Forgotten Loss

        The woman sat at her kitchen table. She was older, hair graying at her temples. Pictures were scattered all over the table and in her hands. She held onto them tightly, trying to fit more and more into her boney hands. Some shook loose and fell to the floor. Memories scattered onto the hardwood as she bent over slowly to pick them up. Once she had collected them they were reunited with the piles on the table. Within the piles there was laughter. Birthday cakes and graduation gowns. Hammocks and fireflies. Her fingers grazed over faces. Her withered skin tracing over each smile. She sank into the chair holding only one picture in front of her. There were church stairs and smiling on lookers, their smiles black and white. A brown fur shawl and a powder blue tuxedo. An arm to shade her from the confetti. The picture started to shake as her unsteady hand held it. Just as it hit the floor she heard keys in her front door. Her daughter and son walked through the door muttering about the weather. Her daughter was carrying a little girl, maybe three years old, in her arms.

            “Hi, Ma,” her daughter said.

She walked through the dining room to the kitchen where her mother was sitting. She leaned over and kissed her on the cheek before putting the little girl down on the floor. The old woman kept staring. Her son kissed her on the head and headed deeper into the kitchen pulling boxes off the counters. Boxes of saltines with crackers crumbling out of the cracks, empty tissue boxes, forgotten boxes of pasta. He wiped down the laminate, collected the dust, and scrubbed the warped and stained wallpaper.

“Ma, you can’t let it get this bad,” he said. “It’s not good for you.”

She kept staring. Her daughter sat down next to her and scanned the familiar pictures. Her little girl was trying to climb into her lap so she scooped her the rest of the way up. The little girls’ eyes grew big at all the colors she saw on the table. Baseball gloves, tulle prom dresses, flock Christmas trees. She reached for a picture of her grandmother when she was much younger but as she lightly grasped it in her little hand it was pulled away. The old woman took it and placed it back in its respective pile, never looking up at the girl. Her daughter stroked her granddaughter’s hair, softening the moment.

“Ma, what should we have for dinner?” her daughter asked, in an attempt to sustain any kind of attention from her mother.

“Yeah, Ma. You want pizza?” her son chimed in. “We can make a couple pounds of pasta,” he added.

“We could order out?” her daughter said.

Their mother did not answer. She just sat, still staring at that picture. Her son grew impatient. An impatience that had formed after too many nights like this filled with too much staring and silence. Worry quickly followed this impatience.

“Mom. You can’t keep this up. It isn’t good for you or for us. It’s too quiet in here, it’s depressing. You have to get out and do stuff. Stop looking at these pictures all the time. It isn’t good for you. It’s been too long for you to still be acting like this. Enough is enough. Now, what do you want for dinner?”

The old woman looked up at him slowly, listening to what he was saying, and quietly spoke when he was through.

“Oh, I don’t care dear. Just make sure to set a place for your father.”

She turned to look back at the picture and smiled. Her children stared at her blankly.

“Ma, Dad’s not coming for dinner,” her daughter said to her quietly, taking her mother’s hand in hers.

Her son walked away from the table, running his hand through his hair. She looked up at her daughter quickly but said nothing. Confusion washed over her face. She looked around the kitchen and into the other rooms of the house she could see from her place at the table. She was always waiting for the front door to open.

“Well, he’ll be along soon enough,” she said.

Her children looked at each other, unaware of what to say or what to do. Her daughter hugged the little girl on her lap.

The old woman gathered all but one picture from the table together and tied them up with a red satin ribbon. She reached to pick the little girl up from her daughter’s lap and placed her on her own. She lifted the black and white picture up in front of the little girl’s face. She pointed to the church stairs, the smiling on lookers, the fur shawl, the powder blue tuxedos, and the arm that shaded her. She pointed to a handsome, smiling face and said, “Now, let me tell you about him.”