Coming home

Its one of those mornings where my body wakes up about 2 minutes before my head. I am laying there with my eyes closed and I know that I must be conscious, I can just about feel the bed underneath me. I am the perfect temperature like you always are in the morning. Somehow throughout the night I am always too hot or too cold but that first breath that I take in consciousness is the only moment all day that I will feel comfortable. Perhaps it is also because it is the only moment all day where I have any chance of knowing what will happen next.

I have always been this way; I like to know what is coming. My morning routine may take an additional 60 minutes as I hallucinate my day from start to finish. I imagine who I might meet and what they might say, or what they shouldn’t say, or how I might respond. I am my best self in my imagination. I never interrupt, when in life I am not convinced I have ever let someone finish their sentence. I never lie, when in life I lie likely more often than I am honest. I think much of this is quite standard. I imagine every morning all the people who I have hallucinated have also hallucinated me. I wonder if their hallucinations of me are accurate.

In fact, even now I have spent 20 minutes reflecting on how accurate or inaccurate my hallucinations are, that I have yet to get to them for the day. I have been waking up like this every day since mum passed. It’s all to do with the body. I know it might sound quite superstitious, but my family has always believed that a body should never enter a home.

We believe that homes are a place for the living. When a dead body enters it sucks the life from your space. The living people of the home begin to occupy a liminal space between dead and alive. You see it sometimes, when you come across a grieving family member; their eyes are sunken and grey and don’t so much as twitch when they smile.  It is worse for the dead, unimaginably so. They become stuck, unable to reach the afterlife.

When mum first died none of this had occurred to me. There is an organised procedure for when someone dies. It was so taken care of that I forgot there was a stage when there wouldn’t be experts around. It isn’t so dissimilar from when someone gives birth to a child. You labour both mentally and physically over the delivery of the baby. How will you get to the hospital, who do you want to deliver the baby, do you want an epidural? All these decisions are so procedural that they distract you from the fact that once all the messy bits are finished you need to bring the baby home. You and the baby suddenly feel like awkward strangers, neither of you knowing a thing about each other.

The same is true of a corpse. The ambulance arrived and they all were very busy and thorough. They had clipped sentences and stern faces and they carted mum away. And I sort of thought that should be the tricky bit. There were a few decisions which I had to make along the way. Nothing quite prepares you, trust me I tried that morning, for the darkly comedic moment when a receptionist asks you to pick out the font to engrave on the urn. She wasn’t a very efficient typist, and her system is quite slow, so she and I were both smiling at each other politely. Then at a certain point her manicured hands slipped me the box and then dismissed me. It dawned on me, it was just mum and I now. No longer any experts to guide me. I felt she was a total stranger; we no longer had anything in common. A putrid aroma was wafting from the box; it reminded me of the sanitary smell in a new classroom. Almost comforting but the unfamiliarity smothers it. I quickly shuffled outside, hoping that the air outside would muffle it.

Then I was lost. I stood in the middle of the street staring at my silver SUV parallel parked directly across from the funeral centre. I had been excited about the spot when I arrived, forgetting almost entirely that I was there to retrieve my mum. Now all the worries were catching up to me. I started to wonder, what even is a home? I cannot bring my mum into my home because she might get trapped, but how did she not get trapped at the crematorium? And what about my car? Some people’s cars are their homes. And my car at times has been the closest thing to a home for me.

So can mum come in my car? And how wont she become stuck in the car. If I can’t bring her home tonight, then where am I meant to keep her. Would it not be rude to leave mum in the car for the night. While we don’t have much in common anymore, we were once quite close, and I think it would be a disservice to our ongoing relationship to leave her ashes outside all night. My appointment for her burial was not for another week. She needed a place to stay until then.  

