The day the geese migrate South is the day my mom dies. I find her in the onion patch, hands thrown at her sides and hair tangled in the earthworms. The hose is wrapped around her and dripping muddy tears off the curve of her calves. The honking laughter echoes in the sweaty dawn and it’s too hot to cry.
I kneel next to Mom’s body and trace the sunspots kissing her tissue paper cheeks. I follow the crow’s feet in the corners of her eyes and the wrinkles that map the topography of her face. They resemble the way the soil cracked when the summer-long drought struck a few years back. I brush a piece of stiff hair and place it behind her ear.
“Dad!” I holler. There must be something in my voice because he runs to the garden immediately. He unlocks the gate and his boots stutter to a stop, exhaling a sharp breath. I keep my eyes pinned resolutely on Mom, and he places a calloused hand on my shoulder.
“Lou,” he whispers. “I’m sorry you had to be the one to find her.” He tries to stifle a sob, but it leaks out dusty and raw.
“Isn’t there like…someone we should call?” A few seconds pass and I sneak a glance at Dad. He looks so lost, and I quickly look away when his eyes meet mine.
“Yeah, sorry. You’re right.” He doesn’t make any effort to move, just stares at Mom staring at the sky. I stand near the garden gate, an apostle of indecision and uncertainty. Yet slowly, Dad follows.
We move at a crawling pace, and Dad has to stop frequently in order to turn away and wipe his eyes. As if he thinks he can still protect me from the fact that Mom’s dead. It doesn’t matter that I can still see his shaking shoulders and collar wrung with snot. As we’re finally approaching the house, I turn around, too. I notice that from here, Mom is indistinguishable from the pile of sweet potatoes or the mound of compost jittery with life. She would have preferred to decompose, nitrogen and potassium rooting into the fertile soil. She could’ve been a tree, a carrot, a leek. Now she’s just dead.
I let Dad stay outside and I grab his phone from the couch. I dial 911 and put it on speaker. I tell the operator my name, address, and that my mom has passed away. I also say that it was expected and that she wanted to stay on the property instead of going to a hospital. The operator asks if there is an adult around he can talk to. This seems to jolt Dad out of his stupor, and he takes the phone from me.
The operator asks him a few clarifying questions, and Dad nods before saying, “Yes, sorry, yes.”
“And you’re sure that she’s dead?”
“Yes, can someone please get her now?”
“Sir, I am just following procedure.”
The operator continues to probe, asking if we’ve checked for any signs of a pulse or administered CPR. With each question, Dad’s face becomes paler, and I can see the tension building up inside him.
“No!” He finally explodes., “She’s dead, okay? She has a Do Not Resuscitate Order and we just need someone to help us. Please.” His voice breaks and he covers his face with a palm.
The operator thanks Dad for his patience and says that an ambulance is coming right away. Dad mutters something under his breath and stalks inside the house without another word. I don’t think he even sees me.
A sound fizzes in my throat, and I gargle back a laugh. This isn’t funny, I remind myself. My mom’s dead. I won’t ever hear her husky laugh or feel her warmth next to mine. No more sticky fingers from the blackberries that hang over the fence or loud Jeopardy nights with her face frozen in blue light. She never got one answer right, even though her guess was always the loudest. I hope that she got to see the geese.
I wait on the step for the ambulance. A few trucks go by, but it’s mostly still. The dirt chalks up silhouettes on the horizon and everything looks a little staticky. I can feel my shoulders burning. I know Mom would tell me to put on sunscreen, but it seems futile now. When I picture her in that onion patch, there’s a part of me that believes she died happy. Mom really did love that place, even if Dad and I found it ridiculous sometimes. She used onions for everything, selling caramelized ones in little jars at the farmer’s market for five dollars a pop. They were in her eggs, salads, omelets, and hamburgers. I always spit them out, leaving a soggy pile in the corner of my plate next to the radishes.
Mom knew I hated them, but I do remember that when I was little, she took me out to the patch one morning. She was holding my chubby fingers and pointed at the thick stems lying sideways on the ground.
The tops should flop over like rabbit ears and be as soft as a squishy marshmallow. She let me tug one of the bulbs, and it gave way with a gentle pop. There’s still a picture of me holding it triumphantly pinned on the fridge.
Mom was also the only person who could cut onions. She claimed that refrigerating them beforehand helped with the tears, but Dad and I still cried when walking into the kitchen. She would just laugh and keep slicing, her breath smelling like basil, mint, and something sweet. I never figured out what it was.
