Fried Eggs

After two, long relentless years, my mother died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in her hospital bed. I sat beside my mother, surrounded by my family, with my hand on her chest. Her eyes rolled rapidly under their closed lids. Her parted lips sucked air in and out. While my immediate family cried loudly cursing the Lord, my mother’s heart beat under my hand slowed until it didn’t beat at all. I kissed her face. I draped my arm around my sister who had planted her face into the bedside to cry. My father cried, saying in Italian that she was his angel. With the weight of the sound of their pain, I sat, with my mother dead by my side.

The morning of my mother’s wake, I tore my closet apart trying to find enough black to wear. I decided on the only pair of black dress pants I own, and borrowed a black fitted sweater from my sister. My hair cut short, curling tight behind my ears. I rummaged through the front door closet for shoes. I pulled out my Kelly green Chuck Taylor All-Stars. Sitting on the second last step of the wooden staircase, I laced up my shoes and pulled the cuff of my pants over the shoe tops. The white rubber toe stuck out revealing only a hint of green.

My father, sister and I were the first to arrive at Ward Funeral home. We walked through the glass doors into the foyer, with pale grey walls, a floral navy and green carpet, and a long marble table with boxes of tissue. I hung my coat on a wooden rack and settled into a room with mahogany wood tables and chairs, baby blue couches, a fireplace and powder pink walls. I spread old photos of my mother and family over the glass table top to create a collage on a large, white sticky sheet with a plastic cover. I scanned images of my mother with large reddish curly hair, some with it brown, cut sleek and short, and only a couple with her wearing a bandanna. I arranged the photos onto the adhesive sheet while waiting to see my mother, restored in her coffin.

My father looked at my mother first. He gasped; then looked away. The skin of my mother's face fell down the sides of her jaw. Her eyelids were wrinkled like pressed fabric. She had died with her mouth open and whatever they placed under her lips to keep them closed gave her an expression we had never seen her make. My father clasped his fingers behind his head and paced back and forth in front of her coffin. He wiped a tear away from his tired eye. My aunt removed the light pink satin scarf she was wearing and placed it around my mother's neck to conceal the falling skin. My father slightly pulled her short, brown-haired wig away from her forehead. The cancer had aged my mother, raping her of her stunning beauty, leaving her looking like a stranger to us.

Rows of Casablanca lilies, dendrobium orchids, red and white carnations, yellow daisies and delicate baby's breath surrounded my mother's coffin. Large bouquets, wreathes and crosses of flowers were draped in sashes that read, “In Loving Memory” and “Forever Remembered.” The odor of the flowers bombarded my senses. A row of large cushioned chairs upholstered in a shiny pink fabric were for immediate family: my father, sister, grandmother, and three aunts. Boxes of tissue rested on arm rests between the chairs. A line of people dressed in black began to form along the right side of the room.

I sat in my assigned chair for a couple hours. The tears of family and friends wet my face when they kissed me to offer their condolences. I kissed the faces of strangers too. “Thank you for coming” I repeated. I wiped the wet off my face. I smiled a gracious smile.

On the day of the burial, we gathered around my mother's coffin for the last time. The funeral director removed the kneeling stool. I stood looking over my mother. My heart went wild inside my chest. I thought my lungs were going to fail me. My knees buckled under me. I fell hard onto the floor. I gripped my mother's tiny, fragile wrist. I held it tight, and I cried myself into a panic attack on the floor. A set of hands lifted me up from under my arms and took me outside. I sat on a bench outside of the room with my dead mother inside of a box, and stared down at the green of my shoe.