I don’t know where you are…

It’s cold. Freezing cold. My steps follow the narrow slippery path to the chapel.

I march hesitantly half conscientious of the scenery around me. I do not see the dark shadows of the tomb stones, the crosses, the flower crowns. I do not see anything.

It’s dark. Deep dark settling on the churchyard. Small rays from the light poles on the street point the way for me.

I hear a cough close to me. I turn my head for a second. I do not care.

“Who are you coming to see?” the man asks me in a low hardly heard voice.

“Mum.”

The men drops his head and avoids my transfigured regard.

“She’s in the middle.”

I turn my back to him and clutch my fists inside my pockets. My teeth screech with pain. Deep pain emerging from the end of my soul. Tears fall on my cheeks. Warm. Caressing. 

I stand in front of the wooden doors of the chapel. I take a deep breath and pray before I touch the door knob. I push it.

Without warning, the doors glide open. Silent. 

Two coffins carefully rested in the immense darkness of the room. Hurtful memories flash in a second through my mind: grandma,dad and now mum. They all spent their last night on earth in the same room. 

Panic engulfs me. I cannot escape it. My uncle told me she would be on the right. The man at the entrance said mother lays in the middle. No written obituary. I burst in tears and I whisper: “Mum, where are you? I am so sorry I do not know where you are!”

My feet feel pinned to the ground. The tip of my right foot oriented towards the dead on the right, the left willing to proceed further to the one in the middle. The white lace covering the sides of the coffins obsesses me. My mother is there. My mother!

I want to say a prayer. No words come to my mind. But a huge desperation and bursts of tears. I do not know where she is. I do not know where my mum is! 

It smells like winter and candles and cold.

The night has covered in black the cemetery. I close the doors behind me. An enormous guilt chokes me. I  am leaving my mum behind in the freezing night while I return home. The same home she had decorated and prepared to receive us for Christmas. She would have loved to have us around her for the holidays. She did reunite us all. For her funeral.

“Oh mum, mum… ” My shoulders burn, my stomach contracts painfully, tears well up in my throat. I hear my feelings rushing to my head and the squeaking sound of me desperately trying to retain their overflow. “I don’t know where you are!”