“I also wish I had told you things, so many…so many times I thought it and I just didn’t because…because I’m an idiot,” Wolf says. “Because I forget sometimes that you are not like me. And this is the most crushing reminder of that. Of death. Of how unfair life is. You shouldn’t be here. You should still be alive with your daughter, in that house with us and you’re not and I honestly don’t know how I’m going to come to terms with that. Because I loved you Yvonne, like I loved my mother, and I lost her too. And I…” Wolf’s eyes pinch shut, a tear running down his cheek. He licks his lips, gives his head a shake. “I will make sure Amethyst is okay. Don’t you worry about that. Don’t worry about her. Your daughter is so bright and so strong and she’s going to be okay. I promise you that.”
I wipe my nose on my arm and stare down at my mother. I can’t even take stock of what I’m feeling, it’s all too surreal, it’s all too much, and far too painful. I’ve never existed in such a present moment before and of course it’s one in which I feel like my soul is splintering into two, my mother taking part of it with her.
I glance up at Wolf. “I don’t know what happens next.”
He gives his head a shake. “Honestly, I don’t know either.”
“I just…I know she’s not here anymore. I know she’s growing colder. I know she’s just…a body now. And that her soul is gone. But I don’t know how to turn around and leave. I feel like I can’t leave. Because this is it…how can I just turn and leave her here? It doesn’t feel right.”
“We can stay here as long as you’d like,” he says to me.
I give him a small smile of thanks, but I know I can’t stay here forever.
“I feel so stupid,” I whisper to him after a few minutes of silence. “For thinking all this time she was going to pull through. I had such blind hope. I just believed that if I stayed positive and really believed in her, that she would pull through. That God would answer my prayers. That things would be okay and she’d be one of the lucky ones. I really believed it. I believed I’d have a miracle.”
Wolf nods and exhales heavily, crossing his arms across his chest while staring down at my mother’s body.
“It’s never stupid to have hope,” Wolf says quietly. “You chose to believe she would make it, and each and every moment you were in this room with her, she felt your hope. Don’t regret in believing that everything would be okay. Don’t regret hope. It sustained your mom and it sustained yourself. And it sustained me. Hope is a beautiful thing to have, even at the very end. As Dickens said, ‘Hope, hope to the last’.”
Yes. That’s what I’d had, more than anything.
Hope, hope to the last.
Chapter 16
Amethyst
The funeral home director keeps talking but I’m no longer listening. I stopped listening about twenty minutes into our meeting, because the things he was saying were over my head. My brain isn’t working these days, it just isn’t. I can barely form words and sentences. I forget where I live. I forget my name.
I’m just existing now.
Lenore, Solon…Wolf. They rally around me. They point me in the right direction and help me to do the right things, but I feel so beyond exhausted and stupid that I’m sure I’m doing it all wrong. If it had been up to me, I wouldn’t be here dealing with this shit with Michael, the funeral home director, who seems to be a few years younger than me and takes it all so professionally that I wonder when death stopped being an issue for him.
I just don’t understand the rush. I mean, okay, I get it. There’s a dead body that needs to be dealt with (took a few days to come to terms with that…dead body. That it’s no longer my mother.), but everything else feels like it should wait. I know most people must go into adrenaline-fueled survival mode to deal with funeral stuff and the logistics and the closing of accounts and the wills and the million things that come up after someone dies, but that person isn’t me. I’m not fueled by anything but grief, and grief has me wanting to curl up into a ball and sleep all day in a world where there is no pain, only peace.
The one person who can help me with all of this is the one person who isn’t here. She’s in cold storage somewhere, waiting for me to confirm the details of the cremation.
“Would you like to pick out the casket?” Michael asks me.