Back Home (Part 2 of 2)

The telephone rang, startling me from the couch. It was the call I'd dreaded and expected for weeks.

I walked slowly upstairs to tell the kids. Pulling the comforter tight up to our chins, we talked about the death of their grandmother, what she might be doing her first few minutes in Heaven. After ten minutes or so, Noah, my oldest, turned to me.

"Can we get out the fall stuff and decorate the house now?" he asked. "Please, Mommy? I think it will help make us a little bit happy."

Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, I planted my feet on the floor and trudged down to the basement to find the Rubbermaid container filled with plastic pumpkins and blinking ghost lights. But inside bitterness boiled.

"What? That's all I get?” I fumed to myself. “Ten minutes to grieve? That’s it? And now we decorate the house for fall?"

I understood the boys' need to refocus, to train their attention on plastic jack-o-lanterns and hollow gourds to distract themselves from the sadness. But I felt ripped off. I didn't want to hang a witch on the front door. I didn't want to listen to The Monster Mash blare from the CD player.

I wanted to curl under my grandmother's crocheted afghan, sip Earl Grey tea, and weep.

I walked through the daily routine in a fog of thinly masked grief. I decorated the house with the boys. I made grilled cheese and tomato soup for lunch. I took them out for hamburgers and milkshakes for dinner.

Tucked into a corner booth, I gazed out the window at the strip mall across the parking lot, remembering the afternoon my mother-in-law and I had browsed for savory spreads and sweet jams in the kitchen shop there. The boys chatted about French fries and ketchup. I picked at my burger, my eyes still on the store.

Later that night, after the boys had been soothed to sleep, the phone rang once more.

“I want to tell you everything,” my husband said quietly.

I pulled the afghan from the wicker basket and sank onto the couch, the phone held tightly to my ear.

Read Part One here.

Photo by A Simple Country Girl. Used with permission. Post by Michelle DeRusha.