Mother's Funeral

[WARNING: CONTAINS BODY SHAMING, ABUSE, BRIEF MENTIONS OF HOMOPHOBIA, AND DEAD MOM'S]

{Please enjoy! :) }

'Mother’s funeral was yesterday, and I missed it. Does that make me a bad daughter? I think that that’s true. I am a bad daughter. No matter how many times Mother would smile in front of guests, then yell at me from close doors, I was the bad daughter. No matter how many times I made dinner for her, for her to take it to neighbors houses and say she’d done it herself, or worse, call it a horror in her mouth to my face. I was the bad daughter. No matter how many times Mother said she’d rather have no daughter than a fat daughter, I was the bad daughter.

I still have a sweet image of her in my head, despite all of that. It’s the one she showed to guests. To everyone outside she must have looked like the perfect mother figure, and I guess I just want to believe that.'

Mindi sat on a bench, right outside the train station. She was writing in her diary with her gifted knapsack hanging from the bench. She fiddled with her new ring as she thought back. She was twenty three years old of a month ago, and now living in Colorado. She’d come down to her childhood home in the countryside of Oklahoma for her Mother’s funeral. Except she had missed it. On purpose. Mindi knew all of her estranged aunts and uncles would be there, and she couldn’t stand the thought of seeing them again.

Beside’s, they’d all want an explanation for where she had gone the last five years.

The day right after Mindi had her eighteenth birthday party that her Mother had planned entirely out, from what they were doing, (clothes shopping, which she hated) to what of the little food she could eat all of the day, she had gotten a ticket to the nearest train station. That night, she rode the train and never looked back. She had forgotten how dry it was here.

“Well,” she said aloud to herself and the cows in the distance,” at least the dirts pretty.” She tried to feel some sort of comfort of being back in her familiar little town. All she could feel though was bittersweet uneasiness in her stomach. And some sort of survival instinct to get as far away from there as possible.

She grabbed her diary and placed it into her knapsack and started heading towards the cemetery.

‘She wasn’t all that bad,’ she thought to herself. She could see her sweet smile, but it was tainted. Tainted with lies. It was the posiones kind of sweet. She could see that now. She wished she could go back in time and tell her younger self not to listen to Mother. To love herself no matter what she looked like, or what impossible thing she couldn’t achieve. Still, Mother had loved her, right?

She shook her head, ’Today’s a day to mourn. I need to just say goodbye one last time.’

Still her mind lingered back.

Mindi knew the route to the cemetery by heart. That was where her and her friends would hang out. Most people found it creepy, but she liked the quietness of it, and was intrigued by the names long forgotten in the headstones. The best part though, there were no judging eyes around. Why then was she so jumpy? Maybe it was because they’d be a name she’d in the graves that she knew personally.

As Mindi walked closer and closer to the cemetery, her phone rang in her knapsack. She picked it up and answered the call. It was from her fiance, Rae. Rae had offered to go on this trip with her, but Mindi had asked if she could go it alone. Since Mindi didn’t believe she would run into anyone she had known, she kind of wanted to be by herself. She wasn’t religious, but it almost felt spiritual, in an odd sort of way.

They had gone back and forth on the idea. Rae didn’t want Mindi to feel like she had to mourn alone. It all came apart a day before though, since Rae got sick. They decided that they would call every hour or so to check in on each other. Mindi didn’t have much to say, since Rae already knew her complicated feelings for her mom, so they chatted a little more about how Rae was doing.

Mindi made a mistake. She hadn’t looked up as she had walked. She hadn’t seen her Aunt’s family in the middle of the cemetery.

Helen held her nine year old’s hand as they walked to her dear sisters grave. It had been a tragic accident on the road, and the loss had hit her hard. Her oldest son, Johnny, who was twenty one years old couldn’t get out of work to come to the funeral yesterday, so she took it upon herself to come again today with him. She had loved her older sister very much. She had taught her everything she knew, and was the best example around. Her sister had kept her on the straight and narrow path. Sure she had been a little rough around the edges, but Helen had loved her sister's tough love.

As Helen grazed over to her sister’s grave, she’d almost passed out when she saw the spitting image of her walking around.