Ultimately, I decided that I might be able to put her in the shed. Nobody has ever thought of their shed as their home. Mum should be safe there I would think. I carefully cleared all the spiders before I moved her in. She used to hate spiders; she always insisted that I squish them when I prefer to place them gently in a glass and bring them outside. I placed her on a clean shelf and brought out a blanket from inside in case her box gets cold. I am not sure if she still is attached to her ashes in a way where her box getting cold would irritate her, but it seemed the thing to do since I was making her stay in the shed.

I wake up again groggy and confused. As I am stretching for the day, I wonder if it might be considerate to go out to the shed and open her box for 10 minutes, so that mum might stretch as well. I can’t imagine that the box is so comfortable. I bought the nicest box they had but they don’t give many options as far as comfort, only aesthetic. Mum can’t even appreciate the aesthetic as she is stuck in that box, but I thought perhaps she might like the thought. I wander out to the shed in my pyjamas and open the box a little and notice that she is in a plastic bag inside. I open the bag a small fraction as well to let her breathe and there she is.

She isn’t all one smooth powder; she has all these little imperfections. Fragments of bone or teeth. She would hate that. Every morning she woke up to straighten her hair, then curl her hair so that her curls were more perfect. She would apply just enough makeup that people would assume her face always looked smooth and her eyes always accentuated.

I sit with her while I let her breathe a little so that she can have some company. I think tomorrow I will bring her out a coffee or something; she cannot drink it, but I imagine that the steam and smell might stick to her powder in a cozy way. And maybe I will bring a blanket out here for myself so that I can sit with her for more of the morning. I want to try to get to know her more in her new form. I have always known myself as fiercely loyal. I have stayed around for many people who didn’t deserve it. Mum deserves it, I can’t imagine this transition is easy for her.

The morning is finished quicker than I would wish and with all the fussing over mum, making sure she is comfortable before I leave for work, I forgot to rehearse my day. I notice this when I first arrive in to work and Tom asks me how I am doing. I logically know he is asking because of mum, but I didn’t think about how I might answer. Because I think he will expect that I am not okay, but I am happy. Things are awkward with mum, but this morning really brought us much closer. But people don’t like to hear you are okay after someone dies. It makes them worry more than if you say you are terrible. Because if I think I am okay then something must be wrong.

This thought sits with me all day, in fact. I am okay. But maybe that means I should be worried too. I speed on the way home to get to mum, being away from her has been too much today. Her box must be feeling quite cramped because when I take her out to breathe a bit some of her dust rushes out the top of the bag. I imagine her sighing the way she used to, a bright high-pitched crescendo.

We are having such a nice evening together that I don’t even notice falling asleep. I must have been very exhausted because I slept through my first morning alarm and woke up again groggy. I left mum out of her box all night and feel incredibly guilty; she probably got very poor sleep. Her plastic bag is very cold when I pick her up and my stomach drops. I run inside and grab a space heater and more blankets for her to help her warmup. I also bring her out a small mug of coffee, unsweetened and black how she always preferred it. I wonder now if she liked coffee black or just didn’t want the sugar. Perhaps tomorrow I will add some sugar since corpses don’t have to worry about things like this.

I decide I should stay home today since I am worried about mum and don’t want her to be alone after last night. I haul a few more blankets and a bean bag chair out to the shed along with my laptop. Mum and I can watch a show together. She loves reality TV; she always told me how beautiful people are broken inside. This confused me because I always thought mum was so beautiful. The show we are watching is dull and I am not interested but I feel like I can sense mum relaxing a bit into our routine. She seems much more at ease than she was this morning. At lunch time I stand up to grab a sandwich from the kitchen and perhaps spend a bit of time tidying up. The air shifts and a silence trickles down my throat and fills my belly.

I can tell mum is upset that I am going inside, but I don’t know how to comfort her.

‘Its okay mum. I will be back in just a short while with some tea and biscuits’

The air remains still and that same putrid smell starts to waft from her box.

‘How about I go inside and grab us both some lunch and come back to join you?’

The smell creeps away leaving only the faintest whiff behind.

