Prose: "Preservation"

Preservation

Lainey Terfruchte, Class of 2025

My father wanted to get rid of most of her things. He wanted less to dust, less to think about. I knew it was sensible. What use did my father and I have for novelty candles and shoes a size too small for me? He let me go through everything first, and I snatched lots of things into a cardboard box. He didn’t care what I saved—it was going to my apartment so either way he wouldn’t have to see it again. I imagined a new life where I required mid-century modern glassware and books on Old English. As if I would bond with my mother more now that she was dead. 

I populated my apartment with her things, feeling uneasy looking at everything out in the open. I had made my living space into a memorial. I tried to read her books, but they had nothing of her in them, no annotations or forgotten bookmarks. My interest in the medieval wasn’t strong enough to carry me through the dense pages.

“You should go,” my father said, his voice jarring and staticky over my phone’s speaker.

“But I can’t.” 

I lay in bed, my body wrapped around my laptop which mutely played a sitcom I had been watching for hours. The laugh track echoed in my head. I hadn’t changed out of my pajamas in days.

“What, do you want me to come get you? Do you want to drop out of the semester? You can do that, if that’s what you want.”

“I don’t want that. You know I don’t want that.” 

“Then go to class. You need a routine.”

“Okay,” I sighed. “I’ll go.” 

When he hung up, I turned the volume back up on my laptop and hid further under my blankets.

I fiddled with the ring on my finger and willed someone to ask me about it. It was made of brassy gold and needed a good clean. I couldn’t stop running my finger over its strangely geometric surface; it had satisfying, sharp edges. I had never seen my mother wear her class ring—I didn’t even know she had one. It made me feel connected to a different version of her, a version that wouldn’t ever know me.

Class went by uneventfully. I drew spirals in my notebook and stared out the window blankly; no one commented on my previous absences. I was surprised when it ended and I couldn’t remember a thing. I was usually the person people asked to borrow notes from.

On the bus, I caught up with some of my classmates. 

“I have a million deadlines coming up,” Hannah said. “A paper this Friday, two-thousand words. Then on Monday I have a presentation and Wednesday I have another essay.”

“Midterms are always a rush,” Jacob added. “I had a nightmare last night that I forgot to finish my presentation before Tuesday and had to present it half-finished. It was awful.”

“That is so weird,” Imogen said. “I had a similar dream a few days ago. I got feedback on an essay and it was all terrible. The professor thought my writing was lazy and somehow I forgot to complete my citations. I haven’t even started the essay yet.”

“I dreamed last night,” I said, “that I was in this maze like church. And it was my mother’s funeral, but I couldn’t find where I was supposed to go. People kept staring at me, but I didn’t recognize anyone. And I found this strange coin hidden beneath a pew, so I picked it up. Then I was ushered off to a funeral reception. When I showed my father the coin, he was so upset, and I knew I wasn’t supposed to have it. I had to put it back, but I couldn’t find my way. Everything looked slightly different. And I had to leave, but I still had the coin. Then, I woke up.”

“That’s crazy,” Imogen replied.

The bus bumped along the road, the engine loud beneath us.

“I just don’t know how I’m going to get my projects done in time,” Hannah said. “This happens every semester, but I’ve really procrastinated this time.”

“You’ll get everything done,” Imogen said. “And then we have a few days off.”

“It seems so far away,” Hannah whined.

They kept talking about their deadlines and how many words they had to write and how many sources they needed and how long their presentations had to be. By the time I arrived at my apartment, my head was overrun with dates and times and numbers that held no relevance to me. I kept the lights off and closed the curtains, then laid on the floor. With my hands on my stomach, I focused on breathing. Eventually, I fell asleep, thinking in…out…in…out. 

I skipped class the next day.

My apartment was full of dying funeral arrangements, but I couldn’t bear to throw them out. I had a grand plan when I brought them all home: I would press them into some sort of bouquet and frame it on my wall. But plans required energy and motivation, both of which I lacked. 

So I watched them decay. The roses became brown and shrivelled, the lilies limp, the leaves brittle—only the decorative crosses and angels remained cheerful. I hated my father for letting me take so many of my mother’s things. I hated him for not wanting the flowers and the candles and the books. He was her husband, why was he so ready to forget her? 

I traveled into the winter dark to get groceries. I tossed a giant bag of pasta in my basket alongside a couple jars of marinara so I could just make a big batch and reheat it for the week. I tore random bags of chips and cookies and chocolates off the shelves, dropping them into my cart like they were free. I heard a group of voices and saw some students I recognized shopping together. They were loud and taking up too much space, and one of them was begging another to buy brownie mix. I knew looks could be deceiving, but I couldn’t help thinking they looked so happy. I ran to the self-checkout and scanned my items as fast as possible before running off into the cold. My breath fogged in the air. 

Dead leaves and petals littered my floor. I felt like a wild animal seeking shelter in a hostile environment: nowhere was quite safe. My mother’s things were everywhere. I couldn’t stop thinking of the things she would never do again: force my father and I to watch a documentary, visit her family in Tennessee, make quesadillas, try to guilt my father into getting a dog, sing quietly to herself while she cooked. She would never hold me again, or watch me graduate. She would never call me again on a Sunday at ten, our weekly check-in time. It was terrible that I would never hear her voice again.

At the funeral, they had a photo of her next to her ashes, but it didn’t really look like her. It wasn’t alive.

“Can you come?” I asked. “I need help.”

“Sure,” my father said, his voice soft for the first time in weeks.

We cleaned out my apartment. He swept up the floral debris and brought boxes to donate things. I still didn’t want to give anything up.

“You’re not going to forget her,” he said. 

I pulled a dead rose from one of the arrangements. “But I will never remember her enough.”

“I know,” he said. “But she doesn’t live in these things.”

I kept the books I thought I might actually read, the glassware in my favorite color, the candles that smelled nice. I put a purse she always used and her collection of statement earrings and a bunch of other things I had haphazardly grabbed weeks earlier into a box. My father told me stories about things I put in the donation pile. I kept my mother’s class ring; I wasn’t sure I would ever let it leave my finger.

We dropped the boxes off together and went out to eat. It was strange, just the two of us for the first time in years. I cried in the restaurant, so my father slid over to my side of the booth to comfort me. With both of us on one side, it was like we were leaving room for my mother. I stared at the empty seat, and I felt she was there.