First Laugh
NANCY McGLASSON retired to tell her stories after forty years as a teacher and administrator at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is writing two memoirs: Flying Kites at Night is about her son’s suicide and online “help” groups, and Make Yourself an Interesting Woman describes her grandmother’s musical career, one largely based in African-American traditions although she was white. “First Laugh” is her first published story.
WE WERE RIGHT ON TIME. People were claiming their seats in the uneven circle, and since Jo had told PJ, the leader, that we were coming, PJ had saved us two folding chairs right next to her blue sky and white clouds beanbag chair. Welcoming, not at all tall, and with her hands busily underlining her words, she reminded me of a fun Italian mama, someone born with a happy spirit. She greeted us and gave me some printed materials describing the special nature of grief for survivors of suicide, and then it was time to start.
I studied the room while people settled in. Didn’t look at anybody. I concentrated on PJ’s office decor instead of people’s faces. The signs and objects scattered around expected absolutely nothing from me. Good. Most items looked like offerings from grateful clients. Rocks, sea glass, unlit candles. I looked at one of the frames hanging on a wall.
COURAGE
doesn’t always roar.
Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying,
“I will try again tomorrow.”
Oh, jeez. Really? I thought. I don’t belong here. But I read the rest of them. The wall to my right held a framed set of four sepia photographs, each one depicting an architectural feature that doubled as a letter. Two joined posts of an ironwork fence: H. A window in a Victorian house: O. H-O-P-E.
A purposefully peaceful poster of a tumbling small stream, which looked welcoming but chilly, hung where there was still space, and framed photographs of individual leaves floated in small clusters around the room. A large Cades Cove print showed a log cabin with some bright orangey-red maple leaves vivid on the tree in front. They were the same color they would have been when Lee died. Death can be so beautiful; that’s what I would think today. That night, I thought only of Lee and how the day he died he might have seen leaves that matched those in the print.
Studying the room’s furnishings and knickknacks ended my nervousness. It wasn’t really my kind of place, but I could tell it was a safe place.
“We always begin,” PJ said, looking around the circle, “with brief introductions. Please share your name—first, or first and last, whatever you prefer—and tell us who you’re here for. Let us know how long it’s