I make sure I am gone only five minutes and decide I should certainly remain with her for one more day at least while she settles in and gets used to everything.

I wake up earlier than normal and start my day. The air has a droopy chill. This morning I go inside to make instant coffee; cleaning the machine would leave mum alone too long. When I get out to her, I can tell she is already upset.

I think she can smell the instant coffee. In life she would never drink it. I added sugar to make up for it, but this angers her more because she thinks I don’t know her. But I don’t! Not anymore. What does a ghost want?

She clearly has no respect for the effort I have been putting in for her. The past 2 nights I have slept in the cold shed to keep her company. Every day I bring her things. I am missing work for God’s sake.

In a small huff I stand up. The air shrinks around me and the chill drops away. Mum wants me to stay, she feels bad we are fighting and wants to make things right. She will enjoy the instant coffee, maybe she likes it now that she is dead. Normally this would be enough, but it all seems a bit much right now. If I tell her I am still upset, she will fall apart so I decide to tell her I need to go tidy up inside since the house is getting a bit musty in my absence. This starts another fight. I knew this was coming. She thinks it’s ridiculous she can’t come inside. She doesn’t get it. In life she would have agreed with me, and this is how I know she has changed.

In a huff I storm out and head inside. I make myself a real pot of coffee because I hate instant too.

As I sip my coffee it dawns on me that mum will be buried in only a few days. If we fight like this now, I may never have the chance again to spend this time with her.

I trudge my way back out to the shed. I can hear her crying. I have been so insensitive. Of course she is emotional, she died.

I put on her reality show, and we sit in silence for a while. Eventually I apologise, she deserves it and I truly am sorry. I was so rash before. She is still upset but she forgives me, she knows this is just as confusing for me.  

Despite our differences, days pass easily in the shed with mum. I tell mum all about my job. It’s funny because she never used to care about what I do, now she wants to know all about it. She is such a good listener now and I think maybe this change was really good for us. She is telling me about her days now but to be honest I don’t retain much of it at all. I sleep in the shed every night with her. It is not the most comfortable, but the blankets keep me warm and she likes the sound of my snoring.

A bright light is in my eyes and mum is screaming. I don’t know if I should be calming her down or if I should be calming myself. I blink rapidly but I can’t process, my mind is groggier than ever, and I can’t make sense of anything just yet. The voices seep in slowly and I understand the light is a police officer. He begins to haul me from the chair.

‘Stop! Please. Please stop. You are stressing out mum. I will follow you. Please’ I am keeping my voice as level as possible so as not to irritate the officer. I reach for mum on the shelf, I can’t leave her in the shed alone and I know the officer won’t think to help her up. Her box was ajar last night because she isn’t so bothered by the cold with the space heater on. As my fingers wrap around the back of the box the officer pulls me, mum tumbles and makes a terrible groan. She grabs for me with her gritty form but it is no use, most of her is on the floor. Some of her is sticking to me as she tries to keep me in the shed with her, but the officer is too strong and he pulls me away.

I scream and twist away from him. I drop to mum and begin to scoop her back into her back. She is crying and I am crying and the officer is behind me rubbing my back. Once mum is mostly in her bag, I follow the officer outside.

 I can hear Tom whispering to another officer. He is a terrible whisperer.

‘His mum passed away a few weeks back. I’ve come around with breakfast because he didn’t make it into work at all this week and we were all a bit worried.’

‘you’ve done the right thing. It seems he has been sleeping out here.’

The daylight is blinding. I curl onto the grass to get away from the sun. Tom comes to sit next to me, and I am cradling mum in my lap. Mum is crying and so am I. She is telling me that I need to calm down and think rationally. She thinks the officer may send me away if I don’t get myself together. I haven’t had any time to rehearse this moment, and my mind is still so groggy I can’t think straight. Who could have seen any of this coming today. I spit out the first thing I can think to say.

‘I didn’t want to bring her into my home.’

Tom glances over at the shed.

‘It looks like you have.’