Her
Title: Her
Summary: A young woman in the face of loss.
Genre: Original
Rating: PG-13/R (For language and darker themes)
Author: Rebecca (alienstars2004 / Blueberry Pancakes)
Feedback: Yes, please.
Author's Notes: Written for Fiction Writing senior year of college. I've never been entirely happy with it, but this is the latest and best version, yet.
Her
I was a young woman that summer, when I sat and watched as they laid her to rest. I could have been in Anywhere, USA for all the details of my surroundings.
There was an odd sort of silence that wasn’t really silent at all. Someone coughed; muffled tears and the sound of noses being wiped and blown echoed across the cemetery grounds, which were the color of freshly laid AstroTurf. The angry face of the sun bore down on all that lay beneath it.
My mind drifted, thinking back to the last funeral I’d had gone to. The circumstances then were entirely different than they were now, and yet everything seemed to be exactly the same: I sat in the midst of the same solemn group of people dressed in black, all of us gathering at the cemetery where countless other headstones rose up and lay flat in the ground. People tugged at their collars, sweating profusely as they fanned themselves with matching clutch purses and handkerchief-clutching hands. Their handkerchiefs were wet with sweat and tears.
I hated sitting there, watching as person after person stood up and began their own overly long and disgustingly sappy story of how they had known her. One woman in the crowd nodded zealously after anyone spoke a single word. Someone had to sit down. They all got up to share all their happy memories and warm, fuzzy feelings that I had no interest in hearing. It was dry, it was boring, it was fake.
Death seemed to change everyone. When that one football player at my high school had died, he’d suddenly gained not only a brain, but a heart. When she died, there was no flaw to be found about her character. All of her attributes and good qualities were exaggerated to extremes.
Everyone seemed to suddenly forget that she was human, that she made mistakes, that she fucked up. Everyone did. But when you died, suddenly those were erased. You were built without a single guilty bone or sinful piece of flesh on your body. You rescued orphans, nurtured sick and injured animals back to health, and single-handedly fed the homeless, all while somehow managing to raise your 2.5 children, whom you carted around in your shiny, new SUV, and being the head of the PTA.
And then it just ended. It felt like the service had started hours ago, but now, suddenly in the casual blink of an eye, it was over.
The crowd rose, slowly shuffling forward to pay last respects. Everyone shook hands with my father, and patted and squeezed my shoulder with firm quietness. Some of the women gave my father hugs and sobbed into him.
I stayed in my seat, staring straight ahead. They came over, after passing her in her coffin, drowning me in their own feelings of sorrow and regret, showering me with promises of prayer and hope. I acknowledged them, but it felt like I was only doing it to be polite.
Finally, everyone had scattered. They finished paying their last respects, their tears pausing for just long enough for them to shuffle back to their solemn cars. They would be at the house within the hour. Everything would start, again; except now there would be platters of potluck food set onto every available counter space and flat surface not in the bathrooms (and hopefully not the bedrooms). Comfort food, casseroles you usually only saw at Thanksgiving and Christmas, all manner of cookies, cakes, pies, and home-baked desserts that a kid’s wildest dreams of sweets couldn’t hope to encompass. Grieving meant food. Food meant everyone and their neighbor bringing their own family recipe for green bean casserole, or apple or cherry pie. At least we wouldn’t have to cook or go grocery shopping for several months, I thought sarcastically.
I stood, the wretched chairs creaking, and walked to the casket. The entire service, it was not more than five feet ahead of me, but I had never really looked at it.
It was a royal blue, with gold and silver trim. A bit gaudy, I thought, but I wasn’t the executive in charge of that; I didn’t even get a say. A flashy box to put an uncaring corpse into that was going to be covered with six feet worth of dirt and mud, anyway. It was a pointless waste on behalf of the living to attempt to ease the suffering of their beloved’s passing.
I looked down, as she lay there, so quiet and still. She wore a white dress, crisp and clean. There was a bouquet of roses on the lid, intermixed with delicate Baby’s Breath; a creamy, off-white color that I normally despised, but here they fit perfectly and were breathtakingly beautiful.
