When Is Momma Coming Home?

WC: 886

When Is Momma Coming Home?

By Jack Rawlins

There's no other way to tell this story.It's the story of my mother's death. It's a story that can only be told through the eyes and mind of the child who lived it... a story that must be set in the time and place when it happened. I was only five years old when she died.

The day that Momma came home from the hospital, I was very happy that she was better. My big brother, Bunny, and Daddy had fixed a bed for her in the living room but she got up right away when they brought me to her. I sat in her lap in the yellow rocking chair by the window. It was late afternoon and the sun lit up her face as it was setting and she looked very pretty. She drew me a picture of Mickey Mouse and then she said, "Jackie, it's time for you to go to bed."

The next morning ,when I came downstairs to breakfast, the bed and Momma were gone. Aunt Rita and my big sister, Frances, were sitting by the kitchen range crying. "Where's Momma?” I asked.

"She has gone away, " Aunt Rita said. "She is with God."

"When will she come home again?" I asked.

"She's not coming home again, " Frances sobbed. "She is gone forever."

"Why did she have to go with God? Why won't he let her come home?" I cried.

Aunt Rita and Frances, and later Grand Mom, told me lots of things that I didn't understand and hugged me a lot while they cried.

That day and the next a lot of people came to the house with things to eat and they were all very sad. And then one day a black hearse came and parked in our driveway. Daddy hurried over from our gas station which was right in front of our house. But before he took me away so I wouldn't watch, I saw two men set up a metal frame with wheels.

Later, Daddy took me home and I saw Momma in her casket in the living room right where her bed had been. The room was full of flowers and chairs were lined up against the walls. The flower smell made me feel a little sick.

It was hard to look at Momma laying there, but every once in a while I went up to the casket to look at her. I didn't cry. I don't know why. Everyone else was crying.

All evening long people came to visit and look at Momma. Many of them knelt down by her casket and prayed. I wondered if I should kneel down. Nobody told me what to do.

The next day at the cemetery I watched as they lowered Momma into her grave. The casket went down very slowly. When it was at the bottom of the hole a man in a black suit gave me a rose to drop on top of Momma's casket.

That night when I was put to bed I thought maybe there was a screen at the end of Momma's coffin so she could breath and maybe come back to life and come home again. And then I began to cry for her. I know I cried for days and I prayed to God not to be mean... to let her come back home.

For a long while I imagined what it would be like if Momma came home. And then I imagined what it would be like if she never did come home and Daddy died too. I wondered how we could live without a momma or a daddy and I pictured a little building in the front yard where we would keep our money so we could buy the things we needed.

One day, Frances found me sobbing by our old apple tree. “Why are you crying, Jackie, “ she asked. “Is it because you miss Momma?”

“No!” I said. I don't know why I said that. I missed her something terrible. I kept asking God to send her back. But he didn't listen. I thought maybe I was being punished for being bad.

Momma died in January. That fall I started kindergarten. The first day, the teacher asked each of us to tell her our mother's name. I was scared. I didn't know what I was going to do. What should I say?

At last she came to me and said, “Jackie, what is your mother's name?”

“My mother's dead! “ I shouted. And suddenly the room was very quiet and the other children stared at me. And while they stared, I kept hearing my words over and over in my head, “My mother's dead.!” I was very embarrassed. And sad. And sorry for myself. Everybody had a mother but me.

After that, I stopped having visions of Momma in her casket waiting for someone to come for her. I always knew she was dead and not coming back, but I took comfort in the pictures in my head.

So that's Jackie's story. That's the way I remember it. It's a glimpse of a searing childhood trauma from the child's point of view.There's no other way to tell this story, but letting him tell it makes it seem very recent. I can still feel his grief, confusion, and longing.

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