plants and light. I always thought you would never get the winter blues if you could just spend some time there every day. The abundance of flowers and moist air ensured that within its confines, it was eternally summer.
The warm pungency of earth and vegetation embraced me. My mother was perched on a settee with Aunt Gracie on the far side of the room. She seemed calm although she was blotting at her eyes with a delicate needlework hanky. Somehow, even after a sleepless night and what I knew had to be hours of crying, she still looked regal. Her blond hair was sleek and her clothing unwrinkled. She had the perpetually youthful appearance her elven blood granted her. She looked not a day over thirty-five even though she was well into her eighties.
“Abigail!” she exclaimed, jumping up as soon as she spotted me coming toward her.
“Mom, I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner.” I hugged her tightly trying to convey as much love and regret as possible into a single embrace.
“It’s alright dear,” she reassured me as I released her. “Your Aunt Gracie has been with me.”
I nodded before turning to hug my aunt as well.
“This is what families do. We help each other, through the good and the bad,” she told me with a reassuring smile, reaching out to tuck a stray lock of hair behind my ear. “I’m just glad you were able to be here to help with the funeral arrangements. I was never good as spectacles.”
“Me neither,” I grimaced. “It looks like we have at least forty five minutes before the funeral director gets here,” I said after checking the time on my phone. “Do you think we could have some tea and talk about a game plan before he arrives?”
Over tea we discussed what we wanted the funeral director to take care of for us and what my mother felt she wanted to handle herself.
“Your father already prepared Jason’s obituary,” she told me, pulling a sheet of paper I had not previously noticed from a side table.
I stiffened at the thought of my father writing Jason’s obituary. I tried to shake it off as I took the document from her hands. I could feel my barely restrained control beginning to slip for the second time in less than twenty four hours and I struggled to retain some semblance of composure in front of my mother. I met my aunt’s eyes and saw there a less intense version of the same anger I was feeling. I was guessing she had already read it.
Lassiter, Jason R., Age 27 died on September 23 rd at his sister’s home in Villanova, Pennsylvania. Jason was the Vice President of Operations for Lassiter Shipping, a subsidiary of Lassiter Enterprise Holdings. He is survived by his parents, Senator Quentin Lassiter and Katharine Clement-Lassiter of Gladwyne, Pennsylvania and his sister Abigail Lassiter of Villanova, Pennsylvania. Services will be held at [time, day and date of memorial service] at [place of service]. The private interment will be at the Odd Fellows Cemetery in Gladwyne. Relatives and friends are invited to a private reception following the internment at the home of Senator and Mrs. Lassiter.
The obituary was cold and succinct, exactly what I had learned to expect from my father. No mention of how he was the beloved son of Senator Quentin Lassiter, or that he would be missed by his family. It stated just the bare facts. I needed to remember to thank my father for his thoughtfulness in providing the fill in the blank sections for us to write in the particulars of the service. It was completely idiot proof. How methodical of him. I guess he was afraid to leave the obituary to us in case we outlandishly thought to mention that we actually cared for Jason. I was determined that my father would not be doing the eulogy.
“How… thoughtful of him,” I said in a strangled voice while offering my mother what I hoped passed for a smile. It was the best I could muster but I feared it was nothing more
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