~
The ambulance’s tires send rocks skittering across our driveway as it pulls up to the house. Dad scurries from inside and the screen door bangs shut behind him. He leads the paramedics to the garden, and they lift the stretcher through the rows of carrots and wildflowers. I follow a few steps behind, taking in their low whispers and pointed directions to step here and lower down slowly. Dad shows them Mom’s DNR bracelet, and they kneel to look at it.
A river roars in my ears as the paramedics pick up my mom. They lay her flat on the stretcher, seat belting her in like she’s going on one of those spinny rides at the fair. Careful, I want to say as they step dangerously close to an onion top. Watch the hose. I know I should be over there telling Mom how much I love her and how much I miss her. A good daughter would hold her dad’s hand and be okay with crying, knowing that there’s comfort in each other. I shouldn’t be hiding in the background, an understudy in my own grief. And I do want to be there, but I don’t know how to support him. Work, I tell my feet. Move! I stay rooted to the spot.
Dad’s fingers twitch towards the stretcher, but the paramedics cover her with a white sheet before he can reach her. They start to move Mom out of the garden and this time, Dad verbalizes what I’d been thinking.
“Careful,” he gestures, “watch her legs. Look out for the gate.” I step out of the way as they roll her by. What am I supposed to do? Walk with them? Say my many thanks? Offer them some tea? Certainly not just stand here like some sort of fool.
I look at Mom instead, willing myself to reach for any emotion, anything at all that will show appreciation for how good a parent she is and how much I love her, even if I could never say those words. Even if she always gave so much more to me than I ever gave back to her. But when I look at this woman, my mother, all I see is a white sheet, a body written in past tense, a person gone. And when she’s lifted into the ambulance, this image, too, is wiped away. All that’s left are memories already collecting dust.
I must have been staring for longer than I thought because when I turn back around the paramedics are talking to my dad. He’s visibly shaking, a dam about to burst. I can see the cracks, but I can’t make out what they’re saying. There’s more deliberating, and finally, Dad is walking towards me.
“Lou, I have to go to the funeral home. There are some…things I need to sort out. You can stay or come with me, whatever you feel most comfortable doing.”
“I’ll stay here.” For the first time in this entire conversation, Dad’s red-rimmed eyes meet my dry ones, and I feel a little bit monstrous.
“I just want to make sure you’re going to be okay here by yourself. I can ask someone to come over or-”
“It’s fine. I’m fine.”
“Ok. It’ll probably be a few hours. I made us omelets; they’re in the microwave.” He nods again before wrapping his arms around me. “Love you.” I’m stiff and I barely touch my fingers to his back before he pulls away. He and the ambulance drive off and I can’t hold back my sigh of relief.
I wander inside and sprawl on the sofa, burying my head deep in the pillows. I try to get my eyes to close and my breaths to even out, but hunger pulls me from my paling consciousness. Isn’t grief supposed to make a person lose their appetite? I sigh and grab one of the warm omelets from the microwave. I sit at the circular table in the middle of the kitchen and stare at Mom’s empty seat.
There are so many traces of her. The half-drunk cup of tea and jam-smeared plate are only a reach away and there’s a knife with her fingerprint on it. The kettle is on the burner and her phone is still plugged in. Those are the cabinets she painted butter yellow even though the guy at the paint store thought we’d lost our minds. And the baby grand piano she played ragtime on only during special occasions or when she had too many glasses of wine. I thought she looked especially beautiful when she played those black and white keys. She created magic then; I was sure of it.
I take a bite of the omelet and let the taste curdle on my tongue. I move it around in my mouth and when I swallow, it drops resolutely into my stomach. I inspect my plate and realize that there are no onions. There’s nothing to spit out, nothing to crunch or pretend to like. Just egg and cheese. How I always wanted my mom to make it. Usually, this would be the best day ever, but it’s not how I imagined. In fact, I think I hate it.
Dad probably wasn’t even thinking when he made them, but the missing ingredient seems to highlight the missing parent, and my heart peels thinking of everything that was. I try to eat a few more bites, but I gag the second the omelet touches my tongue. I search the fridge looking for a glass bowl full of chopped onions, but there’s only eggs, milk, cheese, and some condiments. I debate about texting Dad and asking him to pick up a few things from the store, but then he’d just get worried and come back home early. There are probably some meals left in the freezer anyway.
The omelet looks at me reproachfully, and I know I won’t be able to finish it. What I need to do is go to the garden. Dad wouldn’t want me to, but everything needs to be watered, and some vegetables are ready to be picked. The onions are done, my brain sings, but I toss that thought into an overflowing garbage bin. My eyes flick to the photo on the fridge, me with that enormous onion, showcasing both of Mom’s babies. Those onions belonged to her, never to me.
I leave the plate where it is and walk outside. The garden is still, and the sun is hot on my shoulders. The impression of Mom’s body is a figure carved of damp soil and worms the color of a smoky sunset. That’s where her head rested and where her ankles sank deep into the earth. Shoulders in the shape of crescent moons and a shadow of a person who doesn’t look as tall as I remember. Would I have recognized the outline if I hadn’t been the one to find her? Or maybe I wouldn’t have noticed it at all.
The hose is still dripping on a patch of weeds, and I twist the nozzle to the shower setting. My routine is familiar, and my brain tells me to try and find peace in the monotony. This is calming, I’m feeling better, I tell the carrots. This is calming, I’m feeling better, I say to the sweet potatoes. This is calming, I’m feeling better, I whisper to the corn. My words disappear in the breeze as I return to where I started. The onions look chalky in the cracked soil, and their fallen tops indicate that they’re ready for harvest. My thumb twitches to the trigger and I can’t remember the exact mantra I’d been reciting. No one is home, but my cheeks burn with embarrassment, and I don’t understand why this is so difficult. Everything would be so much easier if I could cry. All I need is for a lump to form in my throat and unshed tears to blur my vision like they do for everyone else. This leaky hose has more empathy than I ever will.
I toss it in the bucket and start to leave when a flash of something silver catches my eye. It lays slightly outside of Mom’s outline, caught on the trunk of the fig tree; just a thread of otherness that contradicts the landscape. I kneel and pick up the strand of gray hair.
It’s Mom’s, still wavy from the shower and damp from being in the shade. I lift it to my nose and inhale, not sure what I’m searching for. Perhaps an answer for my onion problem, some last words of advice, a trace of her lemongrass shampoo. It smells like dirt and well water.
Maybe this is the sign she wanted me to have. Telling me to move on, to water the onions, to forget. I throw the hair in the compost on my way out.
Inside I turn on the TV and clean. The lemon-scented spray sterilizes mom’s belongings and burns the inside of my nose. In the bathroom, I turn off the shower fan and open the medicine cabinet. Her pill bottles line the shelves and make a clattering sound when I dust around them. Some lady on the news is talking about the heat wave hitting the Midwest and the upcoming presidential elections. I spray the countertop and listen to a story about a house explosion that killed two. I guess it was obvious Mom was going to die. Not only in the doctor’s office ten months ago when she was diagnosed, but in the swollen legs, the hacking cough, and the heart that sounded like a kid skipping rope. Getting tangled up, falling, starting again. It was obvious in the five flushes of the toilet at night from the water pills and the whistling wheeze of her breath. But mainly in the quiet sobs when she was cutting onions, knife unsteady, fingers in butterfly bandages.
I vacuum the living room, drowning out the feel-good story of the day. Pinned above the desk is a small calendar. There’s not much on it and whatever vacations we had planned were erased a long time ago. Tomorrow, however, there is a little box filled with Mom’s blocky handwriting. We’re supposed to go to the farmer’s market. I completely forgot that it was opening this weekend. A flame of nerves shoots up my spine because nothing is ready. Usually, all of the onions would be caramelized, carrots pulled, and tables already in the truck. I should be putting stickers on the jars and washing the crates for the veggies.
I’ve watched Mom caramelize them before, but there are a thousand ways it could go wrong. I bite my lip and look at the time. Dad will probably be gone for a few more hours, but he must have a plan. We’ve never missed the farmer’s market. I turn off the TV and run upstairs into my bedroom. It’s stifling and the heat is a vise around my neck. I open my window and flop onto my bed. It’s better here, with my bookcase organized alphabetically and sheets tucked tight into the bed frame. There are no pictures, just a clean space that could belong to anyone. I sink into the mattress, prolonging this feeling of anonymity, of forgetting. That’s what she wanted, right?
My subconscious blurs and the tension in my shoulders fades. Outside, I think I hear a skein of geese passing overhead, but the honking quickly disappears into silence. It might be the neighbor’s dog. I’m not sure.
~
A draft of wind pulls me awake, and I find that someone tossed a blanket over me when I was asleep. Twilight is beginning to seep over the horizon and my stomach cramps when remembering that we still have the farmer’s market tomorrow. I jump out of bed and race down the stairs, stopping when I see what awaits me. Boxes and plastic bags are piled everywhere, on the couch, the piano seat, and dangerously close to the sink. Some are in Dad’s cursive, but most are written with a messy scrawl and a faded marker. Onions for Market, says one plastic tote. Inside is a pile of paint-stained jeans. I clench my teeth together and try to rationalize.
I spot Dad at the table in the kitchen folding sweaters. He’s not crying, but he stares right through the wool and there are purple moons under his eyes. I nudge a box with my foot, and he finally notices me.
“Oh…hey Lou. How are you?”
“What are you doing?”
The question hangs in the air, and I can unwrap his wariness like a lollipop. Dad swallows and puts the sweater on the leaning tower beside him.
“I was just going through her things. Is there anything you want to keep?” I shake my head, and he sighs. “I thought it might be easier this way. You know?” I stay silent because no, I don’t understand why he thinks it will be easier. Mom doesn’t just have things. Her soul lives in this house and how is he supposed to donate that? She is in the walls, in the fingerprints wearing down the piano keys, in the kettle she uses every morning. Mom is in the garden, in the earthworms and compost pile. She is in the onion patch, top flattened to the ground, soft as a marshmallow. The bathroom will always smell like lemongrass, and I know she’s there too. She is down at the river in a rainbow donut and teaching me how to swim on a sweaty, bug-filled day in July. Mom lives in the dimple on my chin, in my hips, in my frizzy hair, and somewhere in my heart. She won’t ever be gone.
“What about the farmer’s market? It’s tomorrow and we haven’t got anything ready.” Dad still can’t meet my eyes and words strangle the tip of my tongue. Coward, I want to say, get over yourself.
“We’re going to have to take a few weeks off. At least until the funeral happens.” He pauses and stares at me. This time, it’s me who looks at the floor. “It’s okay to take a break, Lou.”
My fists clench and I can’t take it anymore. I don’t know what to do or how to think and I can’t breathe. I strike the pile of sweaters, and they scatter across the table and chairs. Hurt flashes across my dad’s face and when he says my name, his voice cracks. I run back to the garden, the door slamming shut on Dad’s apologies. His words replay over and over again, and I want to punch them out of me.
It takes a few seconds to find the latch and, in that time, electric yellow wildflowers sprout in the corner of my vision. I run into the garden and wander blindly over loose rocks and dirt. My entire body is shaking, and I don’t know who to hate. Why did Dad have to get rid of Mom’s stuff so quickly? He’s the one who’s been crying all day, and I don’t know how to take care of emotional people. If he really wanted to move on, then he shouldn’t have canceled the farmer’s market. And why couldn’t he just put onions in the omelet?
I think a part of me blames Mom too, because everyone knew she was dying and no one ever talked about what to do after. I heard them talking through the vent about the funeral and legal stuff, but never about who would take care of the garden or when to resume our regular activities. She never wanted to die, and I guess that was obvious. Now, no one is going to pick the onions and lord knows we don’t need any more dead things around here.
When I reach the onion patch, Mom is barely there, just a splash of shadow under the stars. I sink, falling into her embrace. I spread my fingers to fit her handprint and tilt my neck so that I’m looking at the same sky she was.
I stretch my limbs to their fullest, bending my legs, crossing my hands, and briefly closing my eyes. Still I’m a little shorter than she was, and a stretch of dark soil goes uncovered. I try to reposition my thighs so that my toes reach the bottom, but then the bend of her knee is more pronounced. And I can’t remember the length of Mom’s hair. Was it in the walkway or closer to the fig tree? I do everything to wriggle into her form, but I can’t fill it, can’t replace it.
Wind rustles the stalks of corn and a chill seeps into my bones. I feel like I’m being washed out into the ocean, still stuck in that rainbow donut. I am the leaky hose in the garden and the 911 operator who can’t understand a concept like death. I am trying to resuscitate my former self, one who never needed to change. While Dad is moving furiously forward, I am lying in Mom’s fading form and forcing a dog to be a goose. I feel as though I am fading away, too.
I turn around and curl tighter into Mom’s embrace. I wrap my arms around her neck and burrow my head into her shoulder. Heat lies stagnant between us and for a moment, I can smell the hint of something sweet on her breath and the lemongrass shampoo. I don’t want to water the onions. I don’t want to cut them or caramelize them or wait until they are as soft as a marshmallow. I don’t even want to be in the garden at all. I just miss my mom.
And more than that, I wish she’d told me what to do and how I should feel. I wish she’d looked me dead in the eye and told me to pick the onions. To put them in the refrigerator and cut them even if I cry.
