A Death in the Family
by
Margaret Cracknell
The last place John Wilson would have chosen to die would be the escalator in Eaton's. He hated department stores. His wife always made him drag round after her, looking at clothes. "What do you think of this? I think it makes me look younger. Do you think it makes me look younger? John, are you listening to me?" And so it had been for most of their years together.
June was not an easy woman to live with. He often wondered why she had married him. He couldn't remember ever asking her to marry him. Somehow it just came about when the Mr. Hardy she had had her eye on, up and married someone else. She didn't mean to be left on the shelf. June always wanted someone dancing attendance on her, and he ended up being that someone.
All that ended quite matter of factly one Tuesday morning. John stepped onto the escalator, his mind on the list of groceries he had to pick up in the basement. A sharp pain in the chest startled him. He fell forward and somersaulted down to the bottom. The stairs kept moving, and three women and a child piled up behind him. They had to step over him. It caused quite a stir. The manager of the Food Department tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but it was too late. John was already dead.
When they told his wife, she was stunned. How could he do such a thing? How undignified, making a scene like that. She started to sob. How could he embarrass her like that?
"Mother, don't cry, you'll make your eyes all red. Uncle Bob will arrange everything. You won't have to do a thing. Start planning what you want to wear to the ceremony. That will take your mind off things."
Maureen brought her mother a cup of tea. "Here, I've put a shot of rye in it, just like Daddy always did when you were upset." She added a dash to her own tea. 'Oh, Daddy, we'll miss you so much,' she thought. 'Dan and I and the kids always looked forward to you and Mum coming over. You were so good to us, helping us out when money got tight. Who will help us now? Who will take the boys to hockey practice and pick them up? You always did that. And then there's baseball starting soon. We can't do it, we both work. How are they going to get there now?'
The two unhappy, selfish women sobbed as they sipped their tea. The mother was thinking she would take a cruise with any money there was. The daughter was silently swearing to herself that she would never have her mother come to live with her.
When the senior nurse came to tell Elsie that her brother had passed away, she stared at her unbelievingly. He was only sixty-eight. Here she was, eighty-three and crippled up with arthritis and in a wheelchair. She hadn't left the Home in six years. She was the one that was supposed to die first, not Johnny, the baby of the family. May his soul rest in peace. Tears gathered in the corners of her rheumy eyes and trickled down her careworn face.
The nurse asked if she would like to go back to her room. "No," she answered, "I'll sit here in the sun for a bit. It warms me." She sat on in the pool of sunlight falling across the potted plants and silk flowers in the commonroom of the Nursing Home.
Elsie remembered the day Johnny was born. Yet another baby in an already too large family. Another mouth to feed. Another kid to drag up after her mother died. Johnny was different though. He always tried to help her. She never married, but he was her boy. He turned into a fine young man. Pity that woman got her claws into him, but he was easily led. She reached into her bag and drew out her change purse. Her gnarled fingers had a difficult time undoing the catch. Yes, she had eighty-five cents in all; that should be enough. She would ask the volunteer that came on Thursday to get a sympathy card for her.
The volunteer had looked at the eighty-five cents and had said she was sure that would be enough to buy a very nice card. And it was a nice card. Elsie was very pleased with it. Inside it said, "Don't think of me as dead, I've just gone away for a while." On the front a stream ran through a wood of red and gold leaved trees. Very peaceful. Someone was sitting on the bank fishing.
It reminded Elsie of the times she and her little brother would fish off the dock behind Molson's Brewery. Not much fish caught, but lots of happy memories. She never did send the card. She kept it. After all, she knew she would be seeing Johnny soon herself.