mother was worried it would distract me from my studies.

          She told me over the phone, her voice very controlled. I was puzzled. It was a strange joke, but I played along. I packed a bag and took the train down to Wickford Junction. 

          He really was dead. Everyone was crying about it. It was a Catholic service. The priest said nice things. Brian loved his nieces and nephews, he said. He was there for every performance and every game.

          This was not true. He went to my cousin’s performances and games. He did not come to ours. This was because they lived in Rhode Island, and we lived in New Jersey. New Jersey was too far for him. It was an old resentment of mine. But in the moment, it just made the whole event feel like something out of someone else’s life. I had an Uncle Brian, but it wasn’t this one that everyone was crying over. 

          My cousins did some Catholic things with drapes and robes during the service, and that seemed to make their parents proud. I didn’t know what any of it meant, but I kind of resented them for it. They got to be important. My main takeaway from the whole affair was that my aunt, the oldest of the siblings, got Brian’s legacy: a gorgeous, long-haired cat with bewitching green eyes and a saucy tail. Brian had named her Bob. 

          When I got back to school from the funeral, I had a screaming fight with my best friend at the time. She was angry I missed a party she threw that weekend. We fought in the middle of the quad, a blazing argument in a fishbowl, and then we never spoke again.

I can’t remember if I told her about the funeral or if I hid it. I always hide things I don’t understand. 

          Anthonie’s funeral was a two-day affair. The first day was the church, and the lining up to touch the body, and the drunk girl. The second day was the burial.

          Something happened at the church first — I can’t remember what. Then the pallbearers gathered, and everyone had to go outside. My partner’s father, David, wasn’t a pallbearer. He was at a complete loss, watching the pallbearers move with their white gloves. By some weird stroke of luck, he misplaced his wife and linked arms with me. We processed out of the chapel. It sort of felt like prom. Arm-in-arm with a man shorter than me, dressed well, everyone watching. There was even a drone buzzing in the air, for god’s sake. One of Anthonie’s friends had offered, in the spirit of helping the family. 

          Dozens of cars followed the limo; the drones followed the cars. My partner was driving. We didn’t speak.

          Anthonie’s gravesite was on the side of a hill. It wasn’t a great spot. The freeway hummed not too far away, and the side of the hill thing was annoying. I obviously didn’t say anything. I knew the family had agonized over it. They’d read all the plaques and tried to find a spot with good company. Not too many old people, they’d said. Let’s find people close to his age. 

          About a dozen folding chairs were set up. There were maybe fifty people there. It was a little disorganized for about thirty minutes, people saying hi and finding good spots to stand. Some of the tías were wearing high wedges, and their ankles kept rolling on the side of the hill. The funeral director motioned the pallbearers to place the coffin on this huge mechanism that sat atop the hole in the ground. The upturned dirt was covered by a sheet of green netting. Someone had set up a speaker, and it was blaring some unsanctioned playlist of country-western music. 

          The funeral director brought us all to attention, and Anthonie’s mother started passing out dozens of roses to place on the casket. She distributed them herself. When I got my rose, I dutifully placed it on the coffin. I tried to feel something as I did. All I could think about was the professional photographer in my face. Did my sadness look pretty?

          After the roses came the doves. Anthonie’s mother distributed them in the same way, but there were fewer doves than roses. Everyone waited with bated breath. Would they be chosen?

          I was chosen. I liked my dove. I thought it was very intelligent. I laughed at my partner’s cousin struggling with his. His wife and baby girl were watching from very far off, both wearing wide-brimmed white hats. I wondered what the baby thought of all of it. She would never know Anthonie. 

          I met him twice. Once in the winter, once in the summer. No seasons of transition for him. You got what you got with Anthonie.

          In the summer, he was glowing with happiness. He and his girl, my partner and me; we’d all been invited to have a pool day at their mother’s place. We splashed around in the sun, ate pool food off paper plates. I could tell he was happy: he kept trying to hide his smile, act tough. He couldn’t fool us.

          The second time I met him was on Thanksgiving, and he was angry. My partner and I had gone on a post-dinner walk, and a motorcycle pulled up. The rider revved at us: Hey punks. My partner was pissed. He stood aggressively in between me and the rider  until he drove away. What a fucking loser, my partner kept saying the rest of the walk. What, you’re gonna come to this retirement community and act tough? And then we walked back and saw the bike parked outside his mother’s house. Ha. 

          We walked in, and their mother was fawning over him. He hadn’t taken off his helmet. He and my partner exchanged a few cold words, and he was back out the door. Wait, Anthonie! their mother cried. But he was gone. 

