A Fresh Life

“Really?” Jill had already spoken to three Lindas and two Marilyns, all claiming the same thing. She watched the women buzzing around the house, stopping briefly to speak to one another, introduce themselves, and then buzz around the dining room table to eat. She walked to the stairs, the desire to lie down leading her toward her old bedroom in an almost hypnotic state. She put her hand on the banister and started a slow climb. She was exhausted. She had only slept five hours since seeing her mother’s body at the hospital two days before.

“Can I ask you a personal question?”

Jill was half-way up the stairs before she turned around. “I’m sorry?”

“A personal question, do you mind?” It was one of the ladies from the knitting circle from that time when her mom had made the misguided decision to take up an activity that would require her to actually stay in one place.

“Go ahead.” Jill looked over the knitting lady’s shoulder and saw more women heading her way. They started forming a line, literally, a line. Where was Todd, Jill wondered. Why didn’t anyone want to regale him with their stories? Jill imagined him locked in his closet with decade-old pot that he probably found in one of his old hiding spots.

“Are you going to write about your mom in the column—about this, I mean?” Nobody had used the word death or died all day.

The other women standing nearby heard the question and watched Jill expectantly. “I probably won’t write about her for awhile,” Jill said. She wanted to go upstairs and be alone in her old room, which she had moved back into temporarily. Her father hadn’t asked her to, but he hadn’t asked her not to either, which Jill took as his best attempt at a request for help. Todd had his own wife and children to look after. Who did Jill have waiting for her downtown? And besides, her mother would have wanted her to stick around and help. Jill knew that her father hadn’t poured his own cup of coffee since the day her parents were married almost forty years before.

One of the women in the back of the line was trying to get Jill’s attention. “I loved that one last week about your mother’s heirloom tomatoes.” She yelled this when Jill got to the top of the stairs, catching the attention of even more of the women in earshot.

“My favorite was the one you wrote a few months ago about your mom’s spring pilgrimage to the farmer’s market,” another woman says. “I went with her to three different markets just a few weeks…before. All the vendors knew her.”

“I went with her, too.” Jill heard this from several women at once, like a chorus, like the congregational “Amen” after Rabbi Birnbaum led Kaddish at the gravesite.

“Who here didn’t receive a jar of Phyllis’ favorite honey last fall?”

Jill held her breath. The question was clearly rhetorical, but what if some of the women raised their hands? Her mother couldn’t possibly have remembered every friend for every occasion. Or could she have? Was she that good? The honey thing was a well-known obsession of her mom’s. Jill had written about it in a column the previous September: the way her mother scoured the markets of Highland Park and its surrounding towns for the most unusual blends. She put honey on her yogurt, apples, and pears. The custom of dipping apples in honey each fall was the one Jewish custom that Jill remembered her mother implementing with any regularity. Eddie had hoped for a touch more tradition, a modicum of the observance that his own parents had instilled in his childhood home, a notch more than the yearly sojourn to Temple Shalom for the High Holy Days; but considering his demanding work and newspaper reading schedule, he relinquished the right to demand it.

Somebody in the crowd laughed. “She was non-stop about that honey. And then there was that winter of the Brussels sprouts.”

More women laughed. Some wiped their eyes. “She swore they tasted like fries if you used the right amount coarse salt and roasted them for thirty minutes.”

Jill remembered that too, the winter of the Brussels sprouts—or Brussels sprout, as her mother insisted on correctly writing on the grocery list. She remembered the spring of the artichoke, the summer of the rhubarb, the fall when a parsnip made it into every single meal.

Others joined in the homage to seasons past. They talked about Phyllis’ love of walking up and down Sheridan Road and her detours to watch the waves of Lake Michigan splash against the rocks on the shore.

Jill knew that these conversations were meant to comfort her, but rather than feeling comforted by the idea that her mother had friends who really loved her and knew her well, she felt jealous of them for usurping so much of her mother’s time. Every one of these friends, old and new, wanted a moment alone with Jill to tell her how much they loved her mother, to tell Jill how much Phyllis would be missed, to say that their best friend could never be replaced. And it’s not that Jill wanted to deny these women their grief or suggest that someone as wonderful as her mother could indeed be replaced. But the truth was, Jill thought, you could find another friend. A mother you got once.

“Excuse me,” Jill said. She went to the dining room, knowing full-well that she should be looking for a place to actually sit. She put both hands on the dining room table and leaned in against it, trying not to fall face-first into a large platter of smoked salmon.

What was she supposed to do now without her mother there to tell her? Whatever you want. This voice came from a deep cavern, her gut, the voice she never trusted. Her instincts were always wrong, a fear that her mother affirmed whenever the chance presented itself. Jill didn’t want to just sit though, she wanted to lie down. She went to the couch, moved her mom’s favorite pillows, the ones with the needle-pointed rhubarb plants, and made enough room to take a nap right there in front of God-only-knew how many people who had come to console the family on their loss. Who, but Phyllis Bloom, would deny her the simple pleasure of rejecting the world and simply closing her eyes and praying that these people would all go away? Nobody, Jill thought, as she drifted closer to sleep. There is nobody here but me.

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