Crazy!

Changes...

A few months later... 

"Mom! I'm going!" 

My mother looks up wearily from her newspaper and smiles weakly. "OK, sweetie. I'll see you later." 

I sighed as she looked back down, picking at her cereal. I couldn't expect her to remember. It was too soon. 

She groaned as she lifted herself up and I rush to help her. "Woah, careful!" I say, trying to laugh even as her eyes begin to brim over with tears at the stitch in her side. My mom slipped into clinical depression after my bro went, and that ended up... not very good. To put it mildly. 

My bro 'went'. Hah. A good way to hide the truth, I guess- as good as any, if only hiding it from myself. The real story? The day his heart flatlined, everything just... stopped. It wasn't slow mo, like the movies (idiots). It literally stopped. For me, the world still hasn't started up again.  

God, you must think that I am a selfish brat! I was talking about Mitch and I started on about myself! It's OK, though. When people are dead you don't have to apologise.  

We played Titanium at his funeral. I think he would have liked that. It was his favourite song at the time anyways- sometimes, after a really bad dream, I can still hear him singing it. He sings, I tell him to shut up- that's the way things work in our little family. Me, Mom and Mitch. Well, that's the way things used to work anyways. I guess now... it's just me and Mom. And where is my father you say? Where is the useless scumbag that literally vanished off the face of the earth? Maybe somewhere exotic, somewhere romantic; certainly not where his son was dying. Certainly not where his son was buried. Certainly not where he's needed, be it for support, care, love; when it feels like his wife and child are being buried themselves... 

Enough; it's no use thinking about what you can't change. If I can't change my father, I can at least try to be as little like him as possible. Just because I've got his blood inside me doesn't make him Dad, does it? 

No. 

It doesn't. 

I right my mother as she staggers again. "Careful! You remember what the doctor said? Plenty of bed rest and shout if you need anything give me or Maurice a ring if you need to." 

Maurice is Mom's careworker. 

Nice lady. I could actually like her if she didn't shoot my Mom with drugs every other damn day. 

I listened with one ear as she parroted both numbers and patiently smiled. "Great! OK, then, I guess I'd better get going..." 

"Jake?" 

I turn at the quaver in her voice, wishing I could just stay there, in this moment. This moment where Mom sounds like a mother again.  

Mom. Mother. Such a difference between the two words, right? She is my mother, but I had to love her to make her Mom. I guess that's why I never called HIM Dad.  

Mom stretches out her hand, a letter lying in her shaking palm. 

"Honey, there's a letter for you."