Woke up new

Spring 3015. Samara Brushwood is 41, Esther Brushwood is 20, Martha Brushwood is 4.
Last update: Spring 3013. Winter 3014-15.

It’s absurd, Samara decides, folding and unfolding her husband’s clothes and letters and important documents – old report cards, letters, photos of Jeremy as a chubby little boy.

She’s too young for this. This is what people her age do for their aged parents, not their husbands. Not their perfectly healthy, fit husbands.

Most hours of the day, she is doing well.

Their small garden occupies a bit of her spare time, its blooms and plants sugaring the air.

Martha demands more attention now, still unsettled by the sudden loss. Samara lets her sleep in the double bed most nights, in the hopelessly empty space on Jeremy’s side. She wakes up entangled in sticky-warm toddler arms and legs in the mornings. Sometimes it’s all too much and she cries soundlessly into her daughter’s hair before they rise and shine and make pancakes for breakfast.

Most hours of the days, she’s doing fine.

Esther comes over for dinner at least once a week now, which Samara doesn’t complain about at all. She suspects money is short and slips simoleons into Esther’s pockets whenever she has the chance, knowing her daughter is far too proud to ask for it. They never talk about it.

“Honestly, mum.” Esther shakes her head. “You never cook proper meals, do you?”

“I do.” Samara wonders when she started lying to her own child about eating habits. It seems it was only yesterday it was the other way around. Esther had never been good at regular meals and would much rather have cookies for dinner if not put under constant supervision. Apparently, things change. “For Martha, at least.”

“Mmm.”

“So, how’s work?” Samara asks, to turn the tables.

Samara hadn’t been overjoyed to hear the truth about Esther’s current life – the mere idea of her talented daughter dropping out of college in order to join a questionable dance company in River City had left her cold with dread. But all things considered, it’s no big deal. Most of Samara’s previous concerns – money, class, education – have vanished these past few months.

“Good,” Esther says, pouring another spoonful of salt over the meat before carrying it to the oven. She’s become very thin, Samara thinks, stifling the urge to point it out. “We’re doing this ridiculous musical at the moment. Awful, but it’s popular.”

“Maybe you can get me tickets?”

Esther raises an eyebrow. “You’d hate it. It’s like that show you took me to for my birthday, ages ago. The one where dad-” a shadow crosses her face. “Anyway, it’s crap.”

“Any other news, then?” Samara observes Esther, tries to read more from her face than what she says.

“You mean if I date someone?”

“Well, that would count as news, wouldn’t it?” Samara smiles. “How’s Gerhard?”

“No idea,” Esther says, a bit too quickly. Then she sighs and adds: “I haven’t spoken to him in a while. We broke up, remember?”

“Aw, he is such a nice boy.”

“Mum.” Esther winces.

When Samara had her first daughter so young, everyone kept saying that she’d make such good friends with her kid, that Esther would love to have a young mother to share everything with. Someone told her that younger parents are much more likely to be their childrens’ confidents.

It doesn’t always work out that way, she’s come to realise. Esther grows more secretive the older she gets, too. It feels a bit like being too far away from anything that happens to truly be able to influence it one way or the other. And that, she knows, is probably just what her daughter wants. To be left alone with her decisions. She can’t blame her for that.

“I don’t date anyone worth mentioning,” Esther offers, finally and somewhat unexpectedly. “Most guys I meet at work are jerks and the others… well, nothing is going on.”

Samara looks at her for a long time. She doesn’t look unhappy or heartbroken, at any rate. Always something. “I see.”

“I promise I will let you know if I plan on getting married or anything like that. You know, pregnancies, STDs…”

“Well, that’s very kind of you, dearest daughter.”

She grins. “I know, right?”

They have dessert – ice cream with plenty of chocolate topping – in front of the telly and watch a few mediocre talkshows before Esther says goodbye.

All things considered, Samara concludes when she watches her leave, they are closer now than they were only a year ago.

When she’s all alone in the late evenings, Samara logs into her recent find – a support forum for widowed people. It’s a rather hopeless collection of the sad and the broken, but she’s met a few new friends there and at the end of the day – quite literally – it’s a source of comfort.

There’s something liberating in being able to write a post about the way nothing in her home seems to quite match anymore. How Jeremy’s favourite chair, or his books in the bookshelves and the paintings he had convinced her of buying suddenly look out of place next to her own things. How she wakes up in the middle of the night and reaches for him in bed, only to find she’s holding on to a pillow or thin air and how that always, always sends a chill down her spine because for a few moments when she’s barely awake, she doesn’t remember. And every time she does remember, she loses him again.

She writes to a man who lost his wife about how it feels, hearing your toddler scream after the other parent when there is nothing you can do to make it right. You’d do everything for your children, any parent worth their salt would do that, and yet you can’t do this. It’s the only thing your screaming child wants, the only thing that would make it better, and you can’t do it.

But you can be there for them, her online-friend writes. And he’s right.

So yes, most days she’s doing fine. They are doing fine.

—-

* Soundtrack: Woke up new – The Mountain Goats.