“Mom?” Her eyes stay closed, sunken into her pale face. I shake her and a small trickle of dark red blood runs from her nose. “Oh God! What happened?” I push two fingers into her carotid artery on the side of her neck. She is cold, her lips are bluish, and I can’t feel her pulse. I grab her wrist, but I can’t find it there either. “Wake up, Mom!”
I look around, frantic. I can’t breathe. I need a phone. I have to call 911. My gaze falls on the bedside chest and I stand up and move across the room. My hands tremble so much, I can hardly yank open the drawer and grab the velvet jewelry box. I’m shakin
g so hard now I’m coming apart. My heartbeat pounds in my neck and head and I struggle to suck in huge breaths. I’m angry and scared and I can’t push the tiny button. “Damn it, Mom!” I get my fingers beneath the lid and rip it open. Four little red pills fly into the air before gently ping-ponging around the hardwood floor.
I race to my office and grab my phone. I try to dial as I run back to Mom’s room, but I can’t even manage 911. In the few seconds I am gone, hope echoes in my brain. I hope she got up. I hope she’s in bed. I hope I’m having a horrible dream, but when I return, she’s right where I left her.
“Momma!” I kneel beside her. Her skin is still pale, her eyes sunken, and her lips light blue. The trickle of blood has run down her cheek now. If she didn’t kill herself, what the hell happened?
“Don’t leave me,” I beg, even though I know she is already gone. Nothing will bring her back. “Fuck!” I throw my phone across the room. She has a do-not-resuscitate order. She doesn’t want an ambulance or an autopsy. She has it all planned out with Bergeron Funeral Home.
My vision blurs her dark hair and baby-blue tracksuit. The first sob rips apart my chest and turns into a long, painful wail. I fall backward on my butt. My mother didn’t kill herself like she planned. She got out of bed for some reason and fell. My cries are loud and uncontrollable and drawn from deep in my soul. I pull Mom into my lap the best I can. Her head falls to the side and blood drips in my lap. I try to speak, but all that comes out is a laborious “Mmmm… om.” Hot tears roll down my numb cheeks and neck. I pull her closer. Her head rests against my heart, and a Little Peanut party favor box sits beneath her bent leg.
I bury my face in her hair. “Don’… leeeeeave me.” Why didn’t I hear her fall? I should have heard something, but I was making out with Simon. I could have helped her. “Mom… ma.” My back hurts, but I can’t stop wailing.
“Ahhh, baby,” I hear. My vision is blurred, but there is no one in the room but me and Mom. “Shhh, Lulu.” Something weightless and warm touches my back that I know is my mother, soothing me like when I was a child.
I try to say, “Come back. Don’t leave me, please!” It comes out garbled and disjointed.
I feel her around me, calming me as my cries turn to painful hiccups. “Cher, baby of mine.”
“Don’t go.”
There is a hand on my shoulder. This time it’s real. “Lou Ann!”
I lift my face and see Lindsey through my swollen, tear-filled eyes. “My momma’s gone.”
23
July 30
I’m alone and lost.
I AM ADRIFT, no longer connected to anything. A vital part of me is gone. It feels like my heart no longer beats in my chest, yet I am still here. Mother is across the parlor from me. I can see her profile, but she is not here. She stayed with me for the first two days after her passing, but I felt her leave the night I requested an autopsy. I don’t know if that is a coincidence, or if she’s mad because I went against her wishes, but I don’t think I could live the rest of my life not knowing why my mom died. I know Lindsey couldn’t. Her guilt was almost as paralyzing as mine until learning Mom suffered a heart attack due to a blood clot that originated from a microbleed in her brain. Even if someone had been next to her and immediately called 911, she likely would have died on the way to the hospital. Lindsey seems comforted by this. I am not. Likely only adds to my guilt.
The past five days have passed in flickers of time. I’m in one place, and then I’m somewhere else, and I hardly recall the in-between.
I am dressed in my black suit and new Louboutin heels like the day I took Mom from Golden Springs. The day my life changed, the day my priorities changed. A pillbox hat sits on top of my head, and my lips are Seductress Red in honor of my mother.
Patricia is embroidered in blue on white silk inside the casket; I hadn’t realized how opulent the interior draping was the day she picked it out. The shirring and tassels alone are pure brothel, just like she wanted. There are several poster-size photos of Mom about the room. Most of them are black-and-whites of her and my grandmother and great-grandmother. She would have loved the portrait I had colorized of her wearing her blue organza prom dress, which I placed at the head of the coffin, but my favorite is the picture of her wearing the big blue hat with the broken ostrich feather taken the day I pulled the trunk from the attic. Lindsey and I picked out some of her Bob Ross paintings to display on the mantel above her casket.
Moonlight Sonata plays on the old Victrola, and I sit on the chesterfield where Mother and I talked and laughed and sometimes argued. I can almost smell a lingering trace of Pirate’s Booty on the cushions. Lindsey sits next to me. Her eyes are as swollen as her ankles. Raphael is unusually quiet and still, seeming to mourn with us.
There are people here whom I’ve never met. Some are from Mom’s childhood, others are relatives so distant I’ve never even heard of them before. More than I imagined have come from around the area to pay their respects to a woman they’d never met.
They’ve brought food and say they’re sorry for my loss. They say they know how I feel. I don’t think that can possibly be true. Not unless they’ve experienced a pain so deep it pierces their soul. Not unless they are completely alone in the world and nothing will ever fill the massive hole where their heart once beat.
Simon is here somewhere, but I cannot look at him. He has reached out to me several times, but I cannot see him without being overwhelmed with guilt and shame. While I was kissing him, feeling my body come alive with his touch, my mother’s body was doing the opposite just down the hall. It’s not his fault, but I blame him just the same.
I look at the pointed toes of my shoes. It’s been five days since I walked into Mom’s bedroom and found her on the floor. Five days of planning her funeral according to her wishes. Five days of hell and heartache and sleepless nights. Five days of promising God anything for just one more day with her. Just one more day of looking through old albums, painting happy clouds, and watching Wink Martindale. I don’t care if that day is spent with her accusing me of trying to kill her or steal her shoes or both.
The funeral director whispers to me that it’s time to begin the ceremony. I nod, and he starts with a prayer and Bible verses my mom picked out. He reads the eulogy that I wrote honoring her life. I recall sitting at my computer for hours, but I don’t remember what I’ve written until I hear it from his mouth. It is inadequate, and I am ashamed. I should have said more. I should have described her life in more grandiose terms. If nothing, Mom was over-the-top and grandiose, and my eulogy falls short.
There are no words to describe the agony of seeing my mother in a coffin. It’s raw and jagged and burns my eyes with hot tears. How will I live without her? We had our spats and periods of time when we did not speak. Silly and regretful, but I always knew that my mother was just a phone call away.
I make it through the last hymn, and I manage to rise and walk across the parlor. I stand before Mom’s shiny white casket, with the gold handles and blue pillow to “match” her eyes. She wears a new blue organza dress and Passion Red lipstick to match her nature.
I kiss her cool cheek and whisper, “I love you always.” I am ushered outside so I won’t see the lid close on my mother. Lindsey stands beside me, and I lock my knees so I won’t buckle on the wooden porch. The first time I stood in this spot, my pump got stuck in a hole while Mom insisted Wynonna stole “the good key.” I wish I could go back to that day and do it over. I wouldn’t yell at Mom for saying Tony’s name.