Eight * (Patreon)

A week later, on the night of it, there was a tap against the door. We climbed out from under the covers like we'd been expecting it.

It was our mother, in her funeral clothes again. I didn't understand. Her eyes were swollen like she had been crying. She had been crying.

"I read the obituary you wrote for your father," she said. She closed the door behind herself. Simon crawled out of bed. He hugged her. She hugged him.

"It was perfect. He would have loved it so much." She knelt down and pulled me into a hug. Cold and wet on my skin. On my back. Her funeral clothes were wet, like they had just been rained on. Had she showered in them? The funeral was weeks ago. "I hope you don't let your uncles get you down. It wasn't for them, it was for us. Tell me that you'll write mine, too."

It was the most she had spoken to us since our father died.

And then she stood up and kept right on talking. Talking fast. Excited. Talking fast and excited.

"You have to write my obituary, my darlings. My chickadees. My dear ones. Don't let anyone else touch it. Tell me you will.

"People are going to say that I was selfish. Weak. Tired. Depressed. A bad mother. You are going to overhear their voices in the next room. Their whispers. Down the stairs. Through the window."

She was looking up at the ceiling now, not at us. The smile was gone from her face and it had gone cold. An angry sort of blankness. Angry nothing. Like the ceiling.

"Weak. Tired. Depressed. A bad mother. Those are things people say when they do not understand.

"Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem." She pinched her voice.

She turned to me, then. Her smile was back. Small and wry. Like nothing was worth getting upset over, anymore.

"Isn't that stupid?"

But she wasn't really asking. Beside me, Simon had opened the trunk and was pulling on his funeral clothes, too. Buttoning his shirt. Clean now.

"I spent all these years looking forward to my reward," my mother said, and she made a startling sound. No warning, just her feelings bursting out. There was a pause and then she made the sound again and she sat down and cried.

Then she was smiling again. Smiling and crying. "Stupid," she said.

"I miss your father," she said.

Simon started handing me clothing, but it didn't feel right. I felt safer naked. This felt like a play. Or a TV show.

"Children, I am going to kill myself. I never should have lived. They're going to say I was selfish. Weak. Tired. Depressed. A bad mother. But they won't tell you the truth. That I'm free. That the nails in my feet are gone."

She was watching us to see if we understood. Simon in his dry funeral clothes. Me in my birthday suit. She had started off by asking us to write her obituary, but now I could see she was writing her own.

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