Page 83 of The Problem with Falling
As long as he needed me to stand with him.
Then we went to bed together, and I held him through the night.
Around three in the morning, I felt Theo gently kiss my forehead. His arms were still wrapped around me, and he pulled me closer to him. “Awake?” he murmured against my ear.
“Awake,” I muttered back.
He nuzzled his head into my shoulder, yawning. “Weeping Willow?”
“Yes, Mr. Grump?”
“I was pretty lost before you came along. Thank you for finding me.”
CHAPTER 27
Theo
Death was the only life guarantee that humans had. We weren’t promised riches and fortune, or fame, love, or success, yet we were all promised a final chapter. A novel’s ending would find all of us one day, and that was the only promise made to us when we took our first breath on this planet.
With life came death. Still, that didn’t make it any easier.
The celebration of PaPa’s life took place at my grandparents’ home. It was nothing like a regular funeral. There weren’t sad stories being shared around or sad songs being sung. It was more so a grand celebration of life. Bright, vibrant colors. A tie-dye T-shirt-making station out back by the water. Whiskey shots.A lotof whiskey shots. Irish music and dancing throughout the place. PaPa always said when his time came, he wanted people to celebrate, to sing and shout, and that was exactly what everyone did. Even with heavy hearts, we still gave PaPa the send-off he requested.
His final request was to be cremated and then spread around within all the elements. “That way, you all can see me and feel me within everything,” he told Grandma and me once at our nightly dinners.
Grandma moved around the whole night as if she were on autopilot. She talked to everyone, she smiled, and she danced. She acted as if she were okay even though I knew she was far from all right. How could she have been? She was missing the biggest part of her soul. Nothing would ever fill the space in her heart the way her husband had.
I couldn’t imagine the amount of emptiness she was feeling.
It wasn’t until I crossed her path in the kitchen that I saw her reality. She was alone in there when I walked through her French doors. She stood in front of an open cabinet with a coffee tin in her hands. Inside the tin were all of PaPa’s homemade recipes that he’d written down.
I walked over to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. She jumped slightly and wiped at her eyes. “Oh, sweetheart. Hi. I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Quiet on my feet.”
“You always did move around like a mouse. I swear, when all the other kids ran around wild, you were so quiet.” She turned to face me and placed a hand against my cheek. “PaPa always said you were the quietest with the loudest thoughts.”
“Why do I get the idea that your thoughts are pretty loud as of late?”
She smiled and sniffled a bit. She glanced around the kitchen, then back to the recipe cards. “It’s loud in the house, but it feels…quieter. Doesn’t it?”
“It does.”
“I miss him.”
“Me too.”
She smiled, but it fell quickly to a frown. I was glad she didn’t find the need to pretend to be okay around me like she did with everyone else. “Theo, I—”
Before she could finish her sentence, the French doors were pushed open, and a woman wearing all black entered. Who in the hell would wear all black to my grandfather’s funeral? Color. The theme was fucking color.
It wasn’t until I locked eyes with the woman that I realized who exactly I was staring at.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I barked out, my whole body heating instantly.
She blinked a few times before she parted her lips and said, “Hi, son.”
My mother.
