Twenty Two

Somehow it’s been a month since Mom left us.

I say “left us,” because it’s the most palatable choice of euphemisms. Though it’s be a lot easier if I just said she died wouldn’t it?

Clearer anyway.

But I can’t bring myself to say that. Not yet. It’s too final. A period at the end of a sentence I’m not ready to complete.

Anyway, the point is that 32 days ago she was here. Now she’s not. And it fucking sucks.

I find myself clinging to things. The little details that made her, her. The smell of her hand lotion or her favorite perfume. Phrases she used, music she liked, her favorite desserts. Anything that sharpens the edges of a memory dulled by the passage of time.

They say it’s not the first year that’s the toughest. They say that you’re in too much shock to appreciate the enormity of your loss. That the first year is just one big struggle to process the fact that your loved one is nothing but a million pieces of ash sitting in a pretty box in the living room.

Side note: You’d think two hours at 1000 degrees Fahrenheit would do the job, but did you know that incineration is only one phase of cremation process? I didn’t. To get the fine ash we bereaved consumers demand they have to send what’s left though the bone mill. Of course, before that can happen the undertaker has to sift through the remaining bones to collect any valuable scrap metal that may have been left in Grandma or Grandpa. Now, they tell you all those gold fillings and titanium hips can damage the mill, but that’s only part of it. Turns out there’s money to be made in scrap metal.

Imagine a person you loved going through that. It’ll fuck with you.

But I digress.

Wrapping your head around the enormity of your loss is the bitch. Borderline impossible, really. Suddenly cliched drunken metaphysical conversations from your past become relevant. As if they somehow prepared you for this. But the reality is the mind can’t comprehend this kind of stuff. Here one day, gone the next. It’s heavy shit.

Jen says these sorts of thoughts are all part of the process. Well, not all the thoughts, I don’t tell her about the cremation stuff. She says it’s good to think about these things. To get them all out.

I tell her I’m lucky to have someone like her by my side. Though sometimes I think it’d be easier if I bottled it all up. But that’s just because I’m tired of crying.

I wonder how long it’ll take before she gets tired of me asking the same questions? Or making the same observations?

Can you believe it’s been a month? Six months? A year? Do you think she’s watching over us? Death can’t be it, can it?

Will she roll her eyes before replying with feigned sympathy?

Would I?

She says there’s no timeline when it comes to mourning. “You can’t rush normalcy,” she says.

“You should write a book.” I suggest.

But the truth is: I don’t want normalcy. Normalcy is what compelled me to down a bottle of OxyCotin. Normalcy was anger and depression and isolation. Normal sucks ass.

I want something better.

“So redefine Normal,” is what Jen said. “Create a New Normalcy.”

I told her she watches too much Oprah.

But of course Jen’s right. She’s always right about these things.

New Normalcy it is. Now if I only knew what the hell it was.

The next day when Jen was at work I made a list. At the top of the page I wrote, “New.” For no reason other than I was tired of the phrase, 1st on the list was that “New Normalcy” was to be banned from my vocabulary. 2nd was to remember that my actions are a reflection of Mom’s legacy. 3rd was going to be something about improving family relationships, but before I could get that far, Jerry knocked on the door and shouted out that he “had some fuckin’ beers that needed drinking.”

“Sorry about your fucking mom, bro,” he said, stepping into my trailer.

“Thanks,” I said, taking the half-empty case of beer he handed me. I made a mental note to exclude drinking with Jerry from my list.

He took a seat on the couch.

I remained standing.

“Hell of a thing,” he said.

“Yep,” I replied.

I didn’t mean to be rude, but I was tired of these conversations. Tired of being reminded.

“I was thirteen,” he continued. “All he told me was that she was sick.”

He paused.

“Towards the end, my padre made me go in to her room to say goodbye.”

He shook his head and laughed. “I hadn’t seen her in weeks and goddamn if I didn’t think I walked into the wrong room. Hell, I even apologized to the nurse for thinking I did. Was no way the lady lying there was my mom.”

