Santa Ana

I remember the first time I knew everything would be different. The Santa Ana’s were twirling flames dancing snaking around each other making love in the desert and on the mountaintops and rolling down them in blasts covered in dust. The blanket would crawl up over my head, trying it’s best to protect me. I nuzzled it close to me. This is when I would have to wait. Usually it wasn’t long, this time of year. Any moment she would come busting through the doors in her glowing armor and flowing red fire hair and she would take me in her strong thin arms and it would be alright. I waited that night. Hours were blown out to sea by the winds outside and still I waited. Then I remembered and for a split second I would want to jump out the window and have the winds do with me as they would. But no, I couldn’t end up like my mother. So I clung tighter to the blanket and somehow Morpheus took me into his arms that night and I slept.

The next morning the sun seemed drunk. Like it had been partying all night and came in to work just in time from some bar in East LA. My father came into my room early that morning. His voice was rushed and choked, like he could barely breathe.

“Hurry, come on get up, we haven’t much time,” He said, dragging my substitute savior off of me harshly. He left then, as I was pulled out of bed by whatever small shard of will I had left. I shook my head side to side top to bottom trying to get the images out of my head. The images that came with the cloudy murky dreams I dove into once I fell asleep. Light and hills and smiles and people of every kind imaginable. A perfect world. I laughed in spite of myself. I had longed, for so long, to live in some grand distant utopia. But in that moment as I stepped into the hot steamy volcanic shower and felt the lava flows scald their way down my back, I was glad the world is as screwed up as it is. I thought of my mother. If the world was perfect, death would seem so much scarier than it already does. Who would want to go from sunlight and laughter to deep holes and maggots? I thought, maybe, maybe we as a species long ago came to a silent agreement to never let this world get as good as it should be. I chuckle bitterly to myself as foamy ocean suds slid down my body with the water. We’re all just selfish enough to do that.

I shut off the water and stood there dripping drip drop drip drop drip. Not wanting to get out or face hugs and tears and family members who will pretend that they care. Could I have blamed them if they didn’t?

The thing that struck me instantly and most vibrantly was the sea of plastic manufactured factory-dejected flowers. They surrounded the casket. They surrounded everything. They looked so happy and cheerful and frighteningly fake. The suns merciful-yet-malignant rays bounced off them unwillingly; bees flew, disappointed, out of their petals after finding no nourishment or comfort hidden inside. I could hear their buzzing thoughts. Why are the prettiest always so hollow? I saw a tall black-clothed woman setting a bundle of them down on the hard oak lid that separated my mother from the rest of us so carefully and gently, as if she may wake the occupant up. I chuckled at the desperate primal need to make even the darkest of moments happy and light. My father threw me a shut-the-hell-up look and I did, not wanting to hear his voice at the moment. Not wanting to hear anyone’s. But the silence (broken only by random sobs) didn’t last long. Or maybe it did, I can’t remember.

It ended officially when the man disguised as someone who knew anything about this universe stood up and started spouting out passages from old tired books and telling everyone to bow their heads. As he spoke empty words I met his eyes. The fear I saw stunned me. I thought of blizzards and Antarctica and icicles falling falling falling but never having the courage to finally break. I looked away towards the sky and the trees. I silently thanked nature for not giving in to the rainy day funeral cliché. A breeze blew through my hair, gentle and calming. You’re welcome.

My eyes were drawn towards the wooden tomb my mother was trapped in. No. No, she wasn’t trapped. She was gone and there would be no more pills or tests or T-cells or worries. Guilt swarming in stampeding you shouldn’t be glad your mother’s dead, what’s wrong with you? Look away.

I looked back back back just a few days ago oh, god, it seemed like years already. I saw her shaky and frail in an all too familiar scene of hospital bed, IV, heart machine. As if she ever needed one. Familiarity does not always necessitate comfort. But I had known from the moment I walked through the sterile endless ghostly hall that this scene would not end the same way its predecessors had. There would be no for now’s or nervous laughs or understanding glances. There would be only what I had known would come since the moment I understood why mommy had to go to the doctor every six months. I had held to her hand and I was so afraid it would crumble to dust under the slightest pressure. She always was so sensitive.

“Where’s your father?” Her voice knew, too.

“Getting coffee,” I sat down on the bed and brushed the fire from her forehead, not afraid of being burned.

“Not decaf anymore, right?” Her eyes amusingly disgusted at the mention of the word.

“You know him,” We revelled in a connection brought on by birth; by a struggle triggered in the womb.

“Sex without the orgasm, like I say,” She said and we laughed. She was never one for being puritanical. Her proud laugh settled into a wistful look of regret.

“Try telling him that,” I couldn’t let the connection die.

“I’m sorry, you know. For this. You’re only a teenager, you shouldn’t have to deal with this,” I heard the thick sound of remorse vibrating in her throat.

“Neither should you,” I reminded her.

“I brought it on myself,” My chest ached.

“Don’t say that. You know you didn’t,” I knew she knew she didn’t. “You don’t have to say things for me. Regret gets you nowhere. You told me that.”

“Don’t forget that, ever,” She smiled, that same bittersweet tinge pulsing through her bloodstream, mingling with the virus she once told me she could feel eating her from the inside out.

