My Mother Used Her Kohl’s Cash to Buy Her Husband’s Urn
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Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest 2024 (view all the winners)
Honorable Mention, Tom Howard, Poetry
What I remember most from the nights is how they were the same as his mornings. What I
remember most from his mornings is that they were still coming. There is no remembrance
without pain. Pain from either the wish of re-living it or the memory itself. Sometimes when I
want to feel alive I remember the dead. The stillness of his bones enough to use mine to run.
The hollowness of his sunken chest enough to rumble my breaded stomach. My father chose
silence long before he knew he would live in it. He changed from what he chose to be into the
only thing he would be. It is one thing to lose a blood love but it must be another to lose a love
made by choice. My mother chose to place his lungs in rice long before the doctors decided to
tease the tumor. Let the grains drain his tumored veins long before she stopped cooking. My
father was a quiet man. He liked porch swings and warm pastries. He didn't buy anything
he didn't need and always woke up with enough time to eat a long breakfast. A man once
called my father an honest man. His sentence is the only one I remember from the funeral.
Or the visitation. I can't remember which one we say it was when consoling our Muslim family
that he was buried when he had begged to be burnt. His ashes rest in a large picture frame urn
in our living room. My mother used her Kohl's Cash to buy her husband's urn. What I remember
most from the mornings following his death is how my mother woke with her wedding band. He
wore his even when his finger melted to the size of a smoothie straw. What I remember most
from watching his rest was knowing how much he wasn't there and how people aren't always
where they appear to be. I wondered which world his thoughts had him in, or whether he had any
thoughts at all. I wondered if he wished to be here, or already gone, or whether he was waiting
for us to be ready. He waited until two days after his birthday, until we had all eaten a long
breakfast and came to sit at his bedside at noon. He had always been thoughtful in that way.
