Moving On

An offering of flash fiction where the matriarchs of a family handle the unpacking of the “messiest” of emotions…

by: Gretchen Boger

We all decided that I would stay home from school and Mom and I would accept my brother’s belongings together. Dad and my older brother would go to work as usual. Even at seventeen, I knew instinctively that the messiest emotions depend on women to unpack. Everything he owned arrived in a large green duffle bag wide enough to span our living room floor. The army representatives placed it on our oriental rug right in front of where we put the Christmas tree each year. I found it so curious that it had traveled across the country, just as his body had weeks before. It was out of place, but maybe it all made sense, as this was the same room where a stoic army official sat on the couch and explained to us that my brother had died in a car accident. Maybe it was full circle to experience this in front of the pristine marble fireplace with the white mantle and burnished metal andirons. Under the watch of my Mom’s portrait, we knelt to unzip what remained of Tom’s possessions. There were books, a Richard Brautigan trilogy with a funny looking hippy family pictured on the front, a box of LP’s, his stereo, his two guitars in their cases, and heaps of clothes. 

We gently pulled out his favorite plaid flannel shirts, worn to baby blanket smoothness, and the slightly tattered jeans Mom so despised. He wore them as a badge of freedom every minute he was not in uniform. We couldn’t help but smell them, hoping for some of Tommy to reach us, but they reeked of musk. I always liked his cowboy style jean shirts with the ivory snap buttons. There was a brown suede jacket with tassels hanging from its yoke I had never seen. A smattering of white cat hair floated throughout. Tom’s pure white cat, Catspur, had found a new home with his neighbor Tim.

Mom wept silently, and I reached out to touch her arm now and then to remind her I was there. We didn’t speak for a long time. I followed her lead on separating things into stacks. We separated wash loads, lights and darks. When we had finished making piles on the floor and began the first load, we hauled the big green bag out to the side porch, and I followed her to the kitchen. Mom took out the egg salad she had made for us for lunch. She made sandwiches with iceberg lettuce and poured us milk. Then she surprised me and broke the silence saying, “I feel like going to look at patterns. Do you want to? I think I need to make us something new. Something fresh.”

The rest of the afternoon we spent at the fabric store looking in pattern books, finally deciding on an Indian style Caftan. She chose an organic print in chocolate brown and deep green palm leaves for herself. I chose a paisley in navy and purple. They were both that shiny batik cotton that feels so silk like. Later that week they were complete, so soft and comforting to our skin. We wore them in the evenings when we watched television with Dad, the time of day when sadness would creep in. Dad made popcorn and we gathered around to watch Dallas and guffaw at JR. Our new gowns so bohemian, worn with no bras. An homage to Tom’s love of freedom. A salve for our strength.

Gretchen Boger is a retired advertising consultant living in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina. She has studied fiction with the Writers Studio off and on since 2004. A former amateur actor, she writes poetry, flash, short stories, and enjoys being a part of several groups of dedicated writers.