Roses and Baby’s Breath had always been her favorite.
I noticed that her brown hair wasn’t as glossy as it had been. Not that it really mattered. After this, no one would ever look upon her, again.
I stood there and stared for long moments. I didn’t know how long I stood there, not looking up. My mind slowed, and I stopped thinking. I only looked. At one point, I closed my eyes. My hands stayed still, laid over one another, on the edge of the casket.
I looked to the bouquet, again. I reached out, and plucked a single, long stemmed rose from the bundle and laid it across her folded hands as they rested lightly on her chest.
“Goodbye, Mom.”
I turned and left the grave.
The ride home was bursting with blissful silence, devoid of the annoyance of the worried mourners and abstract family members who had suddenly emerged out of the woodwork. There was an odd sense of peace, no one coming up to me, no tears, no blowing noses into sopping handkerchiefs. It ended all too soon. As we pulled into the driveway, I braced myself for what was to come.
The smell assaulted me as soon as I stepped onto the porch, nearing the front door. It was everywhere. I felt sick.
I think someone laid a hand on my shoulder, but I kept walking. I couldn’t stay in the mess of people and faces that greeted me as I passed that threshold.
I’m still not sure how something so small caught my eye. I don’t remember taking it, or walking up the stairs to my room.
The door slammed behind me, and I flopped onto the floor, legs outstretched in front of me.
I twisted it in my hands. It was a potholder, one we’d had for years. It was ratty; there was a tear in the seam in one corner.
“Can you hand me that?”
“Sure, Mom.” I handed her the potholder.
It was so simple an action; so everyday, so ordinary.
I never dreamt those would be the last words I would ever say to her.
I gasped. My eyes opened wide. I hadn’t realized I’d closed them.
I hated it. I hated everything about it. They deified her. Made her into a perfect thing. She wasn’t human, anymore. It was like they didn’t want her to be.
This goddamn funeral. This goddamn fucking funeral.
They took everything into their own hands. They shoved me away, forcing me to keep silent. All I wanted was to tell them what I thought.
But no. I wasn’t allowed. I was grieving. I was the poor and vulnerable daughter, left behind after a horrible and tragic accident.
Why couldn’t they get it through their thick skulls that I had my own way of dealing with things? That I wanted to do what worked for me. They claimed they were worried about me, wanted me to know I could trust them. I could talk to them. I would rather talk to a bum on the street than talk to them. They clung on, as if they expected me to break, expected me to suddenly open the gates and let all my little feelings pour out.
If they wanted to help me, they would have taken the goddamn hint at my reaction when I found out they put me on suicide watch at school. I was too calm. I would break, and therefore “posed a risk of serious bodily harm” to myself. It wouldn’t have been hard to name the author of the psychology textbook they just quoted.
Their grueling meddling brought it all on. The more they pushed, the farther away I ran. It disgusted me, and I wanted nothing to do with it. I would feel things when I was good and ready. My heart didn’t apply to allotted hour once a week. It was their own fault, the reason why I acted the way I did. But they would never see that. All they would ever see was the poor teenage girl who’d lost her mother. Another depressed teenager, because the world doesn’t have enough of those, already.
She would have known better. My mother knew me. She would have told them to back off, to leave me the hell alone.
My mom and I had always been close. I suppose it was natural, for us. I was a lot like she was when she was my age. When I was eight and determined to join the baseball team, my parents bought me a mitt, a bat and bright orange baseballs. Dad taught me how to hit, she taught me how to catch.
On Sunday afternoons, we would bake. It never mattered what, and usually we didn’t know until we started flipping though the recipe books, waiting for something to catch our eye.
She hinted that the Senior Grad Night and Disneyland wouldn’t be my only travels, come summer. I had dreamt of white sand beaches and crystal blue waters, of waves to be surfed and reefs to explore ever since. I clung to those memories, those fantasies, now. Bit by bit, they were taken from me, as everyone who thought they knew me forced me back. White sand was dull and gray, the warm water turning cold, churning and spiting cold mist as the storm rolled in.
It was their fault I felt nothing.
