I have nearly forgotten my mother when I get the news that she’s dead.
It happens right after I walk into my apartment. It’s been a long day spent in even longer traffic. I drop everything at the door and head straight into the kitchen. All I want is my Pinot Grigio and a minute to myself.
Peace.
Quiet.
Solitude.
That’s when the phone rings. It’s loud and it’s obnoxious. A quick glance at the caller ID says it’s Millie Thomas. My sister. She’s another type of loud and obnoxious that I don’t want to deal with. I also know that if I don’t deal with her – if I don’t take this call right now – she will keep calling until I answer and then she’ll talk at me. Not to me but at me. Having a conversation with my sister is like being her imaginary friend. She does all the talking and you’re never really sure if she sees or hears you at all.
I gulp down my wine, brace for impact, and lift up the phone. Before I even get it to my ear I hear her voice.
“Fucking Christ, Den! I’ve been calling for hours! Where the fuck have you been?”
Breathe. “I was-”
“Never mind. Are you sitting down?”
I take another gulp. “No, but I’ve been drinking.”
“Mom’s dead,” she blurts out. And then comes the sobbing. I let the statement swirl around in my head like the wine in my glass. In this brief pause where my grief stricken sister mourns, I struggle to find the significance.
I refill my glass and ask, “How did you find out?”
“Seattle Police Department called me this morning,” she says, crying softly.
This doesn’t make any sense. “How did they know to call you? We haven’t seen her in what – fifteen years now?”
“We were listed as her next of kin.” She pauses for a moment. “We have to go claim the body, Den.”
“Excuse me?” I nearly choke on my wine.
“I booked us a flight out tomorrow morning to Washington,” she answers.
“Fuck,” I say more to myself than to her.
The last time we saw our mother I was thirteen and Millie was eleven. We watched as the police strapped her down and loaded her onto the psych bus. She had another one of her many manic episodes. This time she had been pacing back and forth on our front lawn dressed in her bathing suit and wedding veil. She was babbling on about being “God’s feminine messiah.” Then she was screaming about seeing my grandmother crawling out of her grave. By the time the police arrived she was on the ground tearing up the grass with her bare hands, shouting, “You can’t come out!”
After the ambulance had gone, another officer took Millie and I down to the station to wait for our father who was none too pleased about having his weekend fuck-a-thon ruined by his psychotic ex-wife and inconvenient children.
The divorce was finalized while my mother was still in the hospital. Once the judge reviewed my mother’s files he deemed her an inept parent and awarded full custody of us to my father. For the most part I fully understood the judge’s decision to remove us from our mother’s care, but there has always been this bitter piece of me that wished he had looked at my father more closely. Had he done so, I’m not so sure he would have awarded my father custody of us either. This bitter piece of me also believes we would have been better off in foster care.
A few weeks after the court ruling, my mother was released from the hospital, and she took that opportunity to release herself from our lives. She did give us the courtesy of a letter. I don’t remember most of it but she mentioned something about moving to California to live with her sisters to be with her real family. I never dreamed I’d reunite with her, certainly not in a morgue.
“Did the police say what happened?” I ask, and I hear Millie breathe in sharply.
“She had been found in an alley. They said it looked like she had been homeless for a while and that it was a drug overdose. She was wearing an ID bracelet from Saint Joseph’s psych ward. It was dated back six months.” Her voice trails off and we’re silent for a while. I know the normal and typical thing would be to grab for the Kleenex. To get upset. To yell and to cry. I can’t do any of it. The only thing I grab is the wine. I don’t feel a fucking thing. Standing there with the phone pressing into my ear, listening to Millie sobbing on the other end makes me uncomfortable. Makes me feel indecent and hollow.
“I guess I’ll pick you up at six,” she says because there is nothing else to say. “Our flight back home is a red eye Friday so make sure you have enough packed.”
“Jerry’s gonna be pissed,” I say and immediately regret it.
“Well I guess he’s gonna have to run the fucking office without you.”
“Calm down, Mills,” I answer.
“Well, what the fuck, Den? I just told you our mother is dead! Overdosed! Homeless! Gutter! You’re acting like it’s nothing.” Fury sounds in her voice, but it changes nothing. I can tell by her tone that she’s judging me. That for the moment she has decided I’m a horrible human being, maybe she’s right.
“We haven’t seen her in over a decade,” I remind her.
“I can’t do this right now. Just be ready to go when I get there.” She hangs up before I can say anything else.
I unplug the phone. I need to be disconnected. I need to find that peaceful solitude I had right before the phone rang, but it’s nowhere to be found.
My mother is dead.
My mother is dead.
I repeat it over and over, hoping the words will sink in and evoke some emotion in me but it doesn’t. The longer I go without crying the less human I feel.