Mindi was walking, still on the phone, when she stopped in fear. A voice rang out that she could recognize anywhere.

“By the heavens above, is that you Mindi?!” Aunt Helen’s voice was loud and over barring.

“Who’s that?” Rae from the phone sounded just as startled as Mindi felt.

Mindi’s tongue stumbled round as she tried to recover from the whiplash of her past shoved in her face. “That’s my Aunt,” she nearly whispered.

“But I thought you said the funeral was yesterday?!” Rae's voice was drenched in worry.

Aunt Helen was far away, but approaching startlingly fast.

“It- it was! I don’t know what to do! Oh gosh- she’s walking over here.” Her whispers were fast and harsher than she wanted them to sound, trying to be quiet enough where Helen couldn’t hear.

“It’s going to be okay babe! Can you get away from her?”

Aunt Helen was maybe a school bus away from her.

“I don’t think I can! I can’t get away, I have no car! I’ll have to talk to her,” Mindi’s breathing got faster. All of the weight she could physically feel how much weight she had gained in the last five years.

“Just try some small talk. Then you can get away by saying-, I don’t know, that this is your mourning time! Oh-! I could call you in a minute to give you an excuse to walk away!”

Ten feet away.

“I think I’ll… I think I’ll do the small talk. Just don’t call me back or she’ll have endless questions, she’s homophobic. And- Oh she’s almost here! Iloveyoubye!”

Rae tried to shoot out one last encouraging sentence, but Mindi hung up before she could. It was a good thing too, because Aunt Helen was right up in her face, mouth moving to ask her first question.

“What ever happened to you?! One night you were here, and the next you were gone! You made your Mother cry every night!”

Mindi was not prepared for that kind of question, so she went with the best thing her mind could think of.

“I moved to Colorado.” She blurted out.

Aunt Helen just stared at her with unreadable eyes etched deep into her puffy face. Her eyes were swollen by tears.

“Well,” she scoffed,” you’ve gained weight.” The air around Mindi grew heavy. “And you missed your own Mother’s funeral.” The air felt like lead as it sank down on her. Tears blossomed from her eyes as she shrank within herself. She looked up, pleading she would see empathy or pity in her Aunt’s eyes, but she saw something worse. The judgemental eyes she’d spent years of her life running away from. It was too much for her, and the truth came flowing out.

“I couldn’t bring myself to come yesterday! I just- I just couldn’t. I couldn’t stand a moment more with her! I had to leave. She… She was killing me.”

Aunt Helen looked appalled. “She was the best woman you could find anywhere,” she emphasized the last word,” in the Country, and you dare say that!?”

Mindi rebuttal. “She called me fat all of the time! I couldn’t eat around her without her calling me ugly! She yelled- Oh she yelled constantly! I can’t even remember the last time she had said that she loved me!”

Her words echoed throughout the cemetery, but all Mindi could do was sob.

Aunt Helen leaned in close to her ear and whispered while shaking. “She loved you, even if you were a spoiled BRAT! She never once yelled at you. I should know, I was there. And to me? To me she was right putting you on all of those diets.”

Mindi sobbed as she begged Aunt Helen to just leave… Her… Alone! She raised her hands up defensively and stormed back, yelling at a little kid who looked remarkably like her to get in their truck. Before she could drive off though, Mindi heard what she loudly said to her husband.

“I can’t believe someone that was as wonderful as my own sister gave birth to such a demon spawn. The day after her funeral too.” She huffed and drove away.

Mindi was shaking as she knelt by her Mother’s grave. How could Aunt Helen just brush her off, and tell her that her distinct memories of her childhood were a lie? Maybe she was a wonderful sister, but as a mother? As a Mother she had made her life a living he||. And when Mindi did try to fix the hole between her and her Mother, the flames only grew hotter.

Still she must have loved her. That had to count for something, right? Mindi searched her mind again and again for anything fully loving Mother had done for her that wasn’t tainted by shame and yelling.

One event popped up in her mind. One month she had fallen into depreasion. She had cocooned herself up during her ninth grade year. She had thrown herself into her studies, and done all of the work and more. The only way she could get herself up out of bed in the morning was because of the knowledge that she had some sort of school work that was due today. Remarkably, that year she had only nice teachers. This all combined, for her winter finales, she had made straight A’s. Not only this, but because she was always working, she would forget to eat most of the time. A few months later, the doctor would tell her that she was approaching dangerously skinny. That month, the day she had finished her finales, her Mother had gifted her a dress.

