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Because it’s always too soon. And time is never enough. And it hurts like hell to watch someone go.
But we all will.
And in typical Sheriff Gloria Bryant fashion, my mama went out exactly how she ordered. She even planned the goddamn menu down to the lemon cake I love and magnolia flower centerpieces I now love too.
The first week in hospice care, she was lucid. She was in no pain and in rare form. I sat on one side of her, and Dad sat on the other. We looked through picture albums and her tablet with more recent stuff.
Mama said, “We’re walking memory lane together to the damn end.”
It was a beautiful journey. We’ve been blessed. I’ve been lucky. I’d forgotten to be thankful that even though my parents divorced before they reconciled, we still did all the holidays and birthdays together.
“Come on.” I nudged Mama while we stared at a Christmas picture of us when I was sixteen. When they gave me my first cell phone as a present. “Y’all were still fucking back then, weren’t you?”
“What makes you say that?” Mama giggled too much. Dad smiled, guilty as hell.
“Because look at you.” I pointed at the picture. “You look way too happy over my new damn phone. And I remember it now. How y’all disappeared the hour before Santa came to visit.”
“Ho, ho, ho.” Mama beamed proudly. “Santa did come, and Ms. Claus did twice.”
I was rolling. My parents were too cute. And if we weren’t talking about memories, Mama wanted stories about my sex life with Redix and Silas.
“Go get a quick cup of coffee for the next two hours,” she shooed my dad away. “I gotta hear this.”
Dad kissed Mama on the forehead, while he didn’t want to stay for the details.
“All I wanna know,” Dad said, “is if Silas has the same habit of going through a box of tissues like Redix did. The ones I used to find all over my damn boat.”
“Dad!” I cuddled up next to Mama. “That’s gross.”
“Is it?” My dad’s eyebrows danced. “If it’s so damn gross, then why’d y’all do it? All. The. Damn. Time.”
“Because he might be like our son,” Mama answered for me. “But you’d be a fool not to fuck Redix Dean. Every. Damn. Day.”
Dad shuddered like that grossed him out before he left us laughing.
“Alright.” Mama held my hand. Her grip was weak, cold, and comforting. “Don’t spare me anything. Start with the first kiss between you three, and go from there. Every smutty detail.”
“Mama, I ain’t giving you every smutty detail.”
“You better.” Her eyes sparkled until the very end. “I wanna go to heaven with a little sin on my brain. And sex is the best sin because it ain’t really one.”
It was weird at first, telling her everything. But then it was fun. And making us laugh. I’ve never seen my mama’s eyes get so wide when I got to the parts when it was all three of our, well… parts. Of all of our bodies together.
“How did they fit?”
Mama was fascinated. Like I was sharing the results of my science experiment, not my first double-penetration with two well-hung studs.
“Well,” I couldn’t believe I was saying it, but then again, I shared everything with my mama. “It was the opposite of throwing two hotdogs down a hallway.”
She howled back, her frail shoulders shaking with laughter. “Oh my, Lord!” She was crying happy tears.
“Yeah, that’s what I said. Many times while it felt like two giant sausages trying to thread the same tiny sewing needle.”
She wouldn’t stop laughing. “Then why in the Sam Hill did you do it?”
“Because what hurts at first starts to feel real good.” And then I remembered it, the sensation never forgotten by my body. “And when it’s Redix and Silas, and when I love and trust them… it starts to feel so damn good you don’t ever want it to stop.”
“Hand me a fan.” Mama interrupted my story.