He took a drink.

“Didn’t look nothing like her.”

And another.

“I wouldn’t even look at her,” he said, then added, “I couldn’t.”

“Damn,” was all I could think to say.

“She tried to say something. Tried to grab my hand, but I shoved ‘em into my pockets,” he said, voice trailing off.

He fell silent for a moment then continued.

“Won’t never forget the look on her face…ain’t never seen so much hurt.”

“I can’t even imagine,” I said.

“After that she closed her eyes and went to sleep. I turned around and never saw her again.”

My mind drifted back to Mom’s room, the memory of that last look jumping into focus.

He turned and looked at me, waiting until I finished my beer (a vain attempt on my part to hide a tear that had somehow found daylight). “I done a lot of messed up shit in my life,” he said. “But there ain’t nothing I regret more than how I treated her in that room.”

“You were only 13,” I said.

“Yeah well,” he replied, then he pounded his beer and slammed the empty bottle on the coffee table. “Fuck it, right?”

“Fuck it,” I agreed.

He stood up. “Grab a couple beers and follow me.”

“Where we going,” I asked.

But he just smiled and walked out the door. “I want to show you something.”

Jerry’s old Dodge pick-up carried us out of the canyon and into the vacant, dry plains. Listening to the soundtrack of a crackling AM country station, we sat in silence as the truck’s well worn tires rumbled across the endless line of gravel that unwound before us. A blue haze of cigarette smoke hung in the cab. I coughed.

Jerry motioned to the handle. “If you can get it to work, crack the window.”

I tried to open it. No luck.

He laughed and, for my sake, rolled his window down a few inches – allowing just enough room for the smoke to leave and the cold November air to enter.

“Cancer or pneumonia,” he asked. A joke.

Out of habit, I laughed.

Fifteen minutes later he pulled up to a solitary, run-down farm house. Maybe, at one point in its life it was white, but time had dulled what little paint remained. A few shingles clung to the roof like ticks on a dog, while the lawn had long since been swallowed by the surrounding grasslands.

“What’s this?”

He grinned. “Home.”

We got out of the truck and stood on the broken sidewalk that lead to the house.

“Well?” He asked.

“It’s yours?”

“As of last Friday.” His grin widened. “Pretty sweet, huh?”

That was one way to put it.

“Three bedrooms, one bath,” he continued, “got a one car garage, basement and a root cellar.”

“Just like the White House.”

Jerry ignored my sarcasm. “The White House come with twenty acres?”

“Touche.”

He lit another cigarette and started walking. “Well this place does,” he said.”And all but one side is bordered by National land.”

“No shit?”

“No shit,” he said.

With the toe of my boot I picked up the remnants of an old widow shutter that lay at my feet. “A fixer upper. Get a good deal?”

He walked back to the truck and brought back two fresh beers. “Guess.”

I shrugged. “200?”

He shook his head.

“150?”

“75,” he said, the self-satisfaction bursting from his voice.

“Fuck me,” I shot back. “For all this?”

He motioned to the backyard. “I figure I’ll put a real brick barbecue in over there. Maybe a shop too.”

I slapped Jerry on the back and held out my beer.

“Congrats, bud,” I said.

He clanked his bottle against mine and replied with a huge shit-eating grin that I had trouble matching.

“Thanks bro,” he said, then added, “So what’s your plan?”

“My plan,” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, “your plan.”

I shrugged. “Get a place in Aberdeen, I guess.”

“That’s it?”

“With Jen,” I replied, smiling.

“Fuck bro,” he shot back. “That’s what I’m talking about. Moving the fuck on.”

His hand shot up for a high five, but as quickly as he held it up, he pulled it down.

“Wait,” he asked, “who the fuck’s Jen?”

“She’s the one,” I replied. “She’s my savior.”

Jerry looked at me like I just asked him to make out. Then he started laughing. Hard.

“They’re all saviors,” he said. Then with a grin added, “Right up until they kill your ass.”