Mummy Arrangements

The group was called Mummy Arrangements. Pat made it on the Tuesday, forty minutes after, because somebody had to, and because she could not sit in that room by herself with the phone in her hand and do nothing.

PatMummy passed this morning 10:42. She was not in any pain. Dr Chin was there.

Marcia (London)Oh God

Marcia (London)Pat I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I was going to call her this weekend

Junior (Florida)🙏🙏🙏

Devon (Toronto)What happened?? She was fine when I spoke to her

PatShe was not fine Devon. She has not been fine since March.

Devon (Toronto)Nobody told me it was that bad

PatI told you in March.

Nobody answered that for eleven minutes. Pat watched three people typing and stopping, typing and stopping.

Then Marcia changed the subject, which was a kindness, and which was also what their family did instead of having the conversation.

Marcia (London)What do we need to do. Tell me what you need from me

PatFuneral home this afternoon. They need a deposit.

Junior (Florida)How much

PatI will send the sheet when they give it to me.

ShaniceAuntie Pat do you want me to come down there today

PatYes please darling. Bring the blue folder from her dresser, the one with the elastic.

Devon (Toronto)Can we talk about the date. I can't do the 14th, I have a thing at work I literally cannot move

Marcia (London)Devon.

Devon (Toronto)What? I'm being practical

Junior (Florida)Flights out of Fort Lauderdale cheaper midweek

Marcia (London)We are not choosing our mother's funeral by what is cheap on Tuesday

Junior (Florida)I didn't say cheap I said cheaper. Some of us not working for the NHS Marcia

PatThe 21st. The church is free on the 21st and Pastor can do it.

PatI am not asking, I am telling you. The 21st.

Devon (Toronto)Fine

Marcia (London)The 21st is good Pat. Thank you.

Later that night, on her own, Marcia messaged Pat directly.

Marcia: Are you sleeping at all.

Pat: I'm alright.

Marcia: That is not what I asked.

Pat did not reply to that one. She left it on read for two days, and Marcia, who had known her for fifty-one years, did not ask again.

Junior (Florida)What about the casket. My friend does them wholesale in Kingston, he will do us a favor

Devon (Toronto)We are not putting Mummy in a wholesale casket

Junior (Florida)It is not a wholesale casket it is a normal casket at a better price

Marcia (London)What does the funeral home have

Pat[Image]

Pat[Image]

PatThe middle one is 180 and the good one is 340.

Devon (Toronto)The good one obviously

PatThen send the money Devon.

Devon (Toronto)I said I would send it

PatYou said that about the hospital bed in April.

Seventeen minutes.

Then Devon left the group, and then Devon rejoined the group nine minutes later, which everyone saw and nobody mentioned, