Gyspy's Train Station, [and the souls that ride the tracks]

This is a small part of something much larger, some background information on the death of one of the protagonist's mothers.

When a person shares the space of a person who is dying, he experiences something very few people ever do. There is a maelstrom that forms, in those moments where the soul leaves the stiff vessel, and begins its travel. The departed soul is permitted to exit that way, in fact it is propelled through it. But that vortex is not semi permeable, it is not fastidious, small parts of the souls of the present living not strong enough to fortify itself and hold fast to its corporal being will travel with the dead. And this is when a part of you ‘dies’; although it isn’t a death, it’s an progression, moving on to a new place. And that part of you does not accompany the soul of the departed, nor do they meet, but rather it wanders aimlessly alone.

Milosh watched from a chair in a far corner of the dimly lit bedroom as his mother took her last breaths. She had lost interest in illumination a long time ago, hated the thought of being seen in such a homely state. The room was dark, and the young man sat in the room shrouded in shadows, his elbows rested on his knees, lanky curls falling around his face as he looked down on his interlaced fingers. His mother appeared at peace, lain amongst plush white comforters and down pillows. From where he sat, his mother retained her angelic appearance. Her olive skin glowed against the small nightlight plugged on the wall, her dark hair framed her face, curls similar to his but deeper, shinier. She was small, the sheets nearly swallowed her, but she still carried the large presence she always had.

Milosh could not sit at her bedside. When he sat close to her, she smelled like the sick, she looked emaciated, and the static rhythm of her breath unsettled him. He sat far away, and remembered her as the mother he knew, whispering to him before bed.

“You’re a special boy.” she would tell him. “You’re going to change the world someday.”

Milosh believed everything she ever told him, just like anyone else who encountered her did.

“Don’t ever quit.” he would hear, each time he walked with his head bowed, or his lips turned up into a frown. “You will dominate.”

Milosh could not dominate. He had lost a small, essential part of himself when he lost his mother. Seated in a wooden desk chair in the corner of the small room covered in shadows, a sticky heat hanging over the two of them, one she couldn’t feel for she was constantly plagued by chills, Milosh waited. Before it was over, he would intermittently remove his gaze from his interlaced figures to her small face covered in a thin layer of sweat, and see a slight smile on her face. She was responding to the attention he was giving her. But Milosh couldn’t hold his gaze there for long, his mother should have known she couldn’t fool him. She had taught him to read people. He knew the end was near. She knew. And each smile was a cruel guise meant to lull him into a false sense of security, where he could begin to plan for the future, where he could see her as an old woman cradling the grandchildren he would one day grant her. But that wasn’t the case. She was exuding the old intonations, telling him not to quit…

You will dominate, her smile said.


Or maybe that wasn’t the case at all. Maybe it was as she once said, ‘let people see you in death as you were in life‘. Of course, he thought she was referring to eulogies, but maybe she hoped rigor mortis would leave her smiling for eternity. Smiling as worms and maggots feasted on her emaciated body…

As he watched her eyes close, her chest heave and drop, peace overcame her, and her soul left. Milosh did not have to rise from his chair. He did not have to take her pulse, or listen for small breath sounds, or check her temperature. He could hear nothing, and that’s how he knew she had gone. For one fleeting moment, he felt absolute silence, absolute emptiness. She did not project any moods, nor thoughts, nor desires; there was nothing. And as she left, parts of his soul left via the vortex between two dimensions, between this universe and the one reserved for lamented humankind. A destination that has been our birthright, to live in a place without sickness, without poverty, without cruelty.

He did not weep.

When he was ready, he stood and turned off the small night light. He called the night nurse who was waiting in the living room, she called an ambulance, and Milosh went out to the garden in the back yard. It was late evening, the sun was just above the horizon, the pink sphere peeked between the cypress in the backyard just enough so that he could see the silhouette of the bush he sought. Without pruning shears or scissors he plucked the hyacinth orchids with his bare hands. He snapped the stems, and placed the decapitated heads in a pile on the ground. When he had plucked almost every healthy looking flower from the bush, he brought them inside and placed them on the stripped bed.

It was for the silence. Now of course, the quiet was interrupted by his racing, thunderous thoughts. Orchids were his mother’s favorite flower. He had to fill the space.

He closed the door to the room, so that the fragrant orchids would replace the smell of medication and disease.