Who the fuck were they to tell me anything? They didn’t just lose their mother. They weren’t in fourth period, listening to some dull-faced teacher droll on about the graduation ceremony and how Sober Grad Night saved lives. Then suddenly a pair from the office appeared. They talked, whispered in hushed tones with the teacher in the corner of the room. They came up to my desk, faces stoic and solemn. They looked fearful, as though I was some wild animal locked in a cage. They stared me down, like they were just about to open the cage door.
“Come to the office with us, dear.”
I hated it when people called me “dear.”
The woman took my arm and we rode in one of their stupid golf carts. They guided me to the principal’s office, in the back. The man held my shoulder. I felt like a convict being escorted to the courtroom. I wondered what I’d done.
“Hello… I’m afraid I have some bad news. You may want to sit down.”
I looked hard at him. I wanted to know what the hell was going on.
“There’s been an accident. I’m sorry- your mother has passed away.”
“Your father’s on his way. I’ll walk you to the counseling center, if you want to.”
“Passed away.” Such bullshit. She died; she fucking died. She’s dead and gone and now she’s buried. Go to hell, just go to fucking hell.
Suddenly I was on my feet.
I screamed. My arm wound back. The potholder flew from my fingers. It crashed against the far side of my room. The cross-country championship trophy from last year fell with a crash to the floor. A picture slid, dropping onto the edge of the bed.
I breathed hard, through tightly clenched teeth. I felt my legs shaking; they gave out beneath me. I sank down onto my knees, back hunched, shoulders curved forward. My chest tightened, my throat closing up. I let out a hacking cough, a desperate cry for air.
I handed her the potholder. I don’t even remember why she needed it. I couldn’t smell what was in the oven, or what was on the stove. I knew the glint of gold from her wedding ring shone in the afternoon sunlight. I knew she had been wearing her favorite jeans and a white blouse. But I couldn’t see it, I couldn’t remember it. I just knew. That was the last time I ever saw her. I knew, but I couldn’t see. And I never would, again.
I bit my lip, hard. I could taste the slick, coppery metal of my own blood. I couldn’t feel the gash, but suddenly, I felt everything else. I gasped for air, my eyes wide, staring straight ahead. I focused on nothing. I felt everything.
The numbness faded into the oblivion I wanted to disappear into. I had walked in a haze since it happened, and now that it was gone, there was nothing but a raw and bloodied mess. Everything I ever was, splayed out for everyone to see. But no one was here. I was alone, in my room. Alone. Completely and utterly alone.
“Mom…”
I crumpled onto myself, my body folding forward. I felt the coolness of the hardwood floor beneath my flushed cheek, as the salty tears dripped and ran down. I sobbed, breaking down, feeling my body lose itself and all control. I melted into the floor, curled in my tight little ball.
I opened my mouth wide and screamed, choking on my tears and spit.
She was gone. She was really gone. I’d just said goodbye to my mother, my own mother. She was supposed to be here, to see me graduate from high school, to see me get my college acceptance letters. She was supposed to send me care packages to share with my dorm mates.
None of that would ever happen. My mother was dead.
My eyes were squeezed shut. I almost betrayed myself enough to hope; to believe that if I could just cry long enough, hard enough, it would all be over. It would all end. Just end.
The tears wracked through me, tearing me apart. My heart beat wildly, breaking and shredding itself into pieces; my ribs ached. My head began to throb. The light burned my eyes and the air stung my lungs.
I hiccupped.
Strong arms came around me, carefully lifting me from the floor.
I didn’t have to open my eyes to know who it was.
Dad held me in his arms, my head resting against the crook of his neck. I folded into him, like I’d done so many times when I was just a little girl. I was nothing more than that, now. I’d regressed completely. I had no control over myself, over my body. My mind whirled, spinning so fast I felt dizzy and sick.
He never spoke. He didn’t tell me that everything would be all right, that he was there for me. He didn’t try and feed me homemade pie. He didn’t ignore me. He never said I was normal for feeling like this. Never did he even think of uttering the words that what I felt would pass. He didn’t know what was I going through, and he didn’t try to. He just held me. He was my father. He was what I had left, and everything I needed.
Goodbye Mom, goodbye.
