Mother Passes

   Maybelle and Elberta, "My little peaches," our father used to call them, were already there. Sister Rosetta took my hand as I entered the room. "We are glad you are here," she said softly. I was "late as usual" by my sisters' accounting, having been notified several hours earlier that Mother hadn't long to live. "It is hopeless," complained Elberta. "Not a peep out of her since I arrived," she sniffled. Maybelle, meanwhile, kept shifting from one foot to the other as if her hemorrhoids were bothering her terribly. "I drove for hours for this?" she whined and shifted again. "I have told her she can let go," said Elberta with perfect aplomb. Then, suddenly and quite dramatically, as was her nature, Mother expired with a great whoosh of breath that Elberta would later characterize as having the odor of bad wine. To the great dismay of my sisters, Mother's head dropped to the side and her left eye, having failed to close, was staring directly at me. The girls became agitated and kept looking back and forth from me to the eye as if I were somehow to blame. "Well, say something! Do something!" demanded Elberta. I could not. I was transfixed by the stare. Sister Rosetta arrived to swiftly, gently, close the offending orb.

   "That was always her good eye," I felt obliged to say.

glwarren, 2014