Something Magical

My mother died on a Wednesday. I guess I should have seen it coming - she had been sick for a long time, and I went with her to all of her doctor’s appointments and chemo-sessions. I even picked a university that was close to home, so I didn’t have to move out of her house and could take care of her. I saw how small she was becoming, and I heard it loud and clear when we were told that we should stop focusing on remission, and start focusing on making her comfortable instead. Still, I must have been in denial, because it came like a shock. One moment, she was there, in the hospital bed we had set up in the living room, facing out towards the garden, she had loved and cared for all those years, and the next, she wasn’t. I knew it the second, she had left her body. It wasn’t so much that I could see it, but suddenly, I felt alone. More alone than I ever had before. A chill went down my spine, and I cried. I cried the whole night through, until I finally mustered up the courage to call the doctor at the first sign of daylight. I had been afraid, I would need to say it - the word, I didn’t want to say - but mom and I had known that doctor for months, so I guess she knew. I only sighed into the phone, and she told me she would be right over.

It was late October, so my student counselor advised me to take the rest of the semester off to get everything - and myself - figured out, and then I could take the courses again come spring. At the time it sounded like a good idea, but halfway through November, I longed to get out of the house. I had nowhere to go, no one to see. For the longest time, it had just been me and mom. My father left when I was very little, and we didn’t speak to mom’s family. I never knew why, but I didn’t even bother inviting them to the funeral. It was just me, the priest, and a couple of people from mom’s job. It was beautiful, though. That is, her colleagues told me it was. I could hardly see the flowers through my tears.

I came home, alone, after the funeral. The priest had told me it was normal to invite people over after the service for coffee, but I didn’t drink coffee, and it was a stupid tradition anyway, because the only person I wanted to see was her. She was the one I would talk to whenever I was sad, even if I was sad because of something she did.

I sat there, in my chair in the living room, head throbbing from all of the crying. The hospital bed was still in the room, but I was looking at her chair. The one across from mine, where she always sat, reading, thinking, or laughing about some dumb joke, I had made. We didn’t have a TV in the living room. She didn’t like them. She wouldn’t even let me get one in my room until I was 16. So long as she didn’t have to look at it. She liked music though. Where any other family would have placed their TV, we had one of those big, old record players. All of the walls were covered in shelves. All of the shelves held either books or records. I can’t remember how many times we would get complaints from the neighbors about our music being too loud, and we would turn it down, but then we would laugh. We would just sit there and laugh for the longest time.

She had all kinds of records - I remember how excited she was when she found out that newer artists were starting to also release their music on vinyl because “there’s no better sound than a good ol’ record” - but her favorite artist, by far, had always been Janis Joplin. We had listened to those records so much, that most of them only played a couple of songs all the way through anymore - the rest would jump or skip or just be crackling so much that you could hardly hear that she was even singing at all. I had asked my mom many times why she liked her so much, but all she would say was “there’s just something magical about her”. That had never made any sense to me, but I took it as just another one of those things, I would understand when I got older.

I remembered one time, I had come home from school, and To Love Somebody had been playing as I stepped through the door. My mom had rushed over to me, and just as I dropped my backpack on the floor next to the door, she had picked me up and carried me to the middle of the living room floor, where she started dancing, still holding me. My giggling soon turned into a laugh, as my mother tried her best to sing along, but failed miserably.

“One day,” she said, finally, after she put me down. “One day, this song will save your life, baby”.

I had no idea what that meant, but she had a habit of coming up with wild things like that, and she always said it with such conviction that my childish mind decided it must be true. So I stored it in the back of my head, and forgot all about it until that night after the funeral. I laughed to myself, knowing then how ridiculous it was, but then a warm feeling rushed over me. If anyone were to ask me about it now, I would deny it, but in that moment, I swore, I heard my mother laugh.

The months were long. At first, I would just sit in our house staring at all of the stuff, she left behind. Trying to find some meaning in it. Trying to find the tiniest glimmer of her, even. It worked for a while. I would look at something, and a memory would rush to my mind about me and her, and for a moment it would feel like she was there with me. But then I would open my eyes, and I would be alone again. And before I knew it, all of the stuff in the house would turn from little vaults of memories to just… Stuff. I began to realize just how much stuff there was. Too much stuff for such a little house. I tried to go for walks around the neighborhood to get away from all of it, but I would always have to come back eventually. At times, it felt hard to breathe in there. I tried to clean it out, pack it up, and just get rid of it all, but every time I had filled one or two boxes, I would turn right around and put everything back where it belonged. It didn’t feel right. I knew I wanted it out of my sight, but I also wanted to be able to see it again. Throwing it out felt like throwing her out.

Finally, a few days after Christmas, I decided to put it all in her room. It was a small room, that I’m not even sure was supposed to be used as a bedroom, but she really only needed to fit a bed in there, and now she wasn’t ever going to be in there anyway, so I could stack all the way to the door.

