Home

Home. House. Home. House.

Home.

Lately, freedom and despair have swept around me, each enveloping me a bit more with every bag of possessions carted off to GoodWill.

She's not there, of course. In the clothes that still faintly smell of her, or in the letters, scribbled, printed, painted, scrawled by her strong hand. She's not in the walls that listened to her cry, cry in pain that was more emotional? or more physical? as her light faded softly away. She's not in the bed-skirt that she proclaimed was happy, not even in the nightclothes we had to cut off of her at the end in order to keep her clean.

But she is! something inside me screams. She is, and YOU! You are just throwing her away.

I push the voice down, down where it will wait for a few more seconds, minutes, maybe even days, before exploding again.

The Tupperware chest brims with her clothes and mocks me. I gave so many away, I plead with it. But these, these I need.

It just stares back, saying nothing, and I know what it thinks.

Three years. Three years ago, I sat in a college professor's office, discussing my writing. It was all about mom, of course. And my professor made me feel like it was brilliant. She said that, through it, she met her; she met my mom. She heard her, she saw her, she got her. Through the words. And all I wanted to do was scream. Because I had done exactly what I wanted to do. I had brought her back to life. But not for me. A stranger could see, touch, smell her, and I still couldn't. I still can't. Not how I want to.

Staring at the soft butter walls of her bedroom -- my bedroom, now -- I look for her. I find the fire she said she saw during her terminal anxiety. My head pounds with her not-her words. "Why? Why are you killing me? Let me go! Get me out of here. Get me out! The house! The house is on fire. Why are you keeping me here? Get me out."

Out. Get me out. I guess that's what I'm doing, finally. I am getting out. Leaving the house, the home, and leaving what else in the process?

"That. That wasn't me."

Her voice barely found the words as she pointed at the same spot on the wall. I understood then.  Cancer had stolen her, almost all of her, away. And it wasn't going to stop. It wasn't going to turn around. And even so, she still held on. Held on long enough to tell me. "Wasn't. Wasn't me."

I blink and force the memory away. Lie down exactly where she drew her last breath. Exactly where I've slept every night I've been home for the last three years. Home. Home.

Above my bed a painting hangs. I float into it, wondering if that is the only painting she signed with her maiden name after her divorce. Inside the painting I'm free, on a countryside somewhere - Ireland? - and the air is wet and warm, and she's there too. Ahead of me, sitting by a lake, painting.

Not here. Not in this room, or this bed, or these hard, cold floors that once supported her. And it is time for me not to be here either.