January by Carrie Mullenholz

Author’s Note: This story is about a family dealing with the loss of a family member.  It focuses on Hannah and how her college life is affected and what she sees her family go through.  She goes through some personal growth realizing death does happen and it affects a lot of people. She learns that there are roles she has to play in her life that aren’t always pleasant and has to learn to not be selfish about everything. I got this idea from reading Music of the Swamp and reading about Sugar seeing dead bodies for the first time and it made me think about the first time I did so it took off from there. I’m proud of the complexity of the piece, because I think it’s one of the more complex ideas I’ve written about and I feel like it’s realistic.  But I know it needs some work.  I’m curious if I need to cut down on some characters because I didn’t want there to be too many, but I couldn’t decide who to cut.  I also went back and forth from making this in first person to third person and I couldn’t decide if third person worked well for this.  I’ve always written in first person because I like to have my characters thoughts a lot in the story and I didn’t really do that in this. I want to revise the scene where they see Jacob’s body, because I was afraid to make it melodramatic and cliché so I didn’t do everything I wanted to do with that, because that was supposed to be a crucial moment in the story.

           

Tuesdays and Thursdays were Hannah’s least favorite days of the week, she had decided.  They were the days filled with the longest classes and she always had to work afterward.  She propped her phone behind her laptop screen in her Geology class so she could text without the professor seeing her.  She thought about screaming at the top of her lungs just to see what would happen, but she decided against that.  College had sucked so far for her.  She hadn’t made any new friends and she was tired of her old friends.  She joined a sorority just because her mom had wanted her to, but she had decided the majority of the girls were bitches.  But she did have lunch plans with one of them today, so she was hoping, maybe, she would make a friend. She wondered if she had moved away from her hometown to go to college if it would have been different. She saw her phone light up with a text message from her half-brother, John, who lived up north. 

“Oh my God. Jacob died?” Jacob was one of her uncles on her mom, Charlotte’s side. Her first instinct was to feel numb and immediately think that it was a joke.  Her brother was significantly older now, but he used to play tricks on her to make her think she was adopted.  It had been at least ten years since he had done that, though. She thought to text her mom, because she would know,

“Why did John text me that Uncle Jacob died?”  She watched her phone as the nerve-wracking ellipses appeared and didn’t disappear for what felt like hours.

“Just go to lunch and call me when you’re done,” she had replied.  Hannah checked the time on her phone and saw that there was only five minutes left in class.  Too much time, she decided,

“No, what’s going on?”

“Call me when you get out of class.”  Shit. She knew it had to be true.  Her mouth started filling up with saliva or as she liked to say her mouth was sweating, typically a sign that she was about to have an anxiety attack and throw up. She slowly started packing up her stuff, even though she hated it when students did that before the professor was done talking.  She had to make an exception this time.  She waited on the professor to stop droning on about something called shale and was the first one out of the classroom.  She had her phone unlocked waiting to press the call button to her mom.

“Hey, are you out of class?”

“Yes. What is going on?”

“Evelyn and I are on our way to pick you up. Meet us at the Quad loop.” Evelyn was her mom’s best friend and boss so she could tell they were headed from work.

“Okay, bye,” Hannah hung up shakily and texted her potential friend to cancel their lunch plans.  She walked out of the building and into the Alabama January, which happened to be in the sixties that day, but could turn into the thirties tomorrow.  She saw Evelyn’s light blue Mini Cooper pull around the loop and her mom got out.  She looked at her and said,

“He’s gone.”

Uncle Jacob’s house was a cold house, but the people inside it were warm.  The entire house, except two of the bedrooms, was covered in tile of some sort. Jacob was a hot-natured person so the temperature was always set on 65 degrees.  Charlotte reminded Hannah to take pajama pants and a long sleeved shirt to spend the night, even though it was the middle of July.  She got excited the instant they pulled on the gravel road that went to their house.  They’d pull up to the carport filled with not only cars but at least four dogs that would trip over themselves to greet you. She loved that house with its massive family room with the vaulted ceiling and the cushy lined pool outside.  She loved getting out of the car to see her sweet uncle with his almost too tight hugs, her kind-hearted aunt Liz that always had some exciting plan for them when she visited, and her two favorite cousins, Valerie and Nicole.  Valerie was only eight months younger than Hannah so they were very close, even though she only got to visit them at Christmas and during the summers, when she still lived up north. Whenever their grandmother, would take them somewhere, they would think Hannah looked like Jacob’s daughter and that Valerie looked like Charlotte’s daughter. Hannah hated being reminded of that, because she wanted to look and be like her beautiful Mama and got jealous of Valerie.  She wasn’t jealous now.  Valerie had lost her daddy and it wasn’t fair. 

Hannah had always thought she’d lose her daddy first.  It was a morbid thought, but that’s how her brain worked.  Her daddy was 15 years older than her mama and she was terrified of him dying.  It didn’t stop there for her, whenever her parents would go on vacation without her, she made herself sick over the thoughts of them dying while they were gone.  Hannah had started at a young age telling people she loved them every time she left them, just in case something happened and she would never see them again.  Hannah wasn’t scared of death itself, just the thought of people she loved leaving her alone.  She couldn’t remember if she had told Jacob she loved him the last time she saw him.  She hadn’t seen him since Easter.

Hannah had been planning to go visit Valerie that following weekend since she and Nicole had gone to Puerto Rico on Christmas to visit Uncle Jacob and his new wife, Mara.  Since Hannah had moved to Auburn, Valerie would spend Christmas night and a few days after in Auburn with her.  Aunt Liz had insisted Hannah still come to visit that weekend like she had been planning.  She would drive over to Montgomery on Saturday and spend the night and then drive with them to Union Springs to the funeral home.  It seemed like in some weird way, God had planned it like that.   He had died in Puerto Rico in his sleep, according to Mara. It had been a little less than a month since the girls visited. It took them several days to get his body shipped home, but Sunday was when they would get a chance to see his body before it was cremated.  Valerie wasn’t an open person like Hannah was.  Hannah couldn’t keep something to herself if she tried.  She knew not to pry with Valerie and said,

“I’m not going to make you talk about it. I know everyone has been talking to you and telling you how sorry they are and I know you don’t want to think about it.  But I’m just going to say I love you and I am sorry and whenever you are ready to talk about it, I am here.”  They hugged and Valerie said,

“Thank you for understanding.”   They went and grabbed dinner at a Mexican place and to see a movie with their Uncle Bradley.  He didn’t have any kids of his own, but treated Nicole, Hannah and Valerie like they were.  The movie sufficiently helped them keep their minds off of everything, even though Nicole and Liz had decided to stay in and watch a movie.

That Sunday they drove to the funeral home in two cars, one with Liz, Nicole, and Bradley in it and the other with Hannah and Valerie.  Hannah had to drive back to Auburn immediately after, because her sorority was having a mandatory event that night. They kept the radio on as many happy songs as she could find.  If there was any mention of something negative in a song, she would change it in fear that she would upset Valerie. Hannah’s parents and grandmother came in one car from Auburn.  They had gotten there before them and were already inside.  They walked inside the funeral home which looked like a form of her grandmother’s living room.  The main room had several floral covered couches and fake flowers in a variety of vases.  Anytime Hannah saw fake flowers she ironically thought of the vases of fake flowers people left at gravesides.  She had grown to find that rather pointless. It’s not like the person was still there, plus if they were, why would you bring fake flowers instead of real ones?  Everyone had gathered around the mortician as he explained what was going on, 

“He’s going to look a little different. I had to put some makeup on him to hide some of the blood vessels that were showing in his face, but whenever you’re ready to see him he’s back there.” They all huddled close for a while to decide how they were going to go in to see him. He was put in a side room off of the main room. Valerie said immediately that she didn’t want to see him and she stuck to that decision.  Hannah didn’t get much of a chance to decide what to do, since she wanted to be with her mom.  Nicole needed a minute to get ready and Aunt Liz decided she would go in with her when she was ready.  So the rest of them went in as a unit to see him.  Charlotte grabbed Hannah’s hand as they were walking and they approached the chestnut brown coffin.  He looked at peace and just like he had fallen asleep in his recliner like he had done before.  They had decided to put him in his seersucker suit that he wore in college, because he always looked so sharp in it.  His weight had gone down in the last year of his life, so he was able to fit in it again.  Hannah looked at him for about fifteen seconds and decided it was too much and left her mom there with the rest of them.  It hadn't completely hit her that he was gone until physically seeing him and the tears came out faster than she could stop them.  She had to be strong for her mom, her grandmother, and her cousins. That was her role, she knew crying herself would only make her mom cry more.  She couldn't decide if she was crying because she had just seen her first dead body or if she was actually sad he was gone.

A few years after Hannah had moved to Auburn, things started changing with her uncle.  She had to spend a few days during the week at her best friend’s house and she didn’t know why. 

