Page 22 of Home to Christmas Island
I hope she knows that I adored her. That I always wanted to be as level-headed and as gracious as she was. I still do.
I get out of the car and walk towards the rows of headstones, my stomach flip-flopping as guilt gnaws at my insides. This cemetery isn’t even technically in Christmas Island, it's a few communities over, and that’s never sat well with me.
I haven’t been here since the funeral, and the memories from that day are making me feel suffocated.
I had been so, so numb. I was aware that everyone in the church was staring at me, watching to see how I would react. Alba could barely walk into the church; her dad had to physically help her to her seat. I, on the other hand, remained stoic. I refused to shed a single tear with everyone watching.
But listening to Uncle Albie give the eulogy, talking about how marrying his late wife also meant gaining the world’s best sister-in-law, and about the strange, beautiful dynamic of co-parenting with my mother, my hands started to shake. It was as though everything I was trying so desperately to keep bottled up was going to come out—one way or another.
The moment he finished speaking and started to walk back towards Alba and I in the church pew, I knew I had to leave. Right that second. I remember hearing Alba call out to me, but I didn’t turn around. I went back to the lake house by myself and the minute I closed the door behind me, it all came flooding out. In this one final safe space, I could let myself unravel.
But the house was quiet. Empty. It felt like it would always be empty, from that day forward. Something about that thought shattered me completely. I started to feel suffocated again and frantically packed a bag, promising to never step foot inside that house again.
I couldn’t stand the thought of her trapped up here on this hill forever, six feet underground. I always liked to imagine her on the wind instead, blowing through the birch trees in the summer, rustling through the windchimes and making waves on the lake.
I stop walking towards the headstones. I stop breathing. But Alba’s voice nags in my mind. I had promised her—promised her that I’d try. She had tried for me, in the days and months and years after the funeral. In the brief moments where I can push my own unrelenting will aside, I can admit that my cousin has always looked out for me. That she’s tried to help me however she can, and that she’s right about me needing to do this.
I take a deep breath and keep walking.
Alba told me where to find her, since I left before the burial and have never been back to see her grave: go over the little hill and three to the left of the large headstone with a pair of children’s shoes on top. I shudder at that.
I find her headstone and wonder to myself if it was Alba, or my uncle, or someone else entirely who chose it. It’s a beautiful, white marble. It looks clean and well maintained, and acid burns in the back of my throat. I wonder who’s responsible for keeping it like this. It certainly hasn’t been me, her only child.
I force myself to read the inscription: Margaret MacLeod—beloved mother, aunt, and friend.
I kneel down in the snow, trying not to collapse completely. I gently lay the bouquet of red berries in front of the headstone.
Hi Mom, I whisper—and immediately burst into tears.
This is not—to be clear—soft, mournful crying. This is ten years of running, full-on denial, complete and total ugly crying. I allow the guilt to wash over me. I feel embarrassed, sad, lonely. Ashamed for all of my choices since her death. And I miss her so much it hurts.
I’m sorry, I choke out, and think of how forgiving my mother always was. As long as you apologize Florence, and own up to it, you can make just about anything right. Any time I got in trouble, this was always her line to me.
And she’d make me do it, too. When I was eight, I pocketed some candy at the local corner store. When she caught me eating it at home, she marched me right back there. Tell them what you did Flora. I really didn’t want to, I kept trying to hide in the folds of her skirt. But she made me fess up. Made me say I was sorry. And made me help them organize their storage room every weekend for a month straight.
But once I apologized, her anger never lingered.
I’m so sorry, I say again, the words barely audible to even my own ears. I wonder if her disappointment in me now would dissipate as easily as it did after my brief attempt at thievery.
I really miss you, and— I take huge, gulping gasps between each word. And I should have come back sooner. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t be here without you. My hands are shaking, whether it’s from the cold or the sobbing or pure shock, I’m not sure. Maybe a combination of all three.
Would she understand why I’ve acted the way I have since she died? I torture myself with that thought, wondering if she’d accept my apology. If she’d forgive me. That tiny voice in my head says she would, but I don’t feel like I deserve it.
For the first time ever, I let the regret about the lake house really sink in. Why, why, why did I tell Uncle Albie to sell it? Why did I make such a stupid rash decision, in the midst of my grief, and then let my own stubbornness choke me into standing my ground? I feel so angry with myself, and it occurs to me now that leaving here and being able to go back to the lake house would actually be of some comfort. Yes, it hurt to be there without her—but it hurts even more knowing I can’t go back there at all.
And then I remember why I can’t go back to my childhood home and the anger I feel for myself shifts towards Alistair.
If he’d never come along, maybe the house wouldn’t have sold. Maybe I would have changed my mind after a year or so and taken it off the market. Maybe I would have decided to come home sooner. Maybe everything would have been different.
Oh Mom, I fucked up, I say, the bitterness apparent in my voice, talking to no one but myself and an empty graveyard. I really fucked it all up. A boy lives at our house. I’m hysterical again, the shame practically eating me alive. Does he bake there? Does our beautiful lake house ever smell like fresh bread or chocolate chip cookies? Or does it only smell like greasy take-out, or plain chicken, or whatever the hell men eat?
Something about this thought makes me cry even harder. I feel like the self-loathing and regret might knock me unconscious. Stupid, stupid Florence, you should have never sold that house.
I’m crying so hard I almost don’t hear the thud to my right.
It’s Alistair, who has sat down next to me in the snow. He’s wearing his uniform, which means he must be working today. He has his yellow and navy hat on this morning, the brim of it shielding his eyes from the sun, his gloved hands knitted between his knees. He stares ahead, down the hill towards the water.
I’m not polite about it.
