Photo by Ahmed Zayad on Unsplash
When Don woke up, it was raining. The water that he ran in the tub sounded like rain chortling out of a storm pipe. The water that streamed from the kitchen faucet for his tea beat into the kettle like rain on a wheelbarrow left out in the yard. Rain. Rain. Rain. It had rained for months.
Don’s mother had died at 10:05 a.m. on the same morning that Don worked his last day. He was looking forward to retirement, and one thing he would do more was spend time with his mother—playing Scrabble, going out for hamburgers for lunch, driving her past her old house where prolific flowers signaled the change of seasons.
At 10:06 on the day she died, the rain started. He had kissed her on the forehead as she lay quiet in her hospital bed, checked to see if she was safe, and slipped out of the room to live the rest of his life without her.
Claire had managed the funeral and service arrangements which were beautiful. On the day Mom was buried, the sun came out for a couple hours—just enough time for Mom’s ten children to say their prayers and lay red roses on her casket. When the casket was lowed into the ground and the earth filled in her vacancy, the grounds men laid the large spray of red roses over the dirt.
Then the rain began again. It rained while they cleaned out Mom’s room at the assisted living home. Maddy took all their mother’s clothes home in garbage bags. A few weeks later, she knocked on Don’s door and handed him a teddy bear. The bear was blue and green and peach and red, made from pieces of Mom’s shirts, pants, and dresses. It looked both happy and sad as Don sat it on the couch in his living room.
Soon, the group texts began. Don shared memories of his mother with his nine siblings every day. Old memories. Vague memories. Disputed memories. Sunny memories. Rainy memories.
Some people in the text posted pictures of what they made for breakfast. Don posted pictures of his new seedlings and old pumpkins. He talked about his clocks inherited from Mom and Dad. Claire posted perfect plates of salmon dinners. Rita identified the birds that Maddy found in her garden by looking them up in her bird bible. Beatrice posted old photos of Mom from her twenties when she was thin, before she had ten children.
The siblings discovered each other again. Most of them had moved out of town since their childhood, and their communication had been through Mom for the most part. Through their texts, they found out that Don had the best green thumb, Claire grew flowers but not vegetables, Rita was a bird and owl watcher, Maddie loved wine and dessert most of all, Beatrice was just starting a walking routine, Minnie continuously created new jam recipes, Jim was the handyman at his job, Carol had learned how to play guitar, Ron still told the best jokes, and Geo wrote poetry in his spare time.
The texts started usually around 7 a.m. in the morning and lasted until the last sibling drifted off to bed. Good mornings. Breakfast recipes. Descriptions of walks. Flower postings. Loaves of bread. Jars of jam. Bowls of soup. Directions to parks. Comments on the news. Revelations about hobbies. Progress on quilts, puzzles, and charity projects. Movie recommendations and dinner plans. All these subjects and pictures streamed between the ten children that Mom left behind.
A few months later, the rain stopped. The sun came out like a herald of good news, and Don woke up to the birds chirping outside his bedroom window.
When he wandered out into his living room, he saw his colorful teddy bear leaning over on its side and bent down to sit it upright, and, as he did, the sun blazed through the window and lit up the bear in a shaft of light.
“Let’s go visit Mom, today,” Don said to his bear. “The sun is out and I know she’ll be happy to see us.”
Half an hour later, after an oatmeal breakfast and coffee with chocolate, Don put the bear in the passenger seat of his blue truck, and drove to the cemetery.
When he got there, the sun streamed like yellow curtains through the oak trees whose branches spread over the graves like kind arms. The green grass, which covered the shallow hills and valleys, glistened with diamonds of left-over rain.
Don drove his truck onto the center road and stopped it in front of his parents’ graves. There they were—lying side by side like happy campers in sleeping bags. Their gravestone rose from the top of their plots like a crown, and Don noticed that one of his siblings had stuck some colorful plastic flowers into the metal vase in front of the headstone.
Don knelt down in the middle of his two parent’s plots, reached out, and placed his teddy bear on his mother’s side of the stone near the flowers.
He paused for a few minutes, furrowed his brow, then recited the Hail Mary prayer, and his words wafted through the cemetery like a low whisper. When he finished praying, he looked up at his teddy sitting quietly.
“You can’t stay here,” he said. “We’re just visiting. You and I have to go home and live some more.”
Don looked at the words of his mother’s name on the head stone and the dates of her birth and death. 92 years long. Somehow, not long enough.
“Thank you for giving me life, Mom,” Don said, placing his hand on his heart gently.
He reached over, lifted his teddy bear from the ledge beside the plastic flowers, and held the bear against his bent frame.
“I’m always here, Mom, for you, just as you were always here for me.” Then Don slowly stood up from the ground, brushed the wet grass off his jeans, and walked back to his truck.
When he got into his seat, he checked his phone to see if any of his siblings had posted another message. A few rain drops fell onto the windshield as he drove away.
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