Remnants Of Black Minds: Excerpt
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| ©️Sylvilel |
I think it’s a default in all of us, to need something to anchor ourselves with; be it religion or people, a job, a cause. It all comes back to the clawing need to believe in something outside ourselves.
*
She sat in her huge, moss green plush chair, eyes glassy and distant. Her pale old-person-skin looked almost smooth under the rays of the afternoon sun. A faint reek of soap, urin and dust filled the room.
I watched her chest rise and fall every three seconds, slow and rasping. She could have been sleeping. She could have been dead. But no; she was ever so much alive just yet.
We sat in silence; me listening to the waning rythm of her life; she staring blankly into nothing. It was a comforting silence, and a sad one.
«I’m going soon,» she said. «You know that.» Her voice sounded like the rustle of gritty paper.
«Mm.» I sipped at my coffee. The insides of the cup was sigarette-yellow after years of use, and there was a definite taste of those years as well. I slurped it down nonetheless, well knowing it might be one of the last times I got to drink one of her special brews.
«He’s coming for me.»
I didn’t answer. She’d taken to stating things like these more often lately. The nurses took it for the demented ramblings of an old woman, and so I saw no reason to question them, although they did make me wonder. Who was he?
What could it hurt?
«He?» Another sip of coffee. More silence. More staring. This room was a world of its own; a bubble within a bubble, filled with a drowsy liquid. Even the light stood still. It was ease and comfort and suffocation in one.
She didn’t look at me, but I could hear the scoff in her frown. As if I really should know better.
«God?»
Now she frowned directly at me. I kept looking lazily ahead, still nipping at my cup.
«Then who?» I asked after a moment’s silence.
«You should finish your coffee,» she said huskily, with an odd reverence in her once more distant gaze. Still thinking of him, then.
It felt odd. Didn’t demented ramblers nearly claw your eyes out to make you listen to their ramblings? I really didn’t know. But it really felt odd.
«Shoo now,» she contiued, getting up and staggering towards the kitchen. Dismissal number two.
«Momo -« I began, but she waved me off. «Get. Give your momo some peace from all these blasted questions, why don’t you.»
I blinked. Shock wasn’t a thing I dealt in on a normal basis. It took too much energy. Surprise, maybe. But mostly I just blinked and wondered, then aquiesced. Arguing with people was so tiring.
I looked down at the porcelain cup in my hand, empty now but for a tiny sip of brown, tobacco-looking goo at the bottom. Then I got up and placed it neatly, silently on the table. Loud sounds, like for instance cups clattering on tables, were one of the most exhausting things in the world.
«I’ll see you then,» I said airily as I drew my scarf around my head and buttoned my coat shut. Not looking at her. She stopped in her tracks, back towards me, the clanging pots she had been moving about falling silent.
«I don’t know,» she muttered over her shoulder.
I knew she would say that. I knew she might be right too.
«Love you,» I called, casually, like I always did. Then I was outside in the snow, and the door was shut behind me.
*
As eulogies go, it was boring at best. In the name of God and blah blah fucking blah. She was most beloved. She touched many peoples lives. She was a devoted Christian.
The usual. Maybe I had been to too many funerals, because this felt like a very cynical approach, even for me. And I was only twentyfive.
All around me, people were looking bleary eyed and pitying. They kept cocking their heads at me and mum, eyes brimming, mouths forming sad little pouty o’s.
Isn’t it all just too sad.
Neither me nor mum cried. Grief was a very personal thing to both of us. We didn’t approve of the mass-notion that our grief was their property. Momo wouldn’t have approved of it either. So in silent, mutual respect, we scowled disapprovingly ahead of us, not saying a word to anyone or each other.
We had requested that condolences not be made in public, so when the ceremony was over, each and all filed out of the church in slow, slightly confused procession.
I could hear them in my mind.
Why won’t they let us show them our respects? It’s respectless, I tell you!
Don’t they want people to care about them? To help them?
The answer, in all cases, was no. We didn’t want their self-righteous repects, and we didn’t want their help. Mum had always been more adamant about this than I, and she had her reasons. But I agreed, to a point. People were tiresome.
We stood, side by side, as the casket was loaded into the hearse. Silent. Unblinking. Unflinching at the pity-slash-contempt they threw at us. My momo, in all this, was not the main event after all. It was us, and the spectacle we provided. The farce we allowed for, by being involuntarily part of this community.
I really didn’t care. Neither did my mother. But it really was tiring.
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