Something I wrote

[angelicalangie]

A while back I used my own recollections of my mothers passing as the fontispiece of a novel. I have since discarded the idea. But what follows is an accurate recollection of the events from after we arrived at the hospital until the wake. I thought I would share them here.

Half an hour goes by, we have long since been ushered into a family room and my dad keeps muttering that she will be fine. I keep quiet I know differently, I know this is one of those things you don’t walk away from. A doctor walks in the room and addresses my father. I am superfluous in this exchange, nothing. My father always holds court and anything I say will be spoken over anyhow. She is gone and my father looks at me as though I killed her, a part of my brain simply says, misdirected grief. This will not be easy. I think to myself, she never saw me move into my own flat, or read the story I was writing. My heart crumbles.

 

We get home an hour after arriving. How can someone be gone from you life that quick? Death should have a precursor or a warning. And so often these days it does. So why not now? I begin the calling. I know I will forget people, I ask family members to spread the news to all parts of the family, but two years later I will still find family members who address Christmas cards to my mother and the questions of do I provoke ire and tell them? I call undertakers and pick one that sounds right, they will bring an information pack around personally, but they can’t do anything until a coroner has seen my mother. It all adds up to delays.

 

Day turns to night and neither of us can eat the bread rolls we decided on. Friends come around and neither of us can be alone. They mean well and I am thankful for the distraction. They feel the loss too, in different ways, but they feel it and we have become for them a focal point. Night gets later and soon it is time to sleep, we are thoroughly exhausted, but we do not wish to end this day, the last day we had with her. We have to though, or fall where we stand. Sleep steals over us finally and we sleep deeply, not dreaming at all.

 

The next few days passing a flurry of activity, finally a report is made five days after her death, there was nothing suspicious and tomorrow we should be able to make her death certificate out, they will have the information. My dad begins to wilt, he isn’t up to the mental computations and decisions that are needed, and so it is decided that I will take on all outside burdens. That night we sit and for the first time we watch something the whole way through. I will never remember the title of the asinine movie, but it made us laugh and that is what she would have appreciated. The following day will be one that whilst on the outside is the simplest thing ever, but emotionally is the most harrowing experience ever.

 

I get up and instead of rain it is for once sunny and bright. A neighbour and I go to the Undertakers and we consider options, get into arguments over colours and what to put in her casket. I want nothing, I want to keep the things I gave her as she wanted, and she thinks I should put something with her. I know my mother better. She was, after all, my mother. Then we move on to the certificate. We fill it out in between bursts of crying jags and tissues. Then we leave, the registrar’s hug still felt around my shoulders. That night we meet with the minister who will perform the service, our neighbours, my father and I manage to talk about her and not cry, we laugh about things and realise she thought of other a lot more than we gave her credit for.

 

We get the house ready for the influx of people, which means that I do everything whilst my father is shell shocked. I don’t earn that right or so it seems. When finally all is done, one of my mother’s acquaintances comes around and I have finally allowed myself to grieve. I am screamed and berated. She doesn’t feel I should grieve, she was my mother after all and I can’t pretend I even liked her. She says my mother often told her of what a little bitch I was. I am stunned. I can’t remember any time recently that I haven’t been a good daughter.  That I hadn’t got along with her. My mother would never talk about me negatively and I know this woman is spouting nothing but lies. My father glares at me, then he too begins shouting at me. It is then that I realise how alone I am in this life I really am. And the thing is I don’t know how long that is going to last.

 

The morning of the funeral arrives and I have taken what this woman has said to heart. I haven’t cried in two days. My father’s family comes over and my aunt asks what is wrong. I explain and she is appalled. She tells me it is perfectly fine and that she never heard anything that bad about me, and that of course I was loved by her. I begin crying and the acquaintance walks over to me and tells me to stop again this time I blank her. I want nothing to do with her. She is nothing, a brat, a callous and unfeeling woman with nothing more or less than a heart of impenetrable glass. I get through the service, I get through the wake as well. I clear up and go to bed.