“We are in Atlanta, with Uncle Jacob.  I’ll tell you what’s going on when we get home,” she remembered her mom saying, even though she never got a clear explanation why.  All she was told was that Aunt Liz had kicked him out of the house and that they were getting a divorce.  It wasn’t until she was in high school that someone finally explained what was going on.  John had moved down to live with them for about a year and a half and they stayed at home while Charlotte and their dad went to Atlanta again.  John told her that Uncle Jacob had gotten addicted to prescription painkillers after he had back surgery before she was even born and had officially decided it was time to go to rehab.  He had met Mara there and they had started dating.  The reason they had gone back there a second time was because he had a heart attack.  Hannah was angry that no one had told her what was going on because she wanted to be there for Valerie, but couldn’t.  She hadn’t known the reasons for the divorce and wondered how much Valerie was told.  She later found out from talking to Valerie that Jacob had cheated on Liz with another woman while he was high and she couldn’t take it anymore.  Hannah couldn’t picture her uncle doing such a thing and it never felt like he was the same person after that.  John even told her that he could tell whenever he was high because his eyes would get red.  Hannah began to question whether she actually knew who her uncle was or if he was high every time she saw him.

When her parents finally got home she asked her mom to explain what was going on.  She explained that the painkillers had weakened his heart and that he was fine, but they had to put a pacemaker and a defibrillator in as a precaution. Hannah asked if Mara had been there, because she still hadn’t met her.

“Yes. She’s a horrible woman.  She wouldn’t let me get back to see, Jacob. Then she lied and told him that I was trying to put him in a mental institution! I never said that,” she said. This was just the beginning of the chronicles of Mara.  When Jacob started to bring her to holidays and family events she would stay upstairs in the room they were staying in and Jacob would say that she wasn’t feeling well.  Eventually she’d stop traveling with him and would stay in their apartment in Atlanta.  She was always suspiciously nice to Hannah whenever she would see her.  They would have long conversations and she would tell her about her children and her days when she was a lawyer.  She would ask about Valerie and Nicole and even talk about how beautiful her mom was, but she was never kind to her.  One Christmas, Charlotte bought her a fancy at home spa kit that came with a robe, slippers, lotions, soaps, and oils.  As soon as she opened it she said,

“Oh. Well I think someone is trying to tell me something.” Charlotte was hurt because she was at a loss trying to figure out what to get her and had put a lot of effort into buying her that.   Charlotte made it her goal to try to like Mara, because Jacob had asked her to, but Mara never let her.  Hannah tried to lighten the mood with anecdotes about Mara’s awful hats she wore everywhere and when she found out that the name Mara meant bitter.

“Well that certainly suits her,” Charlotte said in response.  They couldn’t figure out why she had latched onto Jacob who needed just as much support as she did.   They eventually decided to get married at the courthouse without telling any of the rest of their family.  When they did tell everyone, they wrote it in an email and sent a picture.  They were both smiling and Mara had a dopey straw hat on.

“That had to have been Mara’s idea. God forbid we get to attend his wedding.  They didn’t even tell Mama who has been paying for their apartment in Atlanta. Or Nicole or Valerie,” Charlotte said through her teeth. 

Jacob and Mara had been trying for about a year to get on disability, since they were both not in a “mental capacity” to have a job.  When they got it, they were reimbursed for the months they had been waiting to receive it. So instead of paying Hannah’s grandmother back they decided to rent a house in Puerto Rico for a month.  They tried to focus on the fact that at least the girls had gotten to see him before he died and that he died somewhere he was happy, but it didn’t change much.

His death hit everyone hard, but especially Charlotte.  It was Hannah’s freshman year in college and she lived in the dorms on campus.  Her father wanted her to leave Auburn and go to a school that wasn’t “right in their backyard” but Hannah’s heart was set on Auburn.  The plans she had for spring semester got thrown to the backburner because she knew her mom needed her home.  Everyone understood and Hannah didn’t think twice about it.  She basically moved home to tend to her mom.  She helped cook dinners, cleaned around the house, and fought with her dad.  Her dad was not the type of person who was good at comforting people or tending to people. It wasn’t one of his strengths.  He made you get up and do chores when you were sick and believed that you made yourself feel worse by thinking about things.  He thought Charlotte needed to stop being so upset about Jacob and just try to get on with her life. She would scold her father when he’d start saying stuff like that to her mom. Then he’d go on a rant about how she was in college and needed to be at college. Hannah let her mom cry it out and laid in bed with her when she didn’t feel like getting up.  She wanted to protect her mom from everything and feel the pain for her. 

