Full to the brim, but still can’t get my brain to settle without starting the day off with a writing prompt. Some habits are hard to break. I hope you had a wonderful day with your family. As for me, I’m going to do my writing prompt before anyone else stirs so I can put on the coffee and be sociable. Mornings are never my most sociable, still it is a holiday…
Friday, November 25th: Rain was expected for the next three days.
Rain was expected for the next three days. Mary took advantage of the few days of sun to wash all of the sheets and give the blankets a good air on the line. She opened all of the windows and put on loud up beat music as she cleaned every surface with strong industrial cleanser. Now the floors sparkled, the window glass gleamed and every stick of furniture was polished to a high gloss.
She tucked the cleaning rags away and went out to collect the now dry sheets. They were crisp with fresh air and smelled of the sun. She inhaled deeply as she tucked the sheets around the mattresses. When all the mattresses were clothed in their sheets, Mary returned to the lines she had strung out across the back yard and began bringing in the blankets. Soon each bed was clad in the freshly aired blankets.
All of the cloth seemed to bring the light and warmth in with it. Figuring the house too had gotten as much air as it needed; Mary started moving around the house making sure that all of the windows were closed. She didn’t want the incoming rain to bring in the smell of damp and ruin all of her sunny day efforts. As she tugged the windows closed she wondered how long it had been since she aired out the house properly. It seemed like an age. She knew that in her mother’s final illness most of the rooms remained closed off and even the thought of opening a window was met with a shutter of horror.
Mary liked the outdoors air but her mother seemed to carry some notion that it was disease that rode in on the fresh air instead of blowing out the cobwebs. As there wasn’t much more that her mother could catch at that point and no chance of her surviving what her body had already given her, Mary considered the closing up of the house pointless. However she humored her mother as she had in most things.
Maria’s word was law and Mary stopped fighting her mother and her notions long before the illness took her. Mary shook the thought away. It was much too gloomy a thought and today was still a bright day. There would be time enough for gloomy thoughts once the rains came.
Mary finished with the windows and returned to the main floor. Everything gleamed with newly washed freshness. It seemed extra clean due to the lack of personal belongings. Most of her mother’s knickknacks had been passed along to others well before Maria’s last breath. The rest went at the behest of the will and Mary passed them along herself.
Mary didn’t own much in the house and what was hers was already packed up and loaded into her car. This cleaning would be the final cleaning. While Mary had a bequest left by her father and her father’s parents, nothing of Maria’s would pass to her. All of it would go to her son Simon and his wife Angie. At first Mary was sting by the decision. She may not have been Maria’s child by birth but she was only a few months old when her father married Maria and she was the only mother Mary had ever known. It stung more because the house had been her fathers before his death and his father’s before him. Still he left it to Maria in his will. It was hers and she kept it when she remarried after Mary’s father died and had Simon. Maria decided to leave it to her son despite this and despite the fact that Mary had been the one to care for her in her final illness with Simon never visiting until the will was read. Then he appeared to give Mary a time line for her moving out. While still irritated, Mary held no hard feelings for Simon as it was Maria and not he who wrote the will.
There was a slim satisfaction however in having the money from her father’s family. While Maria had the house, her illness ate up any savings she had. Simon may get everything, but it was just the house and the small lot it sat on. The land outside the small fenced in yard was deeded to her by her grandfather and when she found out the house was not to be hers, she sold it and banked the funds. As she checked to make sure all of the doors were locked before letting herself out of the house, Mary wondered if Simon knew or if that would come as a nasty surprise. While sanguine about the house, Mary found a petty side of her hopping it would be an unexpected shock.
Ten til Midnight 