Á Mortelle Décés (A Mortal Dies)

Mary Martin Stewart recalls with nightmarish acuity the moment she heard the news. The phone rang differently. Didn’t it? She’s sure it did. It always does when being the harbinger of bad news. It was 7:05 pm on Wednesday, the 21st of February, 1980. She was in the bathroom washing the ash mark from her forehead from the morning’s blessing when the telephone screamed at her from its place on the wall in the kitchen of her small Wichita, Kansas apartment. Every time she played the conversation over in her head, it came to her in slow motion; bits and pieces of words interwoven with sobs and stutters. What was not so clear to her now was exactly whose sobs they were.

The voice on the other end begins abruptly. “I have to tell you something, something horrible.” Silence. “Are you alone?” Not waiting for an answer. “Oh, Mary, it’s your mother… she’s, silence she’s shot herself.” Mary hears someone ask, “Is she alive?” but isn’t sure if the words are coming from her own mouth as the conversation has become surreal. A dream, she thinks. No, that’s not it. “The police report.” What police report? “Death by suicide” they say. The words reverberate in her head, choke down her throat and land hard on her clenched belly. Mary drops the phone, leaving it to dangle from its long umbilical cord. Learning her own cord has now been severed, she slides down the wall. Lying on the floor with her face pressed against the cold hard tile, she prays blackness overtakes her, rending her unconscious and covering her like a heavy down comforter, protecting her from this horrible, new reality. Death by suicide, my mother. The words take over her mind like a television ad jingle. It doesn’t go away, playing over and over. Death by suicide, the voice says.

The Funeral

A day later, Mary sits on the toilet in the Harmony Funeral Home, trying, unsuccessfully, to not be sick. Queasiness overtook her the moment she entered the front door. An odorous concoction of flowers and candles and something else, something akin to embalming perhaps, assaulted her. The smells of death rituals, she thinks. Despair sits heavy on her chest like a thick layer of mud.

Gathering herself together as best she can, she washes her face in cold water and tries to prepare for whatever is about to come. She has yet seen her father. Death by suicide, the voice says.

Mary opens the door to the viewing room. No one is there, except the body. The body, her mother. Her mother, who is no longer her mother, lies in a satin-lined box with hands resting on her stomach. Paix á son áme, they say. She stares at the face with thick makeup, a rubber ear and fake hair. Flowers surround the box. The body always disliked carnations; funeral flowers, it said.

She sits in an anteroom, waiting. For what? She doesn’t know. People file in one by one, two by two. Useless platitudes, meaningful condolences, hand holders, back patters, tears, snotty faces. How did your mother die? Death by suicide, it says. They look at her with their pity, their shock, their disgust, not knowing how to gracefully, thankfully, expediently leave the room. So she sits.

Where the hell is my father? Mary thinks. Hiding, emotional, chain-smoking. She finds him sitting in his car. Black suit, crying, weak. Death by suicide, he thinks. “Let’s get this over,” she says. Together, they go back into the anteroom and wait. Strains of The Old Rugged Cross filter through the stereo system. The body disliked The Old Rugged Cross. Funeral music, it said.

Black limo, long line of cars, headlights flashing. The procession makes its way into the cemetery, tires crunching, grinding, grating on gravel, un-disturbing to the entombed residents. Long dead floral tributes, trinkets on tiny graves, sun-bleached silk flowers with frayed ribbons, strewn asunder by wind and rain.

The body, Mary’s mother, lying in its box. They walk single file, tossing carnations as they pass. She and her father stand, stare at the box. The body has a new home. Death by suicide, she thinks.

 The House

Cars line the street. The body had friends. Eating, drinking, smoking, seemingly never-ending talk, nervous chattering. Blood-stained carpet in the hallway covered by throw rugs, the hidden secret. Where the hell is my father? Mary asks. No one knows. In his bedroom, annoyed, frantic, heartbroken. She gets in her car to leave this house that is no longer her home but can’t get out of the driveway.

The Gun

Mary wants to scream until her lungs hurt. Anger, frustration, and disbelief haunt her. Her father will never be himself again. He hides from reality. Her small son will never know his grandmother. His grandmother who shot herself in the head with a 357 Magnum and left no note to say why or goodbye. Self-inflicted gunshot, the police report says. Selfish, stupid acts, she thinks. Death by suicide, her son will say someday.

The Post-Mortem

           Autopsy is a verb. Examination and dissection of the body to determine the cause of death. Death by suicide, it says.     

The Survivor

If only I had known she was so unhappy, Mary thinks, blaming herself. No amount of avoidance, rage, anxiety, depression, or despair can turn the clock back and make it not happen. Time heals all wounds, they say. Maybe that’s true. Mary prays. Catharsis takes a lot of patience, they say. She hopes she can eventually accept the circumstances of her mother’s suicide and stop asking why. There is no one there to give her answers, anyway. Life goes on, they say. And so shall she. Her mother’s death by suicide will not determine who she is. And she will not let it define who her mother was. She will always carry memories of the goodness of her mother in her heart and share those memories with her children. And late at night when the voice creeps into her brain to remind her, she will tell it to bugger off.

The End, the voice said.