I was certain that I was all that was holding her up. My face pressed against her hollow stomach.

I tightened my small, girlish arms around Mom’s waist as she lurched blindly into the house. The finality of those words would reverberate through the years that followed.īut at that moment, as the platitudes still hung in the air, we stood on the stoop, staring at each other, uncertain what to do as we contemplated the etiquette of death. “I’m s-s-sorry for your loss, ma’am,” he stammered when there was nothing left to say. He ran his knuckles across the corners of his glistening eyes and swallowed hard. Visibly inexperienced in dealing with tragedy. His jaw was tight under strawberry blond stubble and his light eyes were watery by the time he was done. I hugged her withered waist as he told her what he had to say. “Ma’am, I don’t know how to tell you other than to say it straight.” The policeman spoke in the low-pitched melancholic tone he’d used moments earlier when he’d pulled up and told me to wait in the patrol car as its siren lights painted our house streaks of red and blue.ĭespite his request, I’d slipped out of the back seat and rushed to Mom’s side as she turned on the front porch light and stepped onto the stoop, dazed from being woken late at night.

“It’s Jenny, isn’t it?” Mom rasped, clutching the lapel of her faded dressing gown. But I saw the will to live drain out of her the moment the policeman knocked on our screen door. Killed her as good as if she’d been shot in the chest with a twelve-gauge shotgun. It was Jenny’s death that killed my mother.

The night swim by megan goldin