          I remember my partner saying, what a weird fucking move, wearing the helmet inside the house. How disrespectful. Now, I think he just wanted a shield. 

          Those were the two times I met Anthonie.

          We released the doves, and that’s when shit got serious. The metal mechanism that held the coffin was winched down until the coffin was in the hole. Someone turned the music way up, and a shovel appeared. Everyone lined up to toss dirt in the hole.

          I was not asked to throw dirt on the coffin, and I did not volunteer. It turned my stomach. People were doing it, though. People were lining up to do it again. 

          Finally, all the niceties were done. A backhoe rolled up, its claw poised. The green netting was removed. All pretense disappeared. It was just fifty of us, a box that held a dead body, and this ugly, ripped-out hole in the earth. The machine clawed at the pile of dirt and shoved it in over the coffin. It was brutal. It was vicious. Machine and dirt. And “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynrd. At this point, the guitar solo was wailing without end. Try listening to that song right now, and tell me it isn’t the perfect song to drown out the sound of earth being packed in by a giant fist over a coffin.

          As the backhoe rolled away, the opening chords of “Seasons of Love” played. I laughed out loud. Anthonie would have called it gay. 

          My sister is twelve now. Almost thirteen. She lives in San Diego with my parents. She’s the last of the four of us, and she’s all alone now.

          Whenever my partner and I stay with my parents, we take her room. And I’ve done some poking around; it’s my right as a big sister. I saw my special box of jewels recently. A thrill went through me at the sight of the still-shiny wood. I opened the box, and...

          It was filled with shit. Like, cheap shit. The pearls I once treasured, obviously fake. The sheen had rubbed off where the beads met each other. The turquoise bracelet, broken. The clip-on earrings, tacky. I wasn’t heartbroken, but it made me feel stupid, having treasured it all that time. 

Not all that glitters is gold, they say. Death doesn’t make anything sacred, I say. We have to make that okay.

Anthonie’s jewelry box? A life insurance policy in his mother’s name. When she heard the sum, she cried. 

          This secondhand grief has been hard to bear. It has destroyed the person I love most. It has revealed to me more about his family than I would have otherwise learned in ten years.

I think about Anthonie every time I see a motorcycle hightailing down the freeway; I think about him every time I see a drunk girl stumbling over her heels. 

          But it’s not about me, and it shouldn’t be. It’s just hard because I can’t really say to people, hey, it’s been a hard few months because my partner’s brother died; even though it has been, and he really did die. People don’t have the tolerance for that sort of thing. It’s like being chronically depressed. When you’re chronically depressed, you let people down. And when you let people down, you can’t really say, sorry, I’ve been so depressed I haven’t been able to get out of bed. You have to keep it vague: yeah, things have been a little tough. Yeah, I’ve been a little down. Yeah, I know it’ll get better. Shit like that. 

          I’m very rarely honest about my depression. I’m still learning how to be honest about Anthonie. I had coffee with a coworker the other day and got stuck talking about it. You know what she said? Ugh, this is so sad. Let’s talk about something else. I don’t even resent her. 

          I do resent some of my friends. People I told early on, people I told when I was still reeling. People who said I’m so sorry, Ally, and then never checked in again. Yeah, I feel resentment. I know it’s not reasonable; I know people are just trying to be respectful. But this is not a small thing that happened. This has been my life.

After Anthonie’s burial, we all lingered by the gravesite. Someone had turned off the speaker before the playlist looped and “Free Bird” screamed again. Anthonie’s biker friends were knotted together, pouring expensive liquor over the burial site and saying prayers as a pack. His mother was speaking earnestly to one of his ex-girlfriends, her hand over her heart. My partner had a line of well-wishers, each hoping to bend his ear about some memory they shared with Anthonie.

I sat on a folding chair next to the youngest brother, Brandon, looking out over the tableau. It wasn’t such a bad spot after all. You could see the mountains, clear as anything. But I wished I could feel something. I tried to figure out if my nose was sunburned. I wondered who had put “Free Bird” on that terrible playlist. I wondered —

          My nose itched. It was sunburnt for sure. I thought about the text I’d received that morning: Bob is with Brian now. I said to Brandon, there’s no lights out here. He said yes, but he wasn’t really listening. I wanted to say — but my throat swelled up — I wanted to say — but no one was listening — won’t he get lonely out here when the sun goes down? 

          I started to cry. It was not a relief. I cried because Anthonie would be lonely out here on this hill when the sun went down. That was the only reason.