There is a lock on my front door that I haven't taken off. It's one of those locks you install high up, above the regular deadbolt, so someone can't reach it or won't think to look there. We put it on in the second year because my mother got out twice. The first time, a neighbor found her at the end of the driveway. The second time, she got about three blocks before a woman I had never met drove her back. My mother was very polite to her the whole way, apparently telling her about her garden.
My mother has been gone since February, but the lock is still on the door. My husband asked in April if I wanted him to take it off and patch the door. I said not yet, and he hasn't asked again. Every time I leave the house, I reach up for it. I did that four or five times a day for two years, so my arm still does it before I remember. Then I put my hand down. The lock is ugly and the wrong color. My children notice it when they come home, I can tell, but they don't say anything.
My mother had been on hospice since November. The hospice nurse said we were probably looking at a few days, maybe a week, so I called my sister and texted the funeral home. Later that night, my daughter sat with my mother while I went upstairs to shower. For three and a half years, I had showered with the door open and a monitor on the counter. I never washed and rinsed my hair in the same trip because you can't hear anything with water in your ears. That night, because my daughter was downstairs and I had been told there were still a few days, I let the water run. I put on actual pajamas and fell asleep. My daughter woke me around four fifteen, crying, and said my mother had stopped breathing. She had fallen asleep in the chair too. Neither of us was awake for it. At the funeral, people kept saying she had gone peacefully and that she was lucky to have me. I said thank you each time. The lock is still there, and I still don't know why I can't let it come off.
There is a lock on my front door that I haven't taken off. It's one of those locks you install high up, above the regular deadbolt, so someone can't reach it or won't think to look there. We put it on in the second year because my mother got out twice. The first time, a neighbor found her at the end of the driveway. The second time, she got about three blocks before a woman I had never met drove her back. My mother was very polite to her the whole way, apparently telling her about her garden.
My mother has been gone since February, but the lock is still on the door. My husband asked in April if I wanted him to take it off and patch the door. I said not yet, and he hasn't asked again. Every time I leave the house, I reach up for it. I did that four or five times a day for two years, so my arm still does it before I remember. Then I put my hand down. The lock is ugly and the wrong color. My children notice it when they come home, I can tell, but they don't say anything.
My mother had been on hospice since November. The hospice nurse said we were probably looking at a few days, maybe a week, so I called my sister and texted the funeral home. Later that night, my daughter sat with my mother while I went upstairs to shower. For three and a half years, I had showered with the door open and a monitor on the counter. I never washed and rinsed my hair in the same trip because you can't hear anything with water in your ears. That night, because my daughter was downstairs and I had been told there were still a few days, I let the water run. I put on actual pajamas and fell asleep. My daughter woke me around four fifteen, crying, and said my mother had stopped breathing. She had fallen asleep in the chair too. Neither of us was awake for it. At the funeral, people kept saying she had gone peacefully and that she was lucky to have me. I said thank you each time. The lock is still there, and I still don't know why I can't let it come off.
