The Body 

You know your mother is dead. Her breath was more labored, and she muttered "hurry up," over and over. The transition started, then ended. You think she meant, let's hurry up and get on with it. Get on with death already.

"What should we do with the body?" you ask.

"She must rest for an hour before an official pronounces her dead," your father mumbles. You know that's not true. 

That's not how this works.

Your father holds his face in his hands and wipes tears from his cheeks. You don't know if he's crying because he is grieving or relieved that mother's pain is over. You thought you would be crying more, but you started grieving a year ago when she told you she was terminally ill with stage four lymphoma. She said, "it's serious when the tumor spreads to the lymph nodes." She spent her life in the bio lab, so this was just a pathogen to her, not a disease stealing her breaths.

You see her body now, tiny underneath the light blue comforter. Her skin is yellowed like sand, and gravity pulls her bones towards the ground. When she was alive she was twice that size. A demanding person, filling the room with her cackles and calls. Now, her failed body has shut the noise off. Her rib cage is at peace, her diaphragm deflated.

At least she got to pass at home. Your extended family thinks it's lucky she didn't have to die in a hospital, plugged into machines and fed with tubes. She died in her own bedroom with the sunlight streaming in through her windows. You think it would have been luckier if she hadn't died at all, but you'll take any solace. She does look at peace here in the bedroom she designed. Lace-covered baby blue wallpaper, oak repurposed headboard, and baby-blue antique writing desk from the 1940s.

On your mother's bedside table you see a picture of yourself as a toddler sitting in her lap. She looks at you with a bright smile. You glance at the camera with your hand in your mouth and a cunning grin. That was a moment of peace, and you have a small memory. You remember the soft voice in your ear. Tenderness and care. That feeling was there for you throughout your mother's life. Who will care for you now?

You reach for your dead mother's hand and hold it, as if somewhere above she can still feel your touch. It's a wishful thought, but maybe the spirit hasn't left the room yet? Maybe the muscle-mind connection is still hanging in the summer breeze? You remember her strong French-Canadian hands. Making fresh cheese bread. Pulling you out of the bath. Hands woven together as one, walking to the local park.

Looking over at the time, you do a double take. How have forty minutes gone by?

"My dear," your aunt says. You didn't hear her come in. "What time did it happen?"

"Little over a half hour ago," you say. She pulls a chair to the other side of the bed and takes your mother's other hand. 

"I left the room, and when I came back in, she took her last breath."

"Well, ain't that the shits," your aunt says and wipes the tears pooling on the bottom rim of her glasses. Your aunt has a sailor's mouth, which irritated your mother. You stare at your aunt. She carries the same jaw line and furrowed brow.

"Lindsay," your father says, placing his hand on your arm. You shrug up and glance back at him. "They've arrived to take her."

"But it hasn't been an hour."

"I'm afraid it has," he says.

Two men appear with a long gurney, wearing tight mall suits. Even though they are in the business of removing bodies, they need to look sharp and professional. They slide her body into the large black bag with a zipper. She slides right in like a sandwich fitting into a Ziplock.

They remove evidence of her existence.