Sunlit Face; Hand-me-down

Mother's day.

I wish that I could disregard it as a hallmark holiday, but the Greeks (followed by the Romans) have been doing it long before greeting card corporations.

On October 11th, 2004, my dad paid to have a new stereo installed in my car. Given the option to wait and subject ourselves to ourselves, we avoided the higher rungs, took an additional step down Maslow's ladder, and walked through the doors of a Dairy Queen.

About half way through my standard spiced chicken sandwich I felt my cheeks flush, even though I was not embarrassed. I felt goosebumps on my skin without a change in the room's temperature. I felt ice and heat in my muscles. Tunnel vision and disorientation. Like a waiting room. Before I had time to think about what I was feeling, I looked up from my meal at my dad. I knew he was feeling the exact same thing because he looked up from his meal with the same urgency and blankness.

"She's gone"
I can't remember who asserted it, but the other agreed.
I decided I would still drive to Garden Grove that evening to play music with my friends. They knew my mother was in the hospital, but I assured them it was okay. It was, after all, my birthday.
I had missed several of the phone calls telling me to come to the hospital because I was trying not to think about my mother being in the hospital. That is how I thought you get people out of the hospital, you think of them as existing out of the hospital, not in it.
I drove at excessive speeds from Garden Grove and ignorantly risked my own life in the process of getting to Oso Parkway. My sister let me into the hospital(which was now closed to visitors) and took me to the tiny room where my mother's body lay. Family was seated in chairs lining the walls. Dead bodies are cold and clammy and stiff and you cannot imagine what one feels like if you have not touched one.
Three little birds revolved around the sun five times.
My father, my sister, and myself traveled to Casper's park with vague instructions from our dead mother to scatter her ashes in a place none of us could really remember. We cut left, then right, then left, hoping to stumble across the scene our mother described, the tree my sister remembered us climbing. My sense of intuition began to wear.
One trail led us past a clearing. A clearing which we startled a large deer into. A deer who stood in the clearing staring back at us while its body pointed towards a canopy of trees. A canopy of trees it started to walk to, and stopped, and looked back at us. Us, three little birds who asked questions to each other, and then followed the deer who seemed to have more answers. Three little birds who were answered.
The sky was hidden by trees, and the ground was covered in leaves. When one of those trees fell, it would shine light on a place rich in nutrients of fallen leaves, where seedlings will sprout and grow towards the sun.
We spread our mother's ashes in handfuls with sweeping arm motions. With silly spin moves. I used the ashes to paint war-lines under my eyes in a move, which we all agreed, my mother would have disapproved, but secretly loved.

I know it sounds crazy, but that is how it happened.