The road to my mother's is dirt, narrow, and an obstacle course of teeth jarring ruts - you take your life in your hands if you exceed 5 mph and God help you both if you meet a vehicle coming the opposite way. The leaves are turning and from a distance the woods appear to be on fire - the air is crisp and a little harsh but the lake is placid and deeply blue. A family of wild ducks passes by the dock and their chatter echoes in the otherwise silent afternoon.
The house, a summer vacation cottage with some improvements really, is a nasty little place with small rooms and a large outside deck. We enter through the kitchen and I cringe at the grime on the countertops - a thin film of it seems to cover everything and it smells and feels of grease. The living room, which thankfully opens onto the deck, is musty with the faint smells of urine, dirty laundry, and old newspaper - the coffee table shines with fresh polish but for some odd reason, this is the only item my mother has ever chosen to clean and the rest of the room is shabby and overlaid with dust and dirt. Despite the chill in the air, my parents are sitting on the outside deck beyond the smudged and fingerprint smeared sliding glass doors, my daddy reading and my mother knitting and drinking sherry. Having spotted the ducks, the dogs run happily through the house to the deck and down the stairs to the edge of the water - the alarmed ducks protest and rapidly swim away and while the dogs follow them on land, neither is brave enough to set a paw in the cold water and both eventually return to the deck, panting and out of breath. They anxiously greet my parents then both drift inside and lie side by side by the fire.
We spend a quiet if somewhat distant from each other afternoon, talking of nothing - at length and in great detail. After so many years of practice, it comes almost easily except for the invisible undercurrent of tension that I feel.
I am not comfortable in this cottage with its pretty lake view, it makes me feel like I want a long, hot shower and the prospect of eating a supper prepared in its kitchen makes me vaguely ill. I finally plead a sick headache and no appetite and am able to escape, hugging my daddy briefly and bypassing my mother. I do agree to dinner at a restaurant halfway between our respective homes the next weekend - it's against my better judgement and I'm pretty sure I'll regret it, but my husband glares at me when I hesitate and not wanting to fight on a second front, I say yes. My daddy gives me a small, sad smile for this - it just makes me feel more guilty - in my heart, I think he will never stop trying to make things right between my mother and me. It's a habit he can't seem to break, a hope he refuses to let go of until her final dying days and then it becomes a cause.
I don't know why I don't give in, it would comfort him to have us reconcile and even a deathbed formality would
preserve appearances and make things easier for everyone in these last days. But I refuse to provide this one last illusion. The old habit of hate and the new one of self preservation outlast and overcome the ones of guilt and shame and the need to please. My mother's death comes and goes and the part of me that isn't relieved celebrates quietly. Ironic that a man who has spent his life comforting the grieving does not understand when it's time to take a step back and let people be.
The chief difficulty with habits is they're habit forming.
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