It hadnāt even been an hour since the examiners hauled my mother down the stairs. I stood at the entry of her bedroom, and without her as a centerpiece, I could suddenly see how awful it was. The tan carpet was stained with grey-brown splotches that were hard to the touch. The walls were stained yellow with years of cigarette smoke, and likewise her sheets and blankets were riddled with burn holes from the number of times she had nodded off mid-smoke.
The middle slat under her bed had broken under the weight of her morbidly obese pit bull, so the mattress sagged into a dramatic U shape. It couldnāt have been comfortable to sleep on. Looking back, I canāt remember a time my mother ever seemed comfortable or truly rested.
The drawers had very clearly been rifled through. On the desk a letter on a sheet of notebook paper sat. It was my fatherās handwriting. A suicide note he had written when he had been placed on the heart transplant list. According to my sisters, mom found it seven months prior and showed it to them. No one knows why she had it out that morning. Dad didnāt end up killing himself. A strangerās heart has a home in his chest.
The bedroom where my mother slept alone already had the thick, unforgiving atmosphere of a place where something terrible had happened. That wasnāt where it happened though. Just a few feet away, in the hall, the bathroomā¦it felt wrong.
No one was sure how or when it happened. My younger sister found her folded in half between the toilet and the tub. She was already cold, already gone. Now that the medical examiner had taken her away, the only evidence left was whatever mess she left behind. I canāt say what it was, I donāt know. I only know that I mopped it up, and shut the door behind me before I left that day.
When my mother first overdosed, there was a mess of gloves, and other medical supplies left behind by the EMTs. There was nothing to leave this time, because there was no medical intervention.
Foolishly, I thought theyād carry her down on a stretcher, covered by a sheet. It was jarring to watch her carried loosely between two officers in a black body bag. It hung low, and swung. Like garbage.
It wasnāt until they were out the front door that they put her on a gurney, and draped an ugly maroon blanket over her body bag. They gave us a moment to pray over her. My dadās friend, the born again one that gave him and my mother so much comfort during his heart surgery, was the one to lead us in the prayer. He stood at her head, and placed a gentle hand where her forehead was.
I reminded him that the investigators told us not to touch. Even if they hadnāt, I didnāt want him to touch her. It sickened me that he did. It still disturbs me now.
We were four little girls crying on the front lawn on a sunny Juneteenth. A neighbor drove into the cul-de-sac on a golf cart. The neighbors right across from us had landscapers working out front. The world kept moving, as though mine hadnāt ended.
