And the last place I could ever look was at Dad. A man who had never shown emotion. A man who routinely told us to “toughen up” as kids, insisting there was nothing in this world worth crying over. A man who didn’t so much as well up when his own father had died just a few months earlier. Because now he was clutching his wife’s hand to his cheek, tears streaming as he whispered I love you’s to her over and over.
If I looked at that, I’d never recover. Hearing it was too much, which was why I kept incessantly rocking. Thankful for the repetitive thumping of the rocker ends hitting the floor, because it meant a couple seconds without hearing his pain.
Andfuck,it was stuffy in the small bedroom with five bodies breathing the same air. Not that any of us were truly breathing—at least,I wasn’t.
“Stop,” Dad croaked in a voice wet with emotion.
That one word was my final straw.
“What the fuck else am I supposed to do? Sit here in fucking silence and wait patiently for my mom to…die?” I shook my head, voice cracking. “She wouldn’t want that. Shedoesn’twant that. For us to just sit in our separate fucking corners and wait in goddamn silence? We should—I don’t fucking know—play some music she loves and talk to each other and maybe just make it feel like she isn’t already dead. Because shefucking isn’t.”
“Son, enough.” Dad shot me a look, and I ran the back of my hand under my snotty nose, seething. “You’re going to make this stressful for her.”
I bit back everything else I wanted to say, rocking the stupid fucking chairharder.
Finally, Austin lifted his head. Placing his hand over mine on the armrest, he said, “No, I think Denny’s right. Some music might be good. Mom loves music.”
Without instruction, Jackson stood and turned on the small stereo on the dresser, hitting play on the classic country CD already inserted. A twangy Hank Williams song filled the room, and Austin cleared his throat.
“Mom hates this song,” he said under his breath.
Jackson skipped to the next one, and within the first few notes, Dad sighed. “Shereallyhates this song, too.”
The third track on the CD started up, and I immediately began laughing uncontrollably. Like a man possessed, I couldn’t help the snorting laughter from bursting out of me. And that sent Jackson into a fit of giggles so hard he couldn’t bring himself to change the song. Austin placed a hand over his mouth, shoulders heaving with silent laughter.
And Dad looked right at Mom, shaking his head and throwing his hands up in the air like he was genuinely pissed off with her. “Why on Earth do you possess a goddamn CD with so many songs you absolutely fucking hate?”
For a solid minute, we were a deranged pack of hyenas, laughing partially because of the situation. Mostly because it felt so much better than crying.
Kate poked her head into the room as the last bit of giggles were leaving our lungs in slow spurts. “Are you guys okay in here?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jackson said in a flustered tone, hitting buttons on the stereo until a slower, melodic classic country song started up. “All good here.”
“Just thought we’d see if we could find a song Mom hated enough to make her wake up and scold us.” I shrugged, glancing over at Mom’s peacefully sleeping face.
Kate cocked her eyebrow. “Okay then. Well, if you need anything…I have lunch made for whenever you’re feeling up to eating.”
She shut the door without another word, and the four of us settled back into our slump. For a while, there were significantly fewer tears. Still no talking, but at least we had music to ease the pain. At least Mom had music to ease the pain.
Then there was Garth Brooks singing “If Tomorrow Never Comes,” and the tears came back with a vengeance when my dad moved to lie next to my mom, moments before she took her final breath.
“Sh-she’s—” He didn’t have to say the words.
My eyes squeezed shut, and hot tears snuck through to fall to my lap with a rattling breath. Nobody moved. Nobody said a word. For so long it felt like maybe time had stopped altogether.
Then Austin stood silently, and I watched him give Mom one last kiss on the cheek before slipping out of the room.
When I sat down next to her, her hand was still warm, and I squeezed it so tight I thought for a second I might break her bones. And when I realized it wouldn’t matter if I did, a choked sob escaped me.
I leaned in close to her, letting my tears soak her cheek, whispering, “I love you, Mom. I love you. So much. I-I can’t do this without you.”
Overcome with a need to get the fuck out of there, I stumbled into the hallway in a daze, feeling like my chest was about to implode, unable to take a full breath. Vision blurred, my fingers skimmed the walls as I waded through waist-deep sand to get to the front door. Stepping onto the front porch, I let the screen door slam behind me, rattling through my bones, and a cool breeze left me gasping for air and clutching my chest. I grabbed the front porch railing in a panic, spilling the contents of my stomach over the flowers below.
Suddenly, Kate was rubbing slow circles between my shoulder blades with gentle, motherly shushes. “What do you need?”
“Blair.”
“I already called her. She’s on her way.” She hooked an arm around my waist and sat my spiritless body in an Adirondack chair. “I’ll grab you a blanket and water. Do you need anything else?”