But even though, I kept reminding myself that her things weren’t going far - it would still be her stuff in her house - it was hard. I would pack half a box at a time before I had to sit down and breathe. Most of the time, cry too.

It took weeks. I started with all of the unimportant stuff - stuff, I didn’t even know she had, that held no memories, no feeling - and worked myself up through the ranks to her favorite books, her photo albums from before I was born, and finally, two days before I was supposed to go back to university, I started on her records.

They took up the most space. Physically, and emotionally. I held every one in my hands for a while before putting them in the box, to reminiscence about the times, we had listened to them, and what we had been doing at the time. It took way longer than it needed to, but it felt like the right way to do it.

I taped up the last box the night before the spring semester started. In spite of all of the times, I had longed to get out of the house to do things and meet people, it suddenly felt wrong. Walking out of the door felt wrong, leaving my mom’s house, talking to other people. It all felt wrong. I wanted to pull everything back out of her room and put it where it belonged, and then I wanted to sit in her chair until the end of me. If I walked out of the house, I was sure that would mean walking out on her too, and that was the last thing I wanted. I wanted to love her forever.

I sat down on the floor and looked at the last box. All of the Janis Joplin records.

‘I could sure use some magic right now’, I thought to myself, wishing I had not packed up the record player and put my TV in its place so I could listen to one of them right then. All of them, if that’s what it would take to make me feel better. But it was too late and I was too tired. My body was too heavy to move. I barely made it onto the couch where no one had ever sat, I was sure. That’s where I fell asleep.

I woke up to the sound of a text coming in on my phone. My head was groggy and my clothes were crumpled and uncomfortable from sleeping in them, but I finally mustered up the energy to look. It was from my student counselor.

‘Good morning. I know we spoke only last week, but I’d like to see you anyway. Please come to my office whenever you have time today. Hope you’re doing good, and that you have a good first day back at uni - H.G.’

I turned the screen back off and leaned back. A sigh escaped my chest. The night before, I had made up my mind to not go back to school, to anything, but now I was doubting that. Here was this woman who had been nothing but patient and kind - we had spoken a couple of times over winter break, even though it was her time off, too - and who had pulled all the right strings for me and taken on my load of applying for extended time on my diploma and re-signing me up for my classes when it was all too much to bear. She rooted for me.

I looked down at my clothes, and then at the clock. I still had two hours before I had to leave the house if I were to make it by her office before my first class. I could do things on my time and still get there. The least I could do for her was to see what she wanted, and tell her in person what I had decided.

I got off the couch and made my way to the shower. It occurred to me how long it had been since I’d last taken one, but then it had also been a long time since I’d left the house. The tea I made for myself was too weak to even drink, but something about wearing clothes that weren’t sweatpants and a shirt with more holes than fabric woke me up well enough. By the time I was ready to leave the house, I still had half an hour to go. Suddenly, I couldn’t wait. A feeling came over me like something was waiting for me on the other side of the front door, that I needed. Something just for me. I couldn’t explain it, but by the time I left, still 20 minutes early, I had no trouble going. The air was cold but still and the sky was clear and blue. There was something out there.

The quickest way from my house to campus was through the student housing area. There wasn’t really dorms at my university, but right next to campus, there was a whole block full of cheap apartments, and I had never known anyone to live there who didn’t go to my school. It had always been like that.

I walked along a small path, I had walked many times before, but this time I noticed it. I heard the sounds of people moving around, and I saw the bikes piled up on every corner. There was a smell of coffee in the air coming from somewhere above.

That’s when I heard it. It was faint at first, so I couldn’t be sure that was really what I was hearing, but as I got closer, I became certain. Out of an open door on the ground floor, a song. A song I knew very well. Janis Joplin’s To Love Somebody. It stopped me dead in my tracks. I couldn’t decide whether my sudden shudder was from the cold or the song, but I looked through the door, and there she was. With a big mane of untamed, blonde hair, sitting in a chair, holding a cup of tea. She was around my age, and there was something about how she looked like she belonged there more than anywhere else, but at the same time like she belonged nowhere at all, that drew me in. Suddenly, I was standing in her door.

“Hello,” she said, looking up at me, smiling.

I knew I wanted to say something, but I didn’t know what. My mind was a blur of fleeting thoughts and ideas and old memories. For a second I realized how odd it was that I was standing in the front door of a stranger’s apartment, and I was about to turn around and leave, but then she spoke again.

“You like Janis Joplin?”

I nodded.

“You want some tea? I don’t have to leave for another half hour or so”.

I took a step inside and looked around. Despite the cold outside and the open door, the place was very warm. I finally figured out a smile. “Thank you,” I said. Then, “hold on, let me send a text real quick”.

I pulled my phone out of my jacket pocket and opened the message thread with my student counselor.

‘Got held up drinking tea with a new friend. Will see you after classes today - F.D.’