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Tears welled up in my eyes. “I’m sorry. Adin, I feel like I’m suffocating with the grief.”
“Gab, I understand how hard this is for you. It’s hard for all of us but Yancy wouldn’t want you to feel this way. That is why she wanted us to plan this party. You have just had a baby and lost our mother. The whole hormonal thing must be making this harder for you.”
“She told me that I would have the hardest time accepting this.”
“Since you told us that Yancy was dying, we decided then and there that this time we would take care of you. We’ve been preparing ourselves for this for weeks. You haven’t. We got to be with her when she took her last breath. You didn’t. Gabrielle, she looked so peaceful. She was no longer in pain that has given me the strength to accept this. You’ll have to find your strength. Until you do we are all here for you.”
Sitting with them on the swing on Yancy’s front porch I felt alone even though I knew that I would never be alone with them always at my side. I knew Adin was right. I had to find a way to accept that our mother wasn’t gone but at peace finally and knowing that it wouldn’t come easily.
Harriet Mills strolled outside. She walked to me and knelt at my feet. She took my hands in hers and she said, “Gabrielle, stop crying right this instant.”
Shocked I looked down at her. A face not beautiful like my mother’s face but pretty. Lined with years of experience. Graying hair that had once been black. Blue-green eyes whose beauty was hidden behind thick glasses. A soft full mouth that was smiling at me while a warm, weathered hand continued to pat my hand. She had been my mother’s friend since they were in high school. Harriet was serious.
“Your mother would have none of these tears from you.” She used her stern, motherly tone of voice.
She was right. Yancy would be pissed that I had cried even if my tears were for her. She wouldn’t want me to mourn her death when her life had been so good.
“I didn’t get to say goodbye,” I explained.
“Neither did I,” she replied grumpily. “She left me alone too. We all have a big hole where Yancy was in our lives. Sam and Keegan need you. Sam has her eyes,” she added.
I chuckled. He did have his grandmother’s eyes and the shape of her face. These features were all Yancy. The color I thought would be like Kerry and Keegan’s color though.
“If I can say so too,” Harriet continued, “he has her personality.”
“God help me,” Kerry replied.
I laughed again wiping my nose with the hanky in my hand. Sam did have Yancy’s fiery disposition. He wasn’t hyper like Keegan or calm like Kerry and I. He was an independent little cuss like his grandmother and I was sure that he would give me fits like she had.
“Gabrielle I have one more thing to tell you then I’m going inside. Your mother was so proud of you. You didn’t graduate college like she had hoped but you did something better.”
“What was that?”
“You were a better mother than she ever was. She told me that. She was so proud of how you raised Keegan so independently. You gave Keegan her self-esteem and independence. You allowed her to make mistakes. She was never able to do that with you girls. She was always interfering.”
Those words from Harriet meant more to me than anything anyone could have said to me. She drew me into her embrace a mother’s hug. “Thank you Harriet.”
Then, Adin went inside Yancy’s house with Harriet. Kerry held me while we rocked back and forth in the swing until Keegan brought Sam outside. He wanted to nurse.
She handed me a blanket to shield myself with so that I could slip down the strap of my dress. When my breast was free from the nursing bra I guided Sam’s mouth to it. Keegan sat down beside me. The tears continued to fall from my eyes plopping on my son’s face until he grew impatient with me. He growled with displeasure, which caused me to chuckle and Kerry and Keegan to burst out laughing.
“Mom,” Keegan began uncertainly, “are you okay? I could postpone school another semester until you feel better. You need time.”
“I will be. You will not postpone school. You leave next week.”
I smiled sadly at my daughter knowing this to be true.
When Sam was done nursing Keegan took him from him. I just couldn’t go inside. The porch swing where so many nights had been spent with my mother, my father, one of my sisters or Kerry rocking sometimes talking sometimes silently making memories. Pop appeared in the doorframe then he stepped outside. The loud crash of the storm door snapped Ke
rry and I out of our revelry.
“Kerry could I talk to my daughter?” He asked.
“Of course Jack.”
Kerry moved swiftly from the swing and with grace across the porch to the door my father had just exited. The muscles of his back flexing across his shoulders and arms as he reached for the door and opened it entranced me. God, I loved this man. I would be lost without him. Admitting it and accepting it at that moment.
Pop sat next to me on the swing and put his arm around me. Gently we rocked back and forth.
