I waited for the inevitable phone call since I posted this . Every time I heard the suspicious ring I wondered if this call would announce the culmination of a hellish week for my Mom. Surprisingly the phone call never came.

Two days ago when I was preparing dinner, the Mister came in with the mail stopping at the kitchen island to sort it. Immediately, I zeroed in on a later addressed to me in familiar handwriting.

I paused chopping squash to examine the envelope. It was addressed to me in my mother’s distinct penmanship. Instinctively I knew this letter bore news of the “inevitable” I had anticipated for days. Quietly, I opened and began reading as the Mister proceeded to educate me on all the new and exciting developments in this month’s Pop Sci magazine.

It is done. And for the best.

I was overcome by peculiar feelings. Not sadness. Not loss. Mostly relief. I had said my goodbyes. To be accurate I said goodbye each time I saw her over the last three years. She looked like a skeleton strutting around in a shabby gray coat, and yet she insisted on living. Every week. Every day. Every hour. Until the last second. She wanted life and badly.

It’s difficult not to ponder mortality when faced with losses of companions, especially those embracing youthful vigor. I suppose I accept such things with all the grace I can muster under the circumstances. I’m not much of a crier or prone to pinning. I acquiesce the inescapable nature of loss, and for some inexplicable reason, I don’t contain much fuel to mourn death properly. I suppose my head is to blame. It presents arguments for not being publicly emotional. I feel the loss, but it’s difficult to surmise the construction of it when you stare into my vacant blue eyes.

Reluctantly, I asked my mother, if she would be capable of making preparations for Itchy to be buried on the family property when the time came. I didn’t want to ask, but I wasn’t in a position to return and handle the matter myself. By preparations, I mean dig a hole deep enough to prevent wild dogs from digging up the remains. She assured me, it was her desire that the matter be handled in that fashion. After living on that property for eighteen years, she could find no reason to move her now.

Ironic, I wanted a proper burial for my childhood cat, but ever since I can remember I’ve always wanted my own remains cremated. When I was about fifteen, I used to tell my dad, I want to be cremated and I wanted my ashes to fill the pepper shakers at Huddle House. I told him that because he spent almost every afternoon in that diner drinking coffee and gossiping with all the other retired old farts.

In truth, I don’t care where my ashes are spread. My only desires are that there be no service, no marker, and no statue (unless of course it is a tasteless one). When I am gone, just make way for the others who will need my place.

*our girl. It was time

**Casey, mentioned in the letter, is another of my mother’s cats. Apparently she plans to ascend the power ladder and become the new reigning queen.

*** I love that my mother still mails hand-written letters.

**** In spite of the macabre tone of this post, I am not sad, depressed, or suicidal. I am in mood suitably cranky for my personality, and a good deal lighter since I have unburdened here.

Throughout the packing and loading process, I was overcome by the urge to stop and write it all down. Hours spent with a tape gun in hand while simultaneously mentally posting to get through the moment. I could not allow myself the luxury of writing, because time was fleeting.

As the previous residence looked less and less like home, the first home the Mister and bought together, I thought back our early days there. We moved in on our first anniversary four and a half years ago. As a “gift” to my family, I didn’t ask them to help us with the heavy lifting. In fact, I didn’t actually tell them we were moving at all until two weeks after the fact. But I did tell them.

That first night we both exhausted. After a quick shower, we rushed off to the grocery store to gather emergency provisions for dinner. In the produce section, I experienced a moment of clarity in which I realized with all the hustle of moving, I neglected to purchase a card for the Mister for our first anniversary. I produced some bullshit story about getting an item from the opposite end of the store so I could find a card. After I returned, the Mister experienced the same brain fart of enlightenment and fled to the card aisle as well.

I always liked the old house. The open floor plan. All the windows beckoning sunlight indoors. The facade completely different from the other houses in the neighborhood. The backyard to which we devoted so much sweat. The property fit the Mister’s and my personalities well. If we could have plucked that house from it’s foundation and set it upon a lot in the new community, the Mister would have.

Mister Hombre is fond of telling me home is wherever I am. That’s one of the things I love about him. He’s my anchor. For me, home is more than a safe place for me and those I love, it’s a place I can grow emotionally and intellectually. A place that inspires me to be the best person I can.

I distanced myself from the house long before the move. It began with the first false start preparing the house for sales two years prior. I boxed up books and clutter and the realtor advised us would distract potential buyers. Gradually the personal touches that described us were eradicated, and the space transformed into a generic home inhabited by art collectors with paint preferences that did not include safe colors like beige. When the rubber ducks and art history books were delivered to storage, my sentimentality for the space begin to wane. For the Mister it continued to feel like home…until the last drawings were removed from the wall.

I anticipated the stress of packing, but not the emotional speed bumps of leaving the space behind. As the contents were gradually emptied from the space, the echos grew, our voices were boomier, the space grew sadder, abandoned. It never occurred to me that I would experience any feelings other than relief.

Drawing of the living room. Point of view top of the stairs. The old house, when we still called it home.