I’ve been bottling everything up again.
His arm around her, sitting right across from me. He laughed, “we call her the consumer. Since she was little, she was always there to eat the fries off your plate or take your shampoo if she ran out. Amy died, and she was already taking everything to her apartment. She asked me if she could have Mom’s Instant Pot as she was loading it into her trunk. She was quick to grab her Ray-Bans too.”
He brought his girlfriend to my little brother’s birthday dinner. He put his arm around her and called her “honey.”
I could taste the stomach acid rising in my throat.
I won’t even get into the fact that he was dating no more than three months after Mom passed. The blonds in his DMs. Multiple women. Or that his Facebook relationship status changed before we even put her in the ground.
It’s weird, you know—grief.
Ever since Mom left, I’ve been trying to grab onto every little thing that reminds me of her because I’m terrified of forgetting. Every memory that surfaces, I frantically write down.
I don’t care about the hundred-dollar sunglasses.
I care about the memory of sitting on the couch with her while we ordered them. Virtually trying on every single style because she was too sick to leave the house.
I hate that memory.
But I refuse to forget it.
The sound of the Instant Pot reaching pressure reminds me of her chicken noodle soup whenever I caught a cold. The way she babied me.
The sound the lid makes when you open it reminds me of sitting on the kitchen counter while we taste-tested the vegetarian chili she made so I’d have something to eat at the annual football party.
The sauté button reminds me of the pulled pork she worked so hard on that somehow turned into absolute meat mush.
I remember the pep talk I gave her on the drive home as she described the look on Pastor’s face when he scooped up her pulled pork pudding… and slowly put it back into the pot.
The way her eyes watered when she laughed so hard she could barely breathe.
The way she kicked off her flip-flops and curled her legs up in the passenger seat.
Her nails were always painted red.
The way she looked at me while I drove her car, like she couldn’t possibly love anything more.
I never had to wonder if she was proud of me.
She made me feel like I was her most treasured thing in the whole world.
When you have something, you take it for granted.
I don’t care about the sunglasses.
I don’t care about the freaking pot.
I’m just trying to preserve her.
He thanked the waitress for his diet soda and continued. “We had a dog that got seizures. You know, shaking all over the place. We’d have to hold him down so he wouldn’t snap his neck. Then Mom ended up doing the same thing before she went. You remember? She was walking in circles in the kitchen.”
He said it laughing.
Do I remember?
I excused myself.
I cried in the Olive Garden bathroom.
I wanted to scream every awful thing I could think of at his face.
Thanks for reading. -E