The coffin was lowered into the soft April dirt. I could not see through the curtain of tears that had blinded me. Feelings of surrealism floated about me and I felt as if I were trapped in a bubble of altered time. A determined wind blew in torrents around the grave site, but it seemed like my hair fluttered around my face minutes after the wind had run its fingers through the dark strands. My mother stood sobbing uncontrollably to my left, clenching a worn tissue as if it were a safety blanket that held some kind of reassurance. I could not fathom now where one would find such hope anymore.
The world stopped that day for me, and I suppose it had come to a stand-still for my mother ever since she had found him there. The eternal dripping of the faucet was spilling out the tears that were stuck in my throat. My knees hit the hard tile before I could control myself and that is when I felt the unwavering embrace of my mother. We hovered on the grimy floor and held each other for what seemed like days. The sunflower clock on the wall seemed to drag time like a child slowly pulling a discarded rag doll behind him.
My mother's mouth started to form words, but they were blocked by the deafening buzz that filled by ears.
“What did you say?” I tried to shake the hoard of bees that had filled my head.
“He is wearing the shirt I got for sale at Macy's,” my mother's voice came out of the void. She held his crimson hand limply in hers and muttered something else to herself. Her tear-stained face had a coldness to it that made me shiver. The sunlight came in through the window in chunks, as if we were deserving only of partial light that day, while the situation played out as if we were trudging through knee-deep sludge. I do not know how long she had been there, but her eyes seemed doll-like, just staring into nothingness. The daisies on the windowsill stood strangely erect, as if they were mocking our situation and I had to look away.
An explosion of red filled the kitchen, as he lay on the floor in a frozen expression of agony that day. As if even in death he could not escape the unfathomable pain that had slowly manifested in him over the years. Her mother had been there awhile, just existing on a sea of blue tiles in the kitchen, like a small sail boat lost at sea. All the time in the world just to float.
The phone call came right after I got out of my last class, my mom's name flashed on the screen and I thought she was calling to tell me to remember to pick up some milk or something as equally trivial.
“What do you want?” I struggled to get my car keys out of the jumble of things in my purse. I felt like there was never enough time in one day to do everything.
“You need to come home right now,” my mother's voice sounded like she was five years old and frightened of the dark. It's your father...”
“You forgot to feed the dog yesterday,” my mother called out as I backed out of our driveway. She was in the middle of exchanging the wilted daisies that she had removed from the windowsill with fresh ones from our front yard. As long as I could remember we kept fresh daisies on the ledge near the sink. I was late for my economic class at Northern State, where I commuted to after I failed to get into any decent school.
“Yeah, I know,” I rolled my eyes. My mother was being precisely herself-overbearing. It was a good day for her when she yelled at the mailman, and my sister and I at least once each. Today was a good day for her.
I was three years old when my dad bought my first bicycle for me. It was pink with multi-colored streamers spilling from the handlebars. My mom was doing her residency at the local hospital; where eventually she wanted to be a neurosurgeon. My dad stayed home and looked after Sarah and me, because my parents believed in building a strong bond between their children and not leaving us in the hands of a stranger. It seemed like everyday passed in a blur of finger paint and tea parties.
The only other thing that I remember that day is that after I fell off my bike and scraped my knee, my dad gave me chocolate chip cookies and let me watch three episodes of Sesame Street. He put the bouquet of daisies that I had plucked for him near the rusty hose in a vase on the windowsill. Each show went by faster then I would have liked. I think my dad went upstairs to take a nap, because before I knew it he was back in the kitchen cooking my favorite dish of macaroni and cheese. The church bells tolled six in the distance.
No comments:
Post a Comment