“Nooooo, Get it off me!”

My mother’s anguished cries jolted me awake in my makeshift bed. My half-open eyes tried to focus in the darkness of the unfamiliar room. Silence. Eerie, stillness enshrouded me in a cloak of uneasiness. I shuddered, someone had just walked over my grave…

******

I awoke several hours later to the sound of the TV in the next room. I noticed Mum and Lewis had already got up. My younger sister Kat was stirring in her zed-bed, and  as she stretched and yawned, the bed springs squeaked in protest.

“Did you hear Mum last night Kat?

“No, why, were her and Lewis ‘at it?”

“Don’t be disgusting” I retorted, unnerved that it seemed to have only been me that had heard her.

****

After waiting an age to use the bathroom. (Eight people + one bathroom + an early start for a long trip = chaos, leg crossing, and frenzied banging on the door) I was hastily eating some toast that my sister-in-law Karen had rustled up for us all.

” Doug, is Bobby up yet? It is unusual for him not to be first up, especially today” Mum looked concerned. The events of the past few days had aged her considerably. Travelling from one end of the country to the other had been traumatic enough at such at time, especially when Nan had not been conscious when they had arrived.

The funeral yesterday had added an extra pallor to her face, highlighting the black smudges under her eyes.

” Please go and wake him up”, she begged Doug and Mark, my two brothers that had slept in the same room as my Uncle Bobby… although us kids never called him Uncle. He was special. Mum’s baby brother (despite now being 36) who was coming to live with us now that Nan had died, and we were all excited.

The boys had been gone for a good ten minutes, then they trooped into the room joined now by my other brother Charles, flanking Mum on all sides.

“We don’t know how to tell you this, Oh God Mum. Bobby is dead!”

The boys caught her as her legs buckled, and we all looked on in horror as an animalistic howl emanated from her body, which was now heaving and quaking with gut-wrenching sobs.

Lewis was by her side in instant, and Karen ushered the rest of us into the kitchen to give them some privacy,  then she went into the bedroom with Charles to check on Bobby, and phone the authorities.

‘He called out for Nan in the middle of the night” Mark informed the rest of us. ” I heard him shout ‘Mum’ twice then he went quiet. I thought he had gone back to sleep.”

“Nan must have come for him in the night” I had the feeling that as Nan had always looked after Bobby and given him all of her love and care since he needed extra, due to him having Muscular Dystrophy that she wanted him to go with her. They had never been apart, and although Mum loved and cherished him, he needed his own mother’s ministrations.

****

It was rather a palaver getting poor Bobby out of the tiny house. He was after all almost 20 stone with Nan’s loving care, and manoeuvering him down the narrow staircase was a Herculean task. It was accomplished and Bobby was taken to the same undertaker that had just buried my Nan.

Tears and shock were mingled with practicalities of arranging another funeral. Trips into town to order more wreaths. Suitcases unpacked, more groceries bought; schools and workplaces phoned to explained the situation

****

Evening closed in, dark, cold and miserable, like us.

“I had a dreadful nightmare last night”  blurted out my mother.” I felt like someone was trying to put me into a coffin; Mum was trying to tell me something. ”

I shivered. Someone had walked over my grave….

This is in response to Writing 101. Re-create a single day.

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