Tomorrow

Yes, tomorrow I return to the family home. Where I grew up. The place my parents bought for 64K when I was eight. The place with the diving board and endless lawns. The place where my mom died with her mouth stretched open and dry after days of rattling her way down cancers death. The house is for sale, in escrow, actually---and I'm conflicted.

My Mom died 10 months ago--my brothers and I rolled her into the December mornings fog atop a cold metal gurney. Mom lay in a red naugahyde and zippered bag lined in red fleece. I didn't understand the bag, beyond its intention of covering and taking away my mom. Red was surprising. Red was hot and bloody and flush and pulsing. Nothing standing or lying there that morning was any of those things. She was twig thin and brittle. She threatened to snap. She was dead.

The house has sat empty and haunts me, both as something I long to keep and simultaneously imagine burning down into low columns of black ashed two by fours. Cremating her home and all the things filling it, refrigerator magnets and all.

Tomorrow, I pile into moms car, the blue Acura my father bought her in 1998 as a birthday gift. Dad died 12 months later, mom kept the car, held it as a testament to him and their bizarre love. She wanted me to have it. Smells like mom, like peanuts, mint lifesavers and leather.