“I won’t forget anything,” I assured her. And it was true. How could I ever forget the smell of Jacaranda wafting off her or the sound of crickets she always loved but never got to hear in the city?

“I know,” I didn’t doubt it.

“I’m so tired,” I knew what she meant. Even still, I couldn’t wouldn’t would never accept it.

“You’re tied up in a hospital. Who wouldn’t be?”

“I guess you’re right,” She humoured me. I felt the first ounce of liquid grief penetrate my lie and shatter it.

“I’m not scared anymore, you know. I’ve went through all the questions. All the why me crap. And I know it’s so freaking unfair, especially to you. But,” She paused, thinking. I caressed her arm lightly gently can’t let it happen. “But I guess you’re never too young to learn how shitty life is. Try not to worry about me. This city…This everything, it’s a song that isn’t mine anymore. Except you. You’ll always be mine. Even when you’re so old you can’t piss on your own.”

My grief and laughter collided head-on in my throat and for a moment my lungs burned and my eyes watered for a whole different reason and finally laughter won and it came out with a burst. She always had a knack for taking my mind off the bad things. A fleeting thought who would take my mind off them from now on no no no don’t think about that.

“I will,” I agreed and bent down to bury my head in her soft shoulder where salty water soaked into her skin. I felt her absorb my fears and somewhere deep in her mind her soothing coos drowned them.

I could feel her breath on my neck and it seemed as hers slowed mine accelerated. I grasped clung to any part of her I could find trapping in her spirit not letting it end. My desperation was failing as I rose up in time to see her eyes close and her face fading. From somewhere there were beeps and I counted them. Beep one two three fourfivesixseven. Then nothing. I looked at the monitor. The line was flat and constantly moving. I wanted to jump on it and ride it into whatever oblivion or void waited after the screen edge cut it off. Somewhere there were doctors around me talking so fast about DNRs and patients’ wishes and there were hands pulling me upright and I allowed them to. I heard my father’s distant frantic voice fading fading like everything. Fading into her. She looked so still and useless. Like a paper bag whose groceries had been put away.

I recall arms around me strong and soothing and the need to comfort. I remember the drive home. Familiar and old. Down three blocks from the hospital, turn right, down the street with that great vegan restaurant, turn left, down nine houses to the big Victorian one with pink shutters and white siding. I stood up somehow my legs shook and I thought maybe it was an earthquake but when my head hit the pillow I knew it wasn’t.

And then there were phone calls and arrangement and anything to keep our minds busy anything to avoid the deadly emptiness falling asleep brought. Anything to keep the memories from invading crushing ripping tearing like winds and leaves and blades and knives and death.

“Hey, are you okay?” My head snapped up at my dad’s voice. Rough and reliable. Reminding me I’m still alive. He’s crying, not attempting to hide it, not caring. Who would care?

“I’m okay,” I said and I don’t know if it was a lie or the truth but it didn’t matter because inch by inch my mother or what used to be my mother and what will never laugh or smell or love again is going deeper into the hole they made for it. I thought how fitting she is in the ground. How much she loved the world in spite of all its chronic complacency with the hatred brewing like a storm or a tasteless soup on an old woman’s stovetop.

I didn’t know what to do or what was coming next. I heard her voice in my head. Can’t stop what’s on its way, so don’t try. I couldn’t. What do you do after your mother dies? I’m about to find out.

“Oh, dear, come here!” I hear a sugary voice and feel bony arms and smell flowery rough fabric.

“Hey,” I say into her bristled jacket. My aunt had always fit the spinster aunt cliché to a perfect T. Mom used to tell me how it was all an act and how she was the wildest coyote you would find if you got a few shots of tequila in her. She said tequila used to ignite her like an inferno and she would dance and spin around and around until her stomach betrayed her.

“This is so terrible! I couldn’t stop crying when your father called me the other night! She was so young, if it weren’t for that damn disease,” She stopped, getting too close to an anguish so deep and infinite no one could escape it. “But at least she won’t be in any more pain, sweetie.”

I held back a giggle at her coping mechanism. I rubbed her back. Equal parts trying to soothe her and trying to get her off me. Luckily my father latched onto her from behind and she was instantly repeating her words for him. As if she needed to keep saying it because maybe if she did it would be true.

I reluctantly looked down and saw the coffin dumped at the bottom of the pit. I felt so very far from it and I was thankful for that. The last time I had looked down into a hole full of death was when my cat My Cat had died years and years ago. He had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and put to sleep. My mother loved him as much as I did and we cried together and consoled each other. Who will do that for me now? Shut up, I told myself. She already took care of that before she died. After we had laid My Cat into the pit dad had dug, we both just stared at it with morbid fascination. I felt her shake out of the trance first and toss a handful of dirt down into it. It hit the shoebox with a million tiny clatters all running together. I followed suit and she smiled at me. Don’t worry, she had told me. It’s better this way.

I smiled and bent down and repeated the action I had used so many years ago. This time the dirt hitting sounded so much further away. I broke the self-made dam and let my tears fall. I saw dad waving at me to come on. I walked towards him without looking back.

It’s better this way.