Summary: A young woman in the face of loss.
Genre: Original
Rating: PG-13/R (For language and darker themes)
Author: Rebecca (alienstars2004 / Blueberry Pancakes)
Feedback: Yes, please.
Author's Notes: Written for Fiction Writing senior year of college. I've never been entirely happy with it, but this is the latest and best version, yet.
Her
I was a young woman that summer, when I sat and watched as they laid her to rest. I could have been in Anywhere, USA for all the details of my surroundings.
There was an odd sort of silence that wasn’t really silent at all. Someone coughed; muffled tears and the sound of noses being wiped and blown echoed across the cemetery grounds, which were the color of freshly laid AstroTurf. The angry face of the sun bore down on all that lay beneath it.
My mind drifted, thinking back to the last funeral I’d had gone to. The circumstances then were entirely different than they were now, and yet everything seemed to be exactly the same: I sat in the midst of the same solemn group of people dressed in black, all of us gathering at the cemetery where countless other headstones rose up and lay flat in the ground. People tugged at their collars, sweating profusely as they fanned themselves with matching clutch purses and handkerchief-clutching hands. Their handkerchiefs were wet with sweat and tears.
I hated sitting there, watching as person after person stood up and began their own overly long and disgustingly sappy story of how they had known her. One woman in the crowd nodded zealously after anyone spoke a single word. Someone had to sit down. They all got up to share all their happy memories and warm, fuzzy feelings that I had no interest in hearing. It was dry, it was boring, it was fake.
Death seemed to change everyone. When that one football player at my high school had died, he’d suddenly gained not only a brain, but a heart. When she died, there was no flaw to be found about her character. All of her attributes and good qualities were exaggerated to extremes.
Everyone seemed to suddenly forget that she was human, that she made mistakes, that she fucked up. Everyone did. But when you died, suddenly those were erased. You were built without a single guilty bone or sinful piece of flesh on your body. You rescued orphans, nurtured sick and injured animals back to health, and single-handedly fed the homeless, all while somehow managing to raise your 2.5 children, whom you carted around in your shiny, new SUV, and being the head of the PTA.
And then it just ended. It felt like the service had started hours ago, but now, suddenly in the casual blink of an eye, it was over.
The crowd rose, slowly shuffling forward to pay last respects. Everyone shook hands with my father, and patted and squeezed my shoulder with firm quietness. Some of the women gave my father hugs and sobbed into him.
I stayed in my seat, staring straight ahead. They came over, after passing her in her coffin, drowning me in their own feelings of sorrow and regret, showering me with promises of prayer and hope. I acknowledged them, but it felt like I was only doing it to be polite.
Finally, everyone had scattered. They finished paying their last respects, their tears pausing for just long enough for them to shuffle back to their solemn cars. They would be at the house within the hour. Everything would start, again; except now there would be platters of potluck food set onto every available counter space and flat surface not in the bathrooms (and hopefully not the bedrooms). Comfort food, casseroles you usually only saw at Thanksgiving and Christmas, all manner of cookies, cakes, pies, and home-baked desserts that a kid’s wildest dreams of sweets couldn’t hope to encompass. Grieving meant food. Food meant everyone and their neighbor bringing their own family recipe for green bean casserole, or apple or cherry pie. At least we wouldn’t have to cook or go grocery shopping for several months, I thought sarcastically.
I stood, the wretched chairs creaking, and walked to the casket. The entire service, it was not more than five feet ahead of me, but I had never really looked at it.
It was a royal blue, with gold and silver trim. A bit gaudy, I thought, but I wasn’t the executive in charge of that; I didn’t even get a say. A flashy box to put an uncaring corpse into that was going to be covered with six feet worth of dirt and mud, anyway. It was a pointless waste on behalf of the living to attempt to ease the suffering of their beloved’s passing.
I looked down, as she lay there, so quiet and still. She wore a white dress, crisp and clean. There was a bouquet of roses on the lid, intermixed with delicate Baby’s Breath; a creamy, off-white color that I normally despised, but here they fit perfectly and were breathtakingly beautiful.
Roses and Baby’s Breath had always been her favorite.
