In Memoriam
by Marc Audet
I remember that stark Thursday morning in January when the temperature was twenty below zero, and Father drove me to the hospital to see Mother whose kidneys were shutting down as cancer invaded her bowels; which took me back to that summer before: in August, when I got married in England where I was living because I was working in Oxford; walking to the stationery shop to buy a Mother’s Day card for the last time; my visit in July when Mother was still well enough to be home, milling about the kitchen as she did so often, the same visit during which I met her doctor who advised me to get a job back in the United States as soon as possible as if changing my job might cure her cancer; followed by a bittersweet visit in October with my wife, when we showed Mother our wedding album, the wedding that neither she nor my father could attend, and I caught the fleeting look on Mother’s face, a mixture of happiness followed by sadness, as she realized that life was getting away from her and that there was little for us to do but wait; and then came that dreaded but expected phone call at four o’clock in the morning from my sister, telling me that Mother was back in the hospital and that this was it and that I would have to take the bus from Boston Logan to northern New Hampshire and make my way back home, alone; and finally, that last Thursday afternoon, stepping out of Mother’s room looking for my father, finding him seated by the door just as the nurse rushed past us: my father and my sister and myself watching as the nurse felt for a pulse and put the stethoscope on my Mother’s chest: followed by a brief pause, the nurse looking at us and then saying with a soft voice, “I’m sorry,” before walking out.
Marc Audet lives near New Haven, Connecticut, where he is self-employed as a web application developer. He enjoys reading contemporary fiction and literature both in English and French. He has traveled and lived in Canada, England, and Ireland. In addition to writing computer code in various languages, he also writes short stories, creative nonfiction, and poetry. His work has appeared in Potato Soup Journal, Across the Margin, Books Ireland Magazine, Ariel Chart, Flash Fiction Magazine, Witcraft, and Dadakuku.