I stared back at her, confused but resolute.
“Kat and me, we’ve got a home, why don’t you came and live there with us, it’s bigger, there’s more room, you could –”
Sarah shook her head sadly.
“No, Frankie, Joe’s everywhere here, all his things, the feel of him, I can’t leave here and lose the last part of him, please don’t ask me to do that!”
I nodded, understanding completely; it seemed to me that all this family ever did was say goodbye to its loved ones, I couldn’t ask her to do that now, not again.
“Kat and me, we’ll stay on in the house; it’s her home, it’s where dad is for her, she won’t leave, I guarantee you, and I’ll be there to look after her. She’ll be fine, don’t worry about her. Where’s mom now?”
Sarah swiped the back of her hand across her eyes.
“Mom’s waiting at home for you. Please don’t make this difficult for her, she doesn’t want all that crying and sobbing around her. She’s going to need your help, and Kat’s too, be the man of the family, that’s what you are, Frankie, so please, take care of business, promise me?”
I promised her, fighting back tears. I was frightened; I didn’t know how to be the man of the family, I’d never needed to; mom was strong, and I relied on her to tell me what was what, what was I going to do when she was gone? I didn’t know how to bring up Kat; she may have been nearly eighteen, but she was still the youngest, barely out of childhood, there was so much more she need to learn from mom, how was I going to show her what to do and who to be?
I had to get out of there, just for a few minutes; I had to think, I had to work out what I was going to do next. Kat’s graduation was just a couple of months away, but mom wasn’t going to be there for it, how was she going to face graduation when all the most important people in her life would be missing? Only Kat and I would be there for her, no other family, just gaps in the photograph that would tear at her forever. And what about college? I know Kat had applied to State U, and a couple of colleges in the south-west, but would she even want to go to college now? I didn’t want to be her parent, I wasn’t ready, I wasn’t even three years older than her, still just a kid myself.
I left Sally waiting for Kat to come round, took my keys and just drove around the block aimlessly, letting my autopilot do the driving while I tried to come to terms with what was going on in my family, the loss of yet another loved one, and the loneliness to come. Kat was going to be a mess, I knew that; she’d just barely gotten over dad, after a long, long journey back from her despair, and now she had to do it again; I was frightened for her; could she do this again, could she take that kind of battering again and level-off one more time? I doubted it, and I despaired over what would happen to her. Mom had made me her protector, fate had made me her father-figure, and now life was taking mom from her just when she needed her most. I couldn’t be her mom as well; I could barely function as an adult myself, and the future loomed black and frightening.
I found myself back at Sarah’s door, no wiser, no less frightened, and wishing this day had never started; somehow I had to go home, somehow I had to face mom, I just didn’t know how, nor did I want to, I just wanted to run and hide, and make it all go away, make it not be true.
When I went back inside, Kat was awake, sobbing against Sarah, who was in almost as bad a state. As soon as she saw me, Kat tore herself away from Sarah and flew into my arms, locking her arms around my neck while a storm of sobs wracked her. I put my arms around her to steady her, and she pulled herself even tighter, her face buried in the hollow of my neck and shoulder. I comforted her, but I couldn’t, not when I wanted to cry as hard as she was right now; I wanted my mom, I wanted her to be well, I wanted her to be there when I graduated, when I married, when my first baby was born, I wanted her to be there forever. But it wasn’t going to happen.
Somehow, I managed to calm her down and convince her to come home with me; we needed to see mom, there were things I know mom wanted to say, things we needed to hear, and right now, every minute with mom was going to be a precious thing, a memory to take with us when she was gone.
Mom was waiting silently for us; her face tense and worried, perhaps thinking the same thing about Kat that I had; how was she going to handle this new hammer-blow?
Kat surprised me by being calm, rational even, but i could see what it was costing her, the tension in her as she fought not to collapse. I always knew she had inner strength, that day was when it started to assert itself, the day she learned of our mother’s death sentence.
Mom was surprisingly calm and resigned; she’d known for a long time, but had chosen to hide it from us, hoping that it would progress slowly enough that we’d be safely ensconced in college, our career’s mapping out before us, before she had to go. But it had quickened its pace, and she had run out of time.