I noticed that her brown hair wasn’t as glossy as it had been. Not that it really mattered. After this, no one would ever look upon her, again.
I stood there and stared for long moments. I didn’t know how long I stood there, not looking up. My mind slowed, and I stopped thinking. I only looked. At one point, I closed my eyes. My hands stayed still, laid over one another, on the edge of the casket.
I looked to the bouquet, again. I reached out, and plucked a single, long stemmed rose from the bundle and laid it across her folded hands as they rested lightly on her chest.
“Goodbye, Mom.”
I turned and left the grave.
The ride home was bursting with blissful silence, devoid of the annoyance of the worried mourners and abstract family members who had suddenly emerged out of the woodwork. There was an odd sense of peace, no one coming up to me, no tears, no blowing noses into sopping handkerchiefs. It ended all too soon. As we pulled into the driveway, I braced myself for what was to come.
The smell assaulted me as soon as I stepped onto the porch, nearing the front door. It was everywhere. I felt sick.
I think someone laid a hand on my shoulder, but I kept walking. I couldn’t stay in the mess of people and faces that greeted me as I passed that threshold.
I’m still not sure how something so small caught my eye. I don’t remember taking it, or walking up the stairs to my room.
The door slammed behind me, and I flopped onto the floor, legs outstretched in front of me.
I twisted it in my hands. It was a potholder, one we’d had for years. It was ratty; there was a tear in the seam in one corner.
“Can you hand me that?”
“Sure, Mom.” I handed her the potholder.
It was so simple an action; so everyday, so ordinary.
I never dreamt those would be the last words I would ever say to her.
I gasped. My eyes opened wide. I hadn’t realized I’d closed them.
I hated it. I hated everything about it. They deified her. Made her into a perfect thing. She wasn’t human, anymore. It was like they didn’t want her to be.
This goddamn funeral. This goddamn fucking funeral.
They took everything into their own hands. They shoved me away, forcing me to keep silent. All I wanted was to tell them what I thought.
But no. I wasn’t allowed. I was grieving. I was the poor and vulnerable daughter, left behind after a horrible and tragic accident.
Why couldn’t they get it through their thick skulls that I had my own way of dealing with things? That I wanted to do what worked for me. They claimed they were worried about me, wanted me to know I could trust them. I could talk to them. I would rather talk to a bum on the street than talk to them. They clung on, as if they expected me to break, expected me to suddenly open the gates and let all my little feelings pour out.
If they wanted to help me, they would have taken the goddamn hint at my reaction when I found out they put me on suicide watch at school. I was too calm. I would break, and therefore “posed a risk of serious bodily harm” to myself. It wouldn’t have been hard to name the author of the psychology textbook they just quoted.
Their grueling meddling brought it all on. The more they pushed, the farther away I ran. It disgusted me, and I wanted nothing to do with it. I would feel things when I was good and ready. My heart didn’t apply to allotted hour once a week. It was their own fault, the reason why I acted the way I did. But they would never see that. All they would ever see was the poor teenage girl who’d lost her mother. Another depressed teenager, because the world doesn’t have enough of those, already.
She would have known better. My mother knew me. She would have told them to back off, to leave me the hell alone.
My mom and I had always been close. I suppose it was natural, for us. I was a lot like she was when she was my age. When I was eight and determined to join the baseball team, my parents bought me a mitt, a bat and bright orange baseballs. Dad taught me how to hit, she taught me how to catch.
On Sunday afternoons, we would bake. It never mattered what, and usually we didn’t know until we started flipping though the recipe books, waiting for something to catch our eye.
She hinted that the Senior Grad Night and Disneyland wouldn’t be my only travels, come summer. I had dreamt of white sand beaches and crystal blue waters, of waves to be surfed and reefs to explore ever since. I clung to those memories, those fantasies, now. Bit by bit, they were taken from me, as everyone who thought they knew me forced me back. White sand was dull and gray, the warm water turning cold, churning and spiting cold mist as the storm rolled in.
It was their fault I felt nothing.
