Member-only story
The Long Goodbye
Everything fades. Everything crumbles. Everything dies.
The light bar on the police car parked in front of our house was still flashing, as I pulled up in my airport rental car wondering what on earth had happened now. Leaving my luggage and rushing inside, I found two police officers taking a statement from my disheveled mother. One gently took me aside to fill me in.
This is the home that I grew up in, belonging first to my grandparents and now to my mother. It would be mine one day too, if there were anything left of it, once my mother passed on. I loved this house and everything it represented about my childhood, so it saddened me to see it fade and crumble, much like my aging mother within it.
I was living and working far away from there now, so I spent all my holidays in my old hometown, trying to shore up the house and help my aging mom as best I could during my visits. I had enlisted the services of a semi-retired couple across the street to help us as much as possible. However, both my childhood home and my mother were in escalating decline, frustrating my best efforts to keep everything the same as it had always been.
It’s only 8:30 pm, but once the police leave I tromp upstairs, shove aside the class of ’84 decorative pillow and fall into the canopy bed I slept in when I was in high school…