The funeral fell on a beautiful day in February.  The service was in a small Episcopal church that he had attended until he moved to Atlanta.  It was painted white and was surrounded by lattices growing different kinds of colorful flowers, which was out of place anywhere else in February, but it was an especially hot year.  Hannah had texted her group of friends and ask them to come, not expecting many to show up, but she wanted a bit of a support system in case she couldn’t keep it together that day.  She had been asked to sing “How Great Thou Art” with Mara’s daughter during the service.  She didn’t mind at all, she had a good voice and would have done anything anyone asked her to do at this point.  Her father continually told her to not be upset in front of her mom. He claimed that she wasn’t actually upset, but she was crying because she felt like she had to. She began to wonder if he was right.  She saw her friends take up a row in the back of the church and smile at her. She nodded back and swallowed the lump in her throat that formed when she realized people actually cared enough to come.

After the service, attendees told her that she sang beautifully and her immediate family thanked her for singing.  She swallowed the pride she felt growing when people told her she did well, because that was not what this was about.  Everyone started to make their way to their cars to drive to Union Springs where the burial would be.  One thing Jacob had loved was Charlotte’s singing voice, so she took it upon herself to sing at his graveside service.  She was singing the traditional “Amazing Grace” which had always been Jacob’s favorite. 

“Hannah?” Charlotte asked as the pulled up to the graveside, “I’m going to need your help singing this.” Hannah nodded and they decided they would sing together. 

This cemetery was the only cemetery that didn’t scare Hannah. When she was little and her grandmother would take her to visit her grandfather’s grave she would say,

“Wow, it’s so beautiful, I don’t blame Papa for living here.”  The sun was always shining and there were clean white gazebos on the top of the hills, which the cemetery had plenty of.  It seemed like a happy place, instead of where a bunch of bodies were buried.

“You couldn’t have asked for a prettier day for his funeral, Mama,” Hannah said as they got out of the car.  The preacher spoke for a few minutes at the graveside and told a few stories about his experiences with Jacob and once he finished it was time for the song. They stood up together and held hands to steady each other.  They started out strong together, but they got to the last verse her mom got too choked up to sing.

“When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we first begun,” Hannah finished for the both of them squeezing her mom’s hand to comfort her before getting choked up herself. 

They didn’t actually lower the casket into the ground like Hannah thought they would.  She wondered if that was something they did later, but she thought about how in some movies the family of the deceased would throw dirt or flower petals on top of the casket.  She thought the whole situation was pointless, because he had been cremated and they were burying an empty casket.  She hugged her mom and walked over to her friends that came.  They hugged her and told her how she sounded great, but she asked them if they could walk away from everyone and just sit and talk.  They walked down one of the hills and over to another family’s plot that was in the shade.  She took off her shoes and walked around in the damp grass,

“I don’t want to have a funeral like this, which saying that makes me seem selfish. But a funeral feels like it’s not even for the person who died, it’s for the people left behind. I mean, we even looked at his body all dressed up in a suit.  Why do people do that? I don’t want them to look at me dead.  I would like to stay in someone’s memory as who I was when I was alive. Plus the whole makeup on a dead body thing, freaks me out.”  She looked around at all of her friends some of them nodded and some of them looking at her incredulously.  She hopped on the stone surrounding the plot and walked on it like a balance beam, not thinking about how she was probably being disrespectful in some way.

“I will say, at least for me. A funeral in no way helps me feel better.  If someone I love dies, I’m going to be upset about it with or without a funeral.  And having to plan a funeral while you’re grieving? Who came up with this?” she said sitting down on the stone next to her friends,

“If I die while any of you still know me, I want to be cremated and thrown into the ocean.  That is my favorite place in the entire world and anyone who knows me will know that.  Then they can have a service there and have a nice day at the beach and remember all the good times they’ve had there or that I’ve had there. I don’t know. This just sucks and I can’t do anything about it. And that scares the hell out of me. And I have to be strong, because there is no way I’m experiencing anything close to what Valerie or Nicole or my grandmother or my mom is feeling. So it’s not fair for me to cr—” she said choking on her last word. Someone put their arms around her and let her cry until she couldn’t anymore. Just knowing that they cared enough to be there for her was comforting enough.   

Somehow that song gets played in church every week the anniversary of his death rolls around.  Hannah liked to say that it was Uncle Jacob saying hello from Heaven and it wasn’t supposed to be a bad thing.  Charlotte still gets choked up whenever it happens and they leave in a gloomy mood. Charlotte was the guarantor of his will and it took them about a year and a half to get the estate settled.  Jacob hadn’t updated his will to add Mara in it, yet she somehow managed to get more money than the girls did, even stealing a part of Hannah’s college tuition.  It had turned out that Charlotte had been right all along and caused Hannah to ask the burning question,

“Do you think Mara could have killed Uncle Jacob?”