Who the fuck were they to tell me anything? They didn’t just lose their mother. They weren’t in fourth period, listening to some dull-faced teacher droll on about the graduation ceremony and how Sober Grad Night saved lives. Then suddenly a pair from the office appeared. They talked, whispered in hushed tones with the teacher in the corner of the room. They came up to my desk, faces stoic and solemn. They looked fearful, as though I was some wild animal locked in a cage. They stared me down, like they were just about to open the cage door.
“Come to the office with us, dear.”
I hated it when people called me “dear.”
The woman took my arm and we rode in one of their stupid golf carts. They guided me to the principal’s office, in the back. The man held my shoulder. I felt like a convict being escorted to the courtroom. I wondered what I’d done.
“Hello… I’m afraid I have some bad news. You may want to sit down.”
I looked hard at him. I wanted to know what the hell was going on.
“There’s been an accident. I’m sorry- your mother has passed away.”
“Your father’s on his way. I’ll walk you to the counseling center, if you want to.”
“Passed away.” Such bullshit. She died; she fucking died. She’s dead and gone and now she’s buried. Go to hell, just go to fucking hell.
Suddenly I was on my feet.
I screamed. My arm wound back. The potholder flew from my fingers. It crashed against the far side of my room. The cross-country championship trophy from last year fell with a crash to the floor. A picture slid, dropping onto the edge of the bed.
I breathed hard, through tightly clenched teeth. I felt my legs shaking; they gave out beneath me. I sank down onto my knees, back hunched, shoulders curved forward. My chest tightened, my throat closing up. I let out a hacking cough, a desperate cry for air.
I handed her the potholder. I don’t even remember why she needed it. I couldn’t smell what was in the oven, or what was on the stove. I knew the glint of gold from her wedding ring shone in the afternoon sunlight. I knew she had been wearing her favorite jeans and a white blouse. But I couldn’t see it, I couldn’t remember it. I just knew. That was the last time I ever saw her. I knew, but I couldn’t see. And I never would, again.
I bit my lip, hard. I could taste the slick, coppery metal of my own blood. I couldn’t feel the gash, but suddenly, I felt everything else. I gasped for air, my eyes wide, staring straight ahead. I focused on nothing. I felt everything.
The numbness faded into the oblivion I wanted to disappear into. I had walked in a haze since it happened, and now that it was gone, there was nothing but a raw and bloodied mess. Everything I ever was, splayed out for everyone to see. But no one was here. I was alone, in my room. Alone. Completely and utterly alone.
“Mom…”
I crumpled onto myself, my body folding forward. I felt the coolness of the hardwood floor beneath my flushed cheek, as the salty tears dripped and ran down. I sobbed, breaking down, feeling my body lose itself and all control. I melted into the floor, curled in my tight little ball.
I opened my mouth wide and screamed, choking on my tears and spit.
She was gone. She was really gone. I’d just said goodbye to my mother, my own mother. She was supposed to be here, to see me graduate from high school, to see me get my college acceptance letters. She was supposed to send me care packages to share with my dorm mates.
None of that would ever happen. My mother was dead.
My eyes were squeezed shut. I almost betrayed myself enough to hope; to believe that if I could just cry long enough, hard enough, it would all be over. It would all end. Just end.
The tears wracked through me, tearing me apart. My heart beat wildly, breaking and shredding itself into pieces; my ribs ached. My head began to throb. The light burned my eyes and the air stung my lungs.
I hiccupped.
Strong arms came around me, carefully lifting me from the floor.
I didn’t have to open my eyes to know who it was.
Dad held me in his arms, my head resting against the crook of his neck. I folded into him, like I’d done so many times when I was just a little girl. I was nothing more than that, now. I’d regressed completely. I had no control over myself, over my body. My mind whirled, spinning so fast I felt dizzy and sick.
He never spoke. He didn’t tell me that everything would be all right, that he was there for me. He didn’t try and feed me homemade pie. He didn’t ignore me. He never said I was normal for feeling like this. Never did he even think of uttering the words that what I felt would pass. He didn’t know what was I going through, and he didn’t try to. He just held me. He was my father. He was what I had left, and everything I needed.
Goodbye Mom, goodbye.