Prompt #9

First, it is cool. Much cooler even just a few feet lower than ground level. It smells of damp dirt, rich soil, cut grass, but all intensified—the way the clean earth smell rises after rain has come and gone. It smells of relaxation and release. And that is fitting. I am in a graveyard, after all. And I am here to rest.

But before I explain myself to you, why I am lying in a cemetery, a plot, to be precise—you, who are presently furrowing your brows and wondering what good can come of graveyard wishes and really as adults haven’t we moved past the self-satisfying death scenes? (And I assure you, I am alive and well and happy for it)—I should first explain, well, me….or the Me of 2014:

I wade through toys and diapers and sticky juice puddles. I wear my workout clothes all day, for three days, before I find a minute to climb into the shower. I am the constant referee of physical and vocal showdowns. I no longer own a shirt without paint, puke, or grease stains. I have heard the word “mom” in every possible tone and volume, and more often in a never-ending loop of atonal cacophonies. I wake every morning to the imperial demand for breakfast; and I fall into bed every night just as my newborn wakes up and demands her midnight snack. I cannot finish a load of laundry without distraction. I cannot finish a sentence of a book without interruption. I cannot finish a thought in my own head with disruption. The Me of 2014 cannot remember what it was like to not be bone-tired; to have a home I wasn’t embarrassed about; to have moments of peace and relaxation; to remember that I’m actually a living entity with a singular consciousness; to take a single breath unfettered; to not be drowning.   

And so I run here, to lie next to my mother’s bones. To be with her. Not to die. Just to have silence; just to lie here, in the cool ground, the smell of good earth around me. To look up and see white wisps of cirrus moving across dusty blue Californian skies. To breathe in and out. Again. Again. To hear nothing but my breathing; to close my eyes and hear my own thoughts. And then, okay, yes, indulge me here, my tolerant audience, to sigh and ask how.

“How?” I say. “How can I do it?”

And to hear a sigh next to me. “Mm.” Her bones cloak themselves in the living image of my mother—not small and sunken as she was that final year. But plump and warm, as she was before I left home for school. And she nods. “Yes, that is a fine question, isn’t it?”

And I keep looking at the sky, keep reveling in my breaths, and in the silence. “I don’t think…” my voice trembles, “I don’t know if I can. Or if I want to. There isn’t enough of you left inside.” I close my eyes against the shame of this.

“You didn’t know me at thirty,” is all she says.

We lay here together, watching clouds and the shadows of trees as the evening breeze moves through them. We savor our silence. I breathe deeply.

“I got lost.”

She turns to watch me. “We all do, I think.”

“I still need you.”

She rolls onto her side, puts her warm hand on my cheek. She looks at me wistfully, allowing herself this one small moment of maternal selfishness. And then she grins, with her crow’s feet and the crinkle on the bridge of her nose.

“You’re cheating, you know? Only a part of me is on the planet right now. If you want to ask a mother how it’s done, go see your sister.”