“Annie, I’m just going to pick up your hand,” Evie says softly, stepping close to Mum beside me. She cradles it gently, respectfully, in her palm. I assume she’s going to do the job herself, but then she reaches out and takes my hand too. Places the warm cloth in it. And helps me begin. It’s as if she instinctively knows I’ll want to remember I did this myself.
While I’m wiping the dirt off Mum’s skin, Evie fetches a nail brush and squirts some liquid soap onto it, running it under more warm water. This part she does do, and we follow that with some lavender hand cream that Mum had in the bathroom—each taking one hand and smoothing the lotion into her skin.
All of it is unnecessary. The people at the funeral home will take care of her. But it’s somehow the most intimate, bonding performance among the three of us, and seems to go some way toward making up for the violence I inflicted on this same body, only hours earlier, trying to save her life.
Evie leads me into Mum’s bedroom and flicks the light switch. I can barely enter the room, with its unmade bed,clothes draped across the chair in the corner, books stacked on the floor. She pulls open the wardrobe and beckons me to stand beside her as Mum’s floral scent spills into the room.
“She always looked lovely in this,” Evie says, reaching for a long, colorful dress in swirling blues and greens, with delicate, floaty sleeves. “What do you think?”
I feel the pressure of someone’s hand, placed gently on my shoulder.
“Yep?” I say, turning around and expecting to see the funeral director with another question about Mum’s wishes. But there’s nobody there.
“What was that?” Evie asks.
“Someone touched me on the shoulder,” I explain quietly. It was both impossible and unambiguous.
“It wasn’t me,” she says. Both of her hands are on the coat hanger holding up Mum’s dress, so I know that.
I face her, confused. But also hopeful that the hand belonged somehow to Mum, with a sign of approval, perhaps? A silent thank-you for all that I did to look after her? A final goodbye, sending me forward into the rest of my life just as she leaves hers?You’ll be okay, Drew.
Evie’s eyes fill with tears. For a fleeting moment, in this sacred space, while she holds Mum’s dress with the gentleness of an archivist handling a priceless garment in a museum, it’s just the three of us. Me, and the only two women I’ve ever loved.
Thatrealization hits me hard in the chest and my heart bolts wildly. Maybe that’s what Mum was acknowledging here. What she was endorsing. Evie is now carefully selecting a pair of silver earrings from a glass plate on the dresser and looking to me for permission to open Mum’s underwear drawer. Nobody tellsyou how pragmatic death can be. I’m at a loss to know how I would ever have made it through this process without her.
I’m plunged into fresh turmoil at the sight of Mum lying on the gurney in a body bag minutes later, while the director carries a plastic bag full of the clothes Evie has helped me choose. As I help him push her through the house, careful not to bang her against walls and doorways, I realize this body we’re maneuveringgave me life. It carried me and pushed me into the world, and now it’s left me here—on my own. There’s something about seeing Mum pulled over the threshold of the home she loved, despite its faults, one last time, that just about breaks me.
Evie walks beside us out to the funeral director’s van. We each place a hand on Mum, on top of the thick fabric of the bag she is in now.
All the words I want to say escape me, and I simply pat the bag and lift my hand off her again. The very last touch. The bond severed.
The director nods and bows at Mum, then shuts the van door.
That’s it. The end.
And it’s just Evie and me now, standing in the driveway, with the feeling you get when you wave off loved visitors after a beautiful stay. Except it’s forever this time. And I’m devastated.
Without words, we turn and walk back inside. Evie slides down to the floor in the living room, her back against the couch, signaling that she’s not going anywhere.
I check the time. “Do you need to get back?” I ask. The last thing I want to do is set off Oliver.
She shakes her head. “I have nowhere to be. Oliver and I broke up.”
The admission hangs in the air. It’s only now that I notice how pale and fractured she looks, at such odds with the strength she’s displayed all night.
They broke up?My heart leaps at this news, only to be chased by a massive dose of guilt. Mum justdied. How can I dredge myself so quickly out of grief and into any form of optimism, however fleeting?
“Sorry,” she says. “It’s not the time to talk about this. But he left. I threw him out. I can stay as long as you need.”
My eyes flick to her left hand. It’s bare. I have the preposterous thought that this miracle is Mum’s parting gift to me, that she arranged it, somehow, like some ethereal matchmaker from the afterlife. There’s something so poetic about the notion that I came into the world out of a relationship gone wrong with Oliver’s father, only to be handed a glimmer of hope with Oliver’s former fiancée, right when I’m at my lowest ebb. Hope, rising out of the ashes of loss.
“How are you feeling, Drew?” Evie asks, swiveling to face me.
I can’t admit the thoughts running through my mind. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Evie isn’t leaping into my arms. She looks as messed-up as me. “Overwhelmed,” I answer truthfully.
“We don’t have to think about anything tonight. I’m going to help you through this,” she tells me. “I have a lot of ground to make up as your best friend.”
Her friend.Yes.