I don’t know where I got the strength to sit there as she calmly told us about the arrangements she’d made, the provisions she’d made for Kat, and for me, where she wanted to be buried, every last detail taken care of.
The days fled by, mom gradually weakening as the disease took its final toll on her, Kat and I constantly by her bedside, until it was time for her to move to the hospital in Roseville. She didn’t want to die at home, she wanted us to remember her living there, not dying here, and so elected to spend her last days in hospital. Her doctors agreed, she could receive better care there than we could give, and it was what she wanted. Kat and I were at her bedside that last terrible day, Sarah in the corridor outside, her strength finally abandoning her; she’d made her last goodbye and fled the room, her soft sobs just audible through the closed door.
At the end, mom went silently, slipping away so gently I didn’t even realise she’d gone, Kat’s sudden intake of breath, and then her sob as mom passed away suddenly alerting me that she was gone. Kat crept into the shelter of my arm as I cried with her, Sarah suddenly there too, all three of us and little Joey now all we had in the world, all our parents and loved ones gone long before their time.
The arrangements mom had made included her funeral, and a Wake to follow. There were a lot of mourners; mom had been well-known and well liked in the community, and her friends gave good and heartfelt tributes. Kat sat through it all like a ghost, pale, drawn, silent and uncommunicative, Sarah no better, and it fell to me, as “the man of the house” to make sure the mourners were properly thanked, that all condolences were properly and graciously accepted, and that all the little bequests and tokens of friendship and remembrance she’d set aside for her friends were properly distributed.
The Wake afterwards back at our house was pretty much as we’d expected; there were no feuding relatives to get drunk and fight, no distant relatives to sing songs and tell us of the old days, no elderly aunts to sit and discuss past Wake’s and family necrology, no boozy uncles to drink Guinness and give long, rambling toasts before starting fights with their sons; the only family Kat had was here, and it was only strangers, friends, for the most part, but strangers nevertheless, to hold the wake with us.
It was a solemn, almost morbid affair, no-one prepared to introduce even the slightest note of jollity, which, after all, was the whole point of the Wake; to celebrate the deceased, and toast their passing, American mid-West Protestantism at a loss when it came to Irish Catholic ritual, so retreating into stiff, solemn politeness. After a decent interval, with all the food eaten and the obligatory drink to toast mom, people began drifting away, and the last of her life and presence here went with them. Some of my friends from college helped me clear up, and then left with toasts of “Air Do Shlainte!” to the girls and me.
After the trauma of the funeral and the interment, there was nothing to do but get back to our lives. Mom had left all of us a substantial amount of money in the form of her various life insurance policies, plus Kat had her own money from dad’s insurance, easily enough to pay all her college fees, so bills and suchlike were not a problem. But I was worried about Kat; she’d been silent and calm the whole time since mom had died, eerily so, almost like she’d detached herself from her emotions, but now she seemed to come alive again, her expression returning from the dull-eyed, haunted look that she’d worn since that day in the hospital to something like her normal self again, almost like she’d flipped a switch inside and turned-off all the sadness and loss.
I didn’t know if it was a good thing, but it was certainly better than the ghost I’d been living with for the past couple of weeks. She began talking and socialising with me almost immediately, unlike the silent recluse she’d become after dad’s death, and one evening I even found her stretched out on my bed, dressed in just a long baggy tee-shirt and panties, with a huge bowl of potato chips, watching a rerun of ‘Saturday Night Live’ and smiling at the gags and snappy one-liners.
My own grief had been mitigated and pushed back down to some extent by my worries about her, but now I began to breathe a little easier; somehow, she’d found a way to get past it, and now she seemed to be on her way back. She’d even remembered to thank me with a little kiss on top of my head for the gift I’d given her for her 18th birthday that had come and gone without us even marking it, coming as it did in the middle of everything else that was happening around us.
I’d given her a voucher for her to buy her prom dress, hoping to get her back out there with her friends and peer-group, and get back into school life and get excited about the promise of a new adventure in college.