It is a singular sensation, wandering as a lesser person then you were seconds before; a feeling not simulated as of yet by any narcotic- stimulant, hallucinogenic, or depressant. It  turns a person into a wanderer, empty in heart and mind. There are memories, thoughts that beckon to be pondered, but the wall in your mind- the one that relives those last moments, cannot be breached. You walk, although you cannot tell you are moving until you arrive at your destination. You encounter obstacles; a doorknob, a threshold, a chair in your path and you may only stare at the alien structure as if it is something your eyes have never beheld before. You are heavy as a lead weight, and yet light as a feather, floating aimlessly in a nimbus cloud of confusion.

He walked through the dimly lit house, and looked out the open door where he saw the nurse standing in the driveway watching two paramedics push the gurney with his young mother’s corpse laying supine into a dormant ambulance. They fed her feet into the ambulance first, so that Milosh could see where his mother’s head was covered, could see the form of it through the sheet that covered her. When it pulled away, the lights atop the death carriage spinning with no sound, the nurse walked back up the driveway, tears drying on her cheeks.

“It never gets easier.” she said, shaking her head as she made her way past him, putting one hand on Milosh’s shoulder, meant for solace. She took the sheets from the pile on the bedroom floor, put them in a garbage bag, and tidied up the room. Working efficiently, she disinfected all surfaces in the room, never disturbing the orchids on the bed. She commented on them, recalling the time his mother had said she wanted something beautiful to lie in her place on her death bed. The nurse with steady hands removed the sheets, the medical supplies and her belongings from the home. She offered Milosh one last hug, told him that there was dinner warming in the oven, and left a number. She drove away, promising that she would be at the memorial.

The memorial took place in his mother’s home, pictures of the deceased crammed the place and joyful music filled the air. Guests arrived from his past to pay their respects, people he hadn’t seen since he was a child, people who his mother owed -who had absolved the debts- and people who never reverted from the gypsy way; they were passing through and came by when they heard the news. When the celebration was over and Milosh once again found himself alone, he placed the urn that held his mother’s ashes on the bedside table in her room. It was orbed shape, with a screwed tight top that once closed, the pattern on it meshed with the pattern on the orb and an untrained eye would never know there was a hollow inside and an cavity left to place anything inside.

His mother had been a nomad, a dancing drifter in a past life. The two of them once traveled all over the world, sustaining themselves in each new place on the graciousness of wealthy, unhappily married men. This had gone on until he turned fifteen, when his mother grew sick. Her lover at the time bought her a house, and supported her until he divorced his own wife and asked for his mother’s hand in marriage. She accepted, although she didn’t love him, but never felt guilty, because she could read him and see that what he thought was love wasn’t that at all. It was more like a miserable adoration, his despair led him to find something younger and lither, hoping that his problems would end there. Although it couldn’t be denied that he had a internal need to care for her as she was ill.

Her husband returned to his own wife three moths before she passed. She had joked, weeks after his congenial departure, that it was time to pack up the Honda and journey to another town. He wanted to go with her, but she wasn’t strong enough.
 

His mother suffered for seven years before she died.
 

Milosh called his employer from his mother’s landline phone and quit his job. He put the urn in the passenger’s seat of the car, and drove for days. He had no destination, but when he got there, he wouldn’t turn back. He spread a little bit of his mother’s ashes along the way. When he was left with an empty urn, he found himself in a college town in the southeast.

He called the number on the first “for rent” sign he saw, one for a loft apartment above a insurance agency downtown, and immediately moved in.

He put the empty urn on the black laminate counter spotted with green and white, in the small kitchen the night he moved in. That night, in an empty apartment that still smelled like the cats fur and the flavored cigarillos of the last owner, he leaned against the humming refrigerator and wept for his mother, and for the piece of his soul that left with her.

Author's Note

So, this is a little excerpt from a novel called "Daddy's Inferno", but it stands alone, so I put it up to get an idea of what people think of the writing. Please let me know what you think!

Reviews

[Flo_writer]

This make me wonder what else is in store for Milosh. A very interesting way to choose a destination by driving until the last ashes of the decease has been cast in the winds of passing cities. This leaves me wanting more and I'm sure it'll interest others to read the book.

[The DuchessPoet]

This is incredible ... absolutely amazing !
I lost my Mother 3 weeks ago and this in so many ways hit home!

You are one of the most talented and gifted writers that I read on this site!

[Gandré]

It is amazingly well written, I even would buy the book. It is rich text and my imagination is evolving with the lines, just compelling. I am wondering about your chosing the Czech name "Milos", nice. Have they been 1968 emmigrants? Just curious. Thank you for reviewing my small piece Justice, much appreciated.