“You’ve been doing well enough in classes, and now look at you. You’re finally skinny enough for this dress I bought you a while back. Good job.”

That was all Mother had said, but she had never been happier in her life. It was enough to pull her out of her depres!on to be able to maintain friends again. It was the happiest memory she could find of her Mother.

She clinged dearly to the memory. Her Mother hadn’t been as bad as she thought.

“Hey Mindi.”

Mindi snapped her head up to face the person behind her. She gasped. It was Sam, her boyfriend! Well, her Ex. They had dated until she had disappeared. He was never her type, but he had been nice to her. She looked to the right of him. Johnny, one of her many estranged cousins, stood behind him. He had a resting angry face, so she had never really talked to him.

She realised what a messed she must have looked like, and wanted to ask them to leave, but Sam talked first

“Um, I’m not sure how to say this, but I’m going to try. Helen’s wrong.”

Mindi paused for a moment, waiting for him to go on.

“I-I know that we were only dating for the last two months that you were still here, but I just wanted to say, well. What little I saw of your mom, bluntly it was abusive. She was belittling, and when you left… Well, I understood why. I’m sorry for your loss, and I’m also sorry for the way she treated you. I should of done something, but… yeah.”

Johnny stepped up to the front. “Hey, don’t listen to my mom. You probably shouldn’t have said those things the day right after, but what my mom said was nasty. She’s trying to mourn too, but I guess you are too.”

Awkward silence filled in between them, but Mindi was thinking. Maybe she would always have some sort of bruised love for her Mother, but someday she could come to live with the fact that her Mother wasn’t good. Besides, she would have the rest of her life to think about it.

“Thanks,” she said.

“‘Course.” Sam reached out a hand and pulled her up. As he did, her wedding ring scratched his hand.

“Wow, you got married? I guess I really don’t know where you’ve been these past five years.”

“I’m about to, yeah. She’s super nice. I moved to Colorado, got a job, fell in love and I’m happier now.”

“Dang, you really have escaped, haven’t you?” Johnny spoke while folding his arms up. “Me and Sam, we want to kind of do that too I guess.”

Sam held Johnny’s hand and nudged him with his shoulder,” Yep! And we can almost afford it too!”

Mindi chuckled as Johnny playfully rolled his eyes at Sam’s nudge. “I could give you some pointers,” she half jokingly said.

“Oh yeah! That’s be great!”

Mindi, Sam, and Johnny talked for a while more. Mindi wiped at her eyes and mascara came off. She realised she still looked like a mess, but that didn’t stop their kindness.

They exchanged phone numbers and started to walk away when Sam stopped to ask her a question.

“After you left… Did you do it?” His eyes glanced to the ground, searching,” Do you get to live what you said you always dreamed about?”

She looked to his eyes. A smile etched on her face as she knew her answer.

“Yeah. I didn’t even know it could get this good. The one I thought would only ever be a dream… it came true.”

She was sitting on the bench, trying to write again in her diary. Everything felt lighter now, even her knapsack. That wasn’t because of the realizations that had hit her, but because of the flowers she had left on her Mother’s grave. Mother had always loved pretty things.

‘Maybe Mother was the worse. Maybe she never did love me. Maybe she had tried, and still failed. I need to make a promise to myself though. I need to try to let her go. Let go of everything wrong Mother’s did to me. Let go of what she thought of me! I can’t have Mother take up any more of my life. I had her for a good time, and I glad I got to meet her, but… Well, I need to promise to myself not let her hurt me anymore.’

She looked up, fiddling with her ring. What stayed with her the most was what Sam had said. She had done it. She had made it out. She was free, and she had made a better life for herself.

She sat up, looking forward with her head held high. Never again would she let the past weigh her down. She would keep going. Despite, and because of her Mother. And, she felt as if she could keep going. No matter if she was ever a good daughter to her Mother, because she knew who she was. She was Mindi, a person who had escaped, and would forever carve her dreams into her futures.

The End.