by Megan Rivers
“I want to thank everyone who has supported us throughout the years and helped us celebrate and heal into happiness. So thank you!”
Kevin put his arm around my mother and kissed her as the crowd clapped. He reached for his glass and added, “If everyone could grab a glass I would like to make a toast. Meadow and Christie, could you join us?” Meadow skipped up and placed herself next to her father, looking up to him with a proud smile. Peeling myself from Galvin's side, I stood next to my mother, losing myself in her aura of joy. When glasses were passed out or refilled, he raised his glass to the crowd. “Here's to finding happiness,” he toasted.
This coming year was sure to be full of it.
X.
And Then There Was One.
“The Story” – Brandi Carlisle
It’s so hard for me to relive the memories of that first day of 2001, it was so traumatic for me as a sixteen year old girl. For those three months prior I was on a natural high of happiness. I rang in the New Year with an amazing boyfriend, a new life with my mom, and a new family. I was on top of the world.
We all slept in that New Year’s Day. I crept downstairs around noon where Kevin was sorting through the bags of decorations and leftovers, trying to determine what was trash and what went into storage. “Did you sleep at all?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.
“A little,” he replied, looking up from a giant plastic storage container.
“Do you need any help?” I asked edging towards the kitchen for a cup of coffee.
He stood up and smiled. He outstretched his arm inviting me to join him. “Forget about all this stuff. Want to help me make brunch for everyone?”
“Sure. What's on the menu?” I asked following him into the kitchen, rubbing my eyes.
He peered into the fridge. “How's about eggs, pancakes, and...” he opened the freezer, “sausage links?”
“Sounds good,” I said, grabbing ingredients from him and placing them on the counter.
Kevin charged me with making a heaping plate of toast while he stood over the stove, cracking eggs over a pan. “Did you have fun last night?” he asked, adjusting the flame on the stove. “I hardly saw you all night.”
“It was a blast―best party I've ever been to!” I pulled toast from the toaster slot and lathered it in butter. “I'm glad that we're a family.”
Kevin leaned over and kissed the top of my head. “Me too, chickadee,” he said scrambling the eggs with a spatula. That small gesture began the definition of a father in my book and Kevin continued to contribute to it throughout the years. It began to fill a hole in me that I didn't realize was so large.
“Ya know,” I began, leaning against the counter, “the smell of bacon always gets me out of bed...”
Kevin smiled and shook the spatula at me. “I like the way you think. Top shelf in the freezer.”
Within twenty minutes both Galvin and Meadow trudged in with bed-mused hair, wiping the sleep from their eyes. “Meadow! Lucky you showed up!” Kevin greeted. He took five plates from the cabinet and plopped them in her hands. “I was just telling Christie how well you set tables.”
Meadow was too tired to talk back and instead fell into the closest chair and tossed plates around the table mumbling about the side effects of natural sunlight.
“And you, sir,” Kevin turned to Galvin.
“Reporting for duty,” Galvin said squinting his eyes, adjusting to the bright room.
“Silverware,” Kevin informed opening the appropriate drawer.
“And the dog finally left, but she came tumbling down the tree right into the present it left her!” Kevin wiped a tear from his eye at the memory of how Meadow broke her arm.
Everyone was in stitches except for Meadow. “It's not that funny,” she insisted as she roasted hash browns on the stove.
“The poor girl sat in the emergency room smelling horrible. I swear when we sat down everyone moved to the other end of the room. She cried and cried and cried, but she kept saying 'it doesn't hurt, it doesn't hurt.' She cried because she smelled so horrible!”
Meadow glared at everyone as we clutched our stomachs. “They're done,” Meadow declared dropping a plate of steaming hash browns on the table. “Maybe we can tell the story of how you 'made a splash' when you met my mother at the aquarium?”
“Well, breakfast looks ready,” Kevin said, changing the subject and pulling in his chair. “Christie, why don't you go get your mother's butt out of bed?”
Meadow rolled her eyes and turned to Galvin. “While we wait, let me enrapture you in a tale involving flying popcorn, curious dolphins, and my father.”
As I walked up the stairs I heard Meadows voice rise up and down and I could see her rising from her chair to act out the story. I laughed to myself until I reached the bedroom door.
Mom was notorious for sleeping in until the late afternoon hours after having even just one glass of wine. I knocked on the door and didn’t expect her to answer. I opened the door and walked in. “Come on Mom,” I remember that moment so clearly, “its time to wake up, we made a really yummy breakfast.”
I crawled into the bed and her back was turned to me so I shook her shoulder, “You don’t want to miss it,” but she still didn’t move. “If you don’t wake up now I’m sure Meadow will eat your share.” I teased her. Still, she didn’t move or even groan. “C’mon Mom,” I was determined to get her downstairs for a family breakfast, even if I had to drag her.
Before I rolled her over something sparked inside me and I knew something was horribly wrong. I grabbed her shoulder―she was wearing a blue and white striped night shirt--and pulled her towards me. My suspicions were confirmed as soon as I came face-to-face with her pale cheeks, blue-hued lips, and I looked into her open, clouded-over eyes that stared blankly into the room.
I jumped out of the bed, entangled in the bed sheets and fell into the wall, still looking into her gauzy eyes and I lost myself. After sometime, I don’t know how long―three seconds? Five minutes? One hour?―I screamed Kevin’s name in what I imagined to be a high, blood-curdling, cry.
Everything was a blur after that.
Evidently Kevin and Galvin raced up the stairs and burst into the room. They thought I was having some kind of fit because I was frozen in place. I couldn’t look away from my mother’s dead gaze; I didn't know what being in shock was until then.
I’m sure 911 had been dialed and the house was buzzing with police, firemen, doctors and paramedics but I didn’t remember any of it. Galvin told me he had to pry me off the wall and carry me out of the bedroom but nothing about me had changed; I was an unblinking, horrified statue. I was overloaded with so many emotions that every cell in my body was numb with distress. A person’s body, especially a sixteen year old girl’s, can’t function very long like that, so my body shut down and I passed out half way down the stairs.
When I woke up, I was lying on the large blue couch in the living room. A paramedic was hovering over me. His lips were moving and then he stood up and left.
There was whispering between Meadow and Galvin that immediately ceased when my eyes traveled over to them. Slowly my senses began to return. I was on the couch. The smell of breakfast still thickly haunted the air. Then I remembered.
I sat up slowly, taking in my surroundings. Maybe I was just waking up from a horrible nightmare. Maybe I fell down the stairs and hit my head. But as soon as my eyes focused on Meadow I knew it was a reality. Her face was swollen with tears. The sight of it, the sting of truth, made my face crack. I looked at her and shook my head, hoping she would say something that would make everything false.
“Christie,” she started and her eyebrows dipped into tears, “I'm so sorry.”
“No.” My voice cracked and my face broke into despair. “No, no, no,” I repeated over and over.
Her face was colored in pain. She immediately pulled me into a hug and kept pulling tighter. She squeezed me so hard it hurt but I think, without it, I would have slipped away too.
; Our tears pooled together as our heads buried into each other's shirts. Galvin sat on the floor, at my feet, and buried his face in my lap. I felt helpless. It took all the strength I could muster to breath in a world without my mother.
We sat there and cried, holding each other up, until our bodies were exhausted and we had no more tears to spill.
XI.
Storm in my Soul
“Remember When It Rained” – Josh Groban
She was gone.
The woman I looked to for advice and strove to be, had suddenly vanished. What was the last thing I said to her? What were her last words? Did she need help? Was she in pain? Who would I talk to and come home to now that she was gone? Why couldn't she stay around for a few more decades? Why didn't we know anything was wrong?
She was more than my mother: she gave me life, she was my father, my sister, my family. She was my future, my past, the answers to so many of my questions. She was the sole person who had known me my entire life―knew how to read my face and interpret my soul. She knew more about me than I did and I wasn't done learning about the person I was to become.
So many of these thoughts clouded my mind and drenched it with unanswerable questions, like a damp, heavy mist settling over a town.
I didn't sleep for three days. Meadow said she woke up in the middle of the night and found me missing. I would be sitting at the kitchen table, staring into the dark yard. She sat beside me so I wouldn't be alone. Galvin started sleeping with me on the couch, holding onto me tightly, because it was the only thing he could do to help.
Galvin hadn't left for L.A. when he was supposed to and had yelled at someone over the phone about it. I knew I had to snap out of it and start functioning again, but I couldn't. I once heard someone explain that when a woman gives birth, she needs several weeks to heal because it was like having a giant scab on the inside. Mom's death was the same―it left a deep sore inside me and an infliction from death takes a lot longer to heal. After all, I had lost half of myself; a limb had been brutally severed.
On the morning of my mother's funeral Galvin had set me down in a quiet corner of the living room before we left. My hands limply hugged my knees, which were covered in itchy black tights as I watched him get on one knee to be at my eye level. His face was highlighted in concern and I wanted to erase that look and replace it with a reassuring smile. I used to be able to do that.
“Listen, Christie.” His hands clasped over my fists. “I need to talk to you about what is going to happen today.”
I nodded, trying only to focus on his green eyes.
“You're going to see your mother today. I'm going to take you early so you can spend some time with her and say good bye.” My eyes started to grow warm and everything but his eyes became blurry. “You are one of the strongest people I have ever met and I know this has been hard for you. I will do anything to help you through this, but you're the only one who can say good bye to her, okay?”
Again I nodded.
Galvin's chin twitched. “And there's a very good chance your dad will be there today, but I will be by your side the whole time, I promise, no matter what.” His hand moved to tuck a lock of hair behind my ear and I suddenly felt too exposed to the world. “We don't have to talk to him, stand beside him, or even look at him.” I tilted my head so that the lock of hair would cover me once again.
“But Kevin wants me to prepare you for the will.” He took a deep breath, glancing at the floor. “Your mom's lawyer needs to talk to you. Kevin's not sure when your mom last updated it. He's doing what he can for you, but we need you to be strong.” He swallowed and I watched his Adam's apple bob. “We're all here for you, no matter what happens.” He put his hands on my shoulders and pierced my eyes with his as if he was searching for something. “Are you ready?”
My father was the last person I wanted to see through all of this, but this time he was in my world. I had Galvin, Meadow, and Kevin to support me. “I can do this,” I said and noticed how dusty my voice was, caked in cob webs.
“Yes you can,” Galvin said grabbing my hand. He pulled me off the chair and led me down the road towards the hardest good bye a girl has to make.
When Galvin and I arrived at the funeral home the only sound was the stifling scream of silence. There was no bell over the door, no ticking clock, no distracting television mounted on the wall, or nondescript elevator music in the lobby. There was, however, a black sign outside the wooden door on the right, and fourteen white plastic letters that spelled out the words Dr. Cynthia Kelly.
Galvin held both my hands and faced me. “Do you want me to come in with you?”
I shook my head; I had to stand up and be strong. I was my mother's daughter: an independent woman (or, at the very least, a stubborn one). Deep inside I could feel the horrible itch that comes with healing.
“I'll be right outside,” he said, releasing his grip on my hand.
Mom's casket sat at the other end of the room. Bouquets of flowers guarded her like the family dog. The lights all shone down on her like a Broadway stage. I stood there for several moments trying to remember the things that didn't matter: the ten rows of eight seats, the prints of landscapes in gold frames, the beige wallpaper spattered with blue flowers, the floral pattern on the couch, and the eighteen gold stripes on the back of the sienna chair. None of it mattered. Down the line, those are not the things that you want to remember.
