Click to Subscribe - By L. M. Augustine Page 0,46
it’s seared so deeply into me that it can never leave. I wouldn’t be surprised if that were the case.
When I arrive, I stop, open and close my eyes, and look at it.
Mom’s grave.
It’s small and white marble, still covered by the roses I leave every week when I visit her. It’s peaceful, though—unharmed and content, like I imagine she is now. Slowly, I reach out and touch the inscription.
Rose Mary Ryder
1970 – 2013
Beloved Mother, Wife, and Mega-Badass FIFA Player
May She Rest In Peace
I smile a little at it, one of those sad smiles you get when you’re trying not to cry. Mom was a badass FIFA player, though, and she would always beat Cat and I at it. When she won, she would laugh and do her victory dance which was really just her doing that scooba move over and over again. She always cheated, too, and she had no shame in trying to slide tackle her opponent’s players until they got seriously injured. She was one of those loud, always happy moms who would trash talk me and throw her controller and party when she won, and I’d just roll my eyes and laugh at her. In that far off time before he fell apart, Dad would join in too, and they’d both make fun of me and we’d joke and play, or sometimes Dad went to my side and we both worked as hard as we could to ensure Mom would lose. But she never did.
I sigh a little, and I feel the tears glistening in my eyes. It’s been six goddamn months, and it still hurts each day she isn’t here. I know it’s stupid, but sometimes I find myself staring at the front door and wishing, hoping she’ll be back, like she’s just on a trip, like she’ll return any day now to play more FIFA and to bring the normal Dad back with her and to make everything happy again. She never is, however, and each time I don’t see her face at that door I feel like I’m finding out that she’s really dead for the very first time—over and over again.
I run my finger down the tombstone, then brush the roses I left here with the side of my thumb. The air is thick and smells like an assortment of flowers, and as I breathe it in, I feel something in the pit of my stomach already begin to settle.
Mom’s grave, which is surrounded by foot impressions from my previous visits, is my happy place. It’s the one place where I feel safe, where I feel truly at home, and it’s also all I have left of my mom. It’s where everything changed and everything will, where I’m reminded that she isn’t just on some trip—that she’s dead and gone and there is no coming back.
Then, I can’t take it anymore. Everything from this past week seems to catch up with me at once, and I bury my head in my hands and cry. I let the tears slip from my eyes and down my cheeks. They burn my skin and I don’t even care, because crying, at least, means letting go. Means giving up and then fighting harder for what really matters, for what still can be fixed. I cry for my mom, my dad, for Harper and Cat. I cry because I need to cry, because it feels good to finally let out it all out. To finally face the truth.
And just like that, I long for Cat again. I long for her warm embrace, for her comfort, for her, really, and I don’t even know what I’m doing but the next thing I know my phone is in my hand and I’m calling her.
My tears fall from my nose and splash onto the screen as the phone rings once, twice, three times, and I hold my breath, hoping she’ll pick up, needing her to forgive me just one more time.
There’s a click, and my whole heart seriously flutters.
“Hello?” Cat asks slowly, carefully.
“I need you,” is all I can whisper out.
Chapter 14
Cat comes less than five minutes later. I don’t even need to tell her where I am because she already knows. She gets me like that—inside and out—like I’m that crossword puzzle everyone knows the answer to. She pulls up in front of the cemetery in her red truck, jumps out, and runs over to me. The sun has almost fully set now, and the sky is a mixture