Russian Roulette #HAWMC

Today is a free day of writing. It is also 3 days before my mother's birthday. It is also the fifth year anniversary of her death. The causes were natural, no autopsy preformed due to the fact that she was badly decomposed. You see, she died alone. No one really knows what day she died. No one knows what time. The Oakland police were called because she had not come out of her house in days, there was a smell of death in the air around my childhood home.

I didn't know she passed until my step dad called and said to call a phone number. The morgue picked up on the other end of the line.

"Hello, Oakland Police Department - Coroner's office, how may I help you?"

"Um, my name is Amanda P. I was told to call about my mother Lynn..."

"I am sorry to have to tell you this, we found her body in her home. She had been dead a while. We'd like you to come in to claim a few things that we took to identify the body. When can you come in?"

"Umm, tomorrow, I guess.. right now I'm at work. What time do you open?"

I tell my boyfriend, I tell my step dad. They both go in with me to the Coroner's office.

The officer in charge explains to me what happened. They hand me a manila envelope with my mother's ID card, a couple of credit cards, the travel carrier that she called a purse. They tell me that they are going to send me a check in the mail for the money that was found in the purse. $25 dollars and some change, they account off of a few things from the day they found her body.

I am numb to the world. I find out I have only weeks to clear out what I want to take from my childhood home, leaving books, furniture, an early 1900 Singer Sewing Machine. The kind that was foot powered. The house being foreclosed on May 1, 2007.

The nights painful to sleep, raw with emotion, terrified to close my eyes because I still saw my childhood home. The hallway to her room. I reach for the door. I open it and that is when I wake up screaming. My boyfriend tries to comfort me. I sob uncontrollably. The same month my step Grandmother dies.

Three more deaths during the year make me dread the ringing of my telephone in the middle of the night. I am very aware of my Grandfather's mortality, of my step dad's mortality, of mine. I quit my job. I lose 20 pounds. I become a shut in. Depression takes hold and I force myself to get help after 3 months of not seeing anyone except my boyfriend and my father.

In October I fly back to Minnesota. I told myself, if my grandfather asks I'd move there to take care of him. He was the only family I had left. He told me to go back to California, live my life. Be happy.

He passed away in 2010. Now I feel alone in the world, even when I have two daughters, a husband and a few friends that I haven't yet met in real life.

Tears flow even now remembering the year 2007. The year of death.