The wooden sea of collapsible chairs parted in an aisle that I slowly walked through. In my head I kept telling myself that this would be the last time I saw my mother's face. Never again will I lay my eyes upon her curls that she no longer tried to tame with a hair dryer, her forehead that always said more than her words, or her skin that smelled of coconuts, without a Polaroid picture staring back at me.
I knelt down beside her and tried not to see the cosmetic imperfections that told me her soul no longer dwelled inside.
Tears were already beginning to fall and I wiped them away. “Hi Mom.” I didn't know how to translate the storm in my soul.
“I love you. I just don't know what I need to say.” I thought about all our heart-to-hearts on our tiny couch; she always knew what to say. “It's going to be hard to go on without you,” I admitted.
“Everyone keeps telling me that you're not gone forever, that you'll always be in my heart, but hugging myself is not the same as hugging you. I want so badly to give up and tell you that it's not worth it without you because you're my world, but I can't because its not fair to you. You gave up so much for me and you were finally getting something back. It's just not fair that you can't have it now.”
I wiped away a stream of tears. “You've taught me how to be stronger and how to be independent. And I really hope I never stop hearing your voice in my ear.”
I put my head in my hands, feeling the cool polished wood of the casket on my forehead. “I'm not ready to say goodbye. I don't want to.” This was going to be the last tornado of tears, I told myself. I didn't want these soul-rupturing moments to be the last ones I spent with my mother. So I wiped my eyes and pulled my cheeks into a foreign and painful smile.
“I remember one day I came home from school when I was like ten and you posted that Thomas Jefferson quote on the fridge―god, I still remember it, word for word: 'To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.' When I asked you what it meant you said that life is always better when we're learning.” A small laugh escaped my lips when I pictured myself at the table trying to do my math homework and that quote sat there mocking me like Edgar Allen Poe's Raven.
“You always knew the person I wanted to become and reminded me I was capable of becoming her. Thank you.” My smile had turned genuine. “I'll always love you. And I'll never forget you. There won't be a day that goes by where I won't think about you.”
I stood up, feeling warmth rush to my legs. “Good bye, Mommy.” I pushed her hair gently aside and kissed her cold forehead. “I promise I'l
l make you proud.”
♪ ♪ ♪
At Galvin's side I watched throngs of people come and go. Kevin sat on the floral couch visiting with several different people. Meadow sat beside him, staring at her hands that fidgeted with the hem of her skirt. I had never seen her so quiet and reserved and her face looked as if it had never seen a smile. It was then that I realized what she had lost: another mother.
She and I were in similar places. We both loved our parents and spent years hoping that they'd find that happiness that comes with a soulmate. We both were lost in a dream coming true and it was savagely ripped away from us. She was probably hurting as much as me, if not more.
In the first move of independence in days that seemed like years, I broke myself from Galvin's side and walked to her. I was beginning to see the world again; each tear, each wince, each memory we hurried to tuck away before it flew away. Sitting beside her, I grabbed her hand and cupped it with mine. Her eyes glistened with razor sharp emotions and we sat in each others company until the procession to the cemetery.
As they lowered my mother's casket into her grave I stood between Galvin and Meadow, grasping their hands, and stood a little taller. I wasn't proud she was gone, but I was her legacy―I felt the need to prove to everyone that she did a spectacular job raising me with what she had, and I wasn't done yet.
“Christie,” Kevin put his hand on my shoulder. I hadn't noticed that most of the crowd had dissipated. “This is Mr. Calhoun, your mom's lawyer.”
My father was standing beside him, which caused me to squeeze Galvin's hand. He put his arm around my shoulders for reassurance. “He needs to speak to you,” Kevin said, his voice raw with an emotion I couldn't place. His eyes traveled between both men and back to me. Kevin's eyes hinted at an emotion that I never saw in them before. He suddenly looked so small and impotent.
