I buried my husband, and five days later my own family tried to bury me in lies. They failed. Now they’ll remember my name for the rest of their lives.
Subscribe. You don’t want to miss this one. My name is Anna May Johnson.
I am 68, and my house in Atlanta still smells like lilies and pine from the funeral sprays that crowded our parlor five days ago. The black dress I’ve been rotating since the service is getting shiny at the elbows. And when I wash my hands, a soft trace of rose still rises from my skin, as if grief has a perfume all its own.
I heard voices in the hallway before I saw the faces. Not his baritone, God keep him, but the clipped, bustling chorus of the living. They weren’t talking about Harold.
They were talking about me. “She still breathing?”
“Thought she’d have gone by now.”
My eldest grandson, Daryl, joked the way some boys laugh at their own meanness to see if it will grow into a personality. “Maybe we should check her pulse right during the will reading.”
Laughter rolled down the stairs like a dropped marble, bright, careless, and headed for damage.
I stood at the foot of the staircase, holding the banister Harold polished every spring. He’d rub the wood with lemon oil and an old shirt, humming off-key while the house soaked up the shine. From there, I could see my family fan through the entrance like realtors at a showing.
They had sticky notes in sherbet colors, melon, mango, and that aggressive traffic-cone orange. I watched my granddaughter Kendra tack an orange square onto Harold’s grandmother clock, the one that had ticked through two wars and four marriages. Then onto my tufted wingback.
Then onto the china cabinet we bought for our silver anniversary. Her phone’s camera app flicked on. She paced and measured, eyes narrowed like a general surveying high ground.
“This room’s going to be a spa once she moves out,” Kendra announced. “We’ll open the walls for more light.”
My daughter-in-law, Chantel, breezed in with a tray of champagne flutes, bubbles like little helium balloons fighting their way toward good behavior. “We’re celebrating Harold’s legacy,” she said.
“He built an empire. Now we’ll carry it forward.”
“And sweep out the ghosts,” someone murmured. Laughter again.
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