The Counting-Downers Read Free

sometimes Mom gave him a practiced look of silent communication that all the best soulmates use. One that said ‘we’re a team and you need to back me up.’ He’d reluctantly tell me off, then wink behind my mom’s back if he thought she was overreacting and slip me some chocolate when she wasn’t looking.
    We were the real team, he and I. I guess it’s true what they say about there being no ‘I’ in team, because I’ve never been more alone than I am without my former teammate.
    Turning toward me, Mom takes in my appearance as I take in hers. I realize to my distress that I have been looking at her for the past week without seeing her current state.
    Looking at everything without seeing. Eating without tasting. Hearing without listening. Breathing without living. Senses dulled, feelings numbed.
    My timelessly beautiful mother has aged over the past seven days. Lived and died a thousand lifetimes. She’s grown world-weary, with the wrinkles of the civil wars she’s fought written across her skin, and reflected in her soul-sapped eyes.
    “Oh, Matilda, you’re not wearing that are you? You look like you’re going to a rock concert rather than your father’s funeral,” she says with exasperation, referring to my flowing black dress, floral DMs, and black leather jacket, accessorized with my signature messy blonde braid full of daisies.
    “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing? It’s black.” I’m trying not to become frustrated with my mom because my heart is filled with nothing but empathy for her. If my father was the air I breathed, he was the blood in her veins.
    Neither of us could live without him. Yet, here we both are. Deadly alive.
    Even though I’d always been a Daddy’s Girl, we were all as close as a family can be. I love my mother, even if I often don’t understand her, and I know she feels the same about me. Without my dad to be the bridge between our two different approaches to life, and translate the words we do and don’t say to the other, I’m afraid we’ll have one breakdown in communication too many.
    My mom gives a heavy sigh, letting go of a wriggling Oscar who is wearing the premade bow tie as a hairband. Mom is famous for her ‘speaking sighs’ as Dad called them; sighs that say it all without words. This one explains that on the second worst day of her life, the last thing she needs is me making it more difficult.
    A tremendous amount of guilt hits me at that sigh. She needs me to be strong for her, and for Oscar. She needs us to be together as a family today, what’s left of it anyway.
    At four, Oscar is still too young to understand the implications or importance of today. He knows in theory that Daddy is no longer with us and has become an angel in the sky, but I wonder if in practice he still thinks Dad is just away on some kind of extended business trip and will be bringing him back a souvenir. In many ways, I’m jealous of his youthful ignorance and trouble-free approach to life. He is the ultimate example of going with the flow and moving with the tide.
    Letting my stubborn scowl soften in apology, I calm my frustration and prepare to explain my choice of funeral outfit to my straight-laced, untied mother. She, of course, looks impeccable in a knee-length, form-fitting, black dress, sensible kitten heels, and a black headband. Outwardly, not a strand of sleek blonde hair is out of place, but I know internally is a different story.
    She won’t want anyone else to know this though. No, she’ll do her grieving in private.
    In the lonely midnight hours, lying on his side of the bed they’d shared for over twenty years, which is starting to lose his scent, she lets the tears fall in silence as she mourns the loss of her life and love. Something about the nighttime invites soliloquies of the soul. Midnight confessions spoken into the silent darkness, free of judgment and the observations which come with light.
    She thinks I can’t hear her nightly cries and prayers.