Out of Reach

Why Was It Hard to Cry?

"Depression, real depression, the kind that whispers to you that death is the only escape, can't be comforted by words. It gets worse if you or someone else even try. The only thing that can be done is to distract yourself until your brain hopefully stabilizes. And if it doesn't stabilize, well..."

When Dad died, I lost two parents. I say so because Mom, with her meager high school diploma, went to work full time, and the times I saw here were few and far in-between. When she was home, she mostly slept. It seemed she could never get enough sleep.

So when she died out of the blue when I was fourteen, the worst thing wasn't the funeral, meager as it was, or suddenly finding myself alone. It was coming home to my empty home and realizing nothing had changed. Everything was as she left it, so it could have been any other, ordinary day.

And I felt nothing.

I walked about the house numbly, looking at the dirty dishes in the sink that weren't mine, wandering into the bathroom to take stock of her toothbrush and soaps. I lifted the brush we shared that had a mix of our hair still in it.

Lastly, I went to my mom's side of the bedroom where her unmade bed sat unchanged from when she had got up that morning for work.

Disturbed by my own numbness, I crawled into her bed and hugged her pillow. I drank in the scent of her favorite coconut scented shampoo and the unnameable musk which was Mom. This wasn't the first time I had done this. I usually did every morning after she left, not just because her bed would still be warm and was somehow comfier than mine, but because the scent always soothed me back to sleep.

It did this time too, all the same. Nothing had changed. Mom was dead, and everything kept going on like it usually did.

My teacher, possibly the only person in my school who had known of the funeral, woke me up the next morning, tears in her eyes.

"It's time for you to come home with me, dearie," she said, so gently. "You can't live here alone."

My mom's stuff was sold. I was allowed to keep her dark blue bedsheets and Native American patterned comforter, and her downy pillow she had always been so protective of.

Eventually, the smell wore away. Everything got put through the wash.

And that's when I woke up and realized I didn't like where I was living. It was different. It smelled different. Mom's dirty dishes weren't in the sink. The old, fugly green couch her and dad had gotten when it was still in style was gone. Her shampoo was gone.

And that Mom had gone for good.

I did some crying, but it wasn't therapeutic. It was like I had to force myself to give up the tears. I took some time trying to talk myself into appreciating the kindness of my homeroom teacher. After all, my parents had been only children and older when they got married, and my grandparents had already been either dead or on their way when I was born. The extended family beyond that had never heard of me, and probably hadn't even realized that my mom had even died.

My teacher mentioned taking me to grief counseling, but I was afraid. I was afraid once they found out about my numbness and forced tears I'd be labeled some sort of broken, heartless person. Like a sociopath, as I later googled. I was afraid they'd put me on meds or send me to an institution, or worse, say I never loved my mother as I should.

And I loved my mom. I loved her coconut shampoo and all the signs she had been around. But they had sold those. Clean them. Gave them away.

And there was no bed to crawl into when I woke up at five in the morning for no reason.

So, once I hit 16, I got a job in order to qualify for emancipation, which is essentially when the government lets an individual under 18 years old live on their own and have the legal rights of an adult. Personally, I don't think it's any of their uncaring business, but it went through and I was free. Especially that, once I had been declared a legal adult, I then qualified to inherit the money left behind by my mother's life insurance.

I instantly went back to mine and Mom's old apartment, but it had other residents. So I found a studio apartment nearby. I didn't like wasted room. I wanted every corner to be mine. So I turned down one room or even two room apartments, even though I could afford it, and settled for the studio, which kept my bedroom and living room as one and a hop and skip away from the kitchen.

Mom's bedsheets had faded when I put them on my bed in my new apartment. The elastic for the fitted sheet had gone slack. The Navaho comforter had lost some of its fluff and gone flat. Her downy pillow had gone yellow.

But I still got clearance fabric at Walmart to match the comforter's colors and made curtains out of them.

I got my furniture in dark blue. I got dishes in the Navaho tan and red.

Then I got coconut shampoo, the same kind she would always get.

And that, to me, released a heaviness I hadn't realized I had been crushed by over the past two years. I breathed in deep of the space, the smell of her shampoo, the feel of the Indian blanket, at my second hand TV and bookcase full of old dark fantasy and horror novels. It was like I had built a shrine to my mother and now her spirit could be at peace.

I stayed there till I finished high school. Then, having received a full ride scholarship from the only university in America that offered parapsychology as a major, I said good-bye to Mom's shrine, took all my other stuff, and found a roommate who didn't get all sappy when I told her I was as orphaned as orphaned could be. In fact, she slapped my back like a man, and said good for me for being strong. She didn't try to relate, as she already knew she couldn't, and she was hilariously prudish. Her nails, her hair, who whined about that kind of stuff? Oh, I guess a lot of people do. Weird.

She said nothing about my worn out blue sheets and Indian blanket or my yellowed pillow. She said nothing about all my dark blue furniture and curtains. She did pick at a few of my books, but not being a big book reader herself, she couldn't give any honest approval.

And from there, I met Professor Oliver Davis, practically a celebrity.

And to my undoing, he wasn't hitting middle age like I had assumed, but young, and attractive in a deadly way a shark could be. I'd look at him and think "Here's a guy that never smiles, unless it's to condescend someone. Or bare his teeth."

It was entertaining. I didn't have a crush on him, I refused to, I was afraid to,(someone that pretty and out of my league and mean? Heck no). But I could enjoy his lectures, his cases, the twins and complications of his genius mind, and his icy, sarcastic view of the rest of humanity.

Just like Ayako, I guess I found him hilarious.

And somehow, studying the dead or what happens to us after we die, helped me feel like that sense I had of walking into my Mom-less home, and feeling like nothing had changed, and being numb, was okay. That I wasn't some sociopath. That I wasn't a nutcase. That I loved my mom.

I thought of this as I walked into the room allotted to me after enduring the headache which was a Professor Davis overseen put together of all the monitors and electronics and cameras that would be all over the house. It wasn't dark blue. It was bright pink and red, with a big brass bed.

Kind of had to laugh at that. My bed had been pink and covered in My Little Pony. Let's do the time warp again.

Anything relatable to Mom ended at that, and I didn't think of her again as I squealed over the clawed tub in the attached bathroom and the funky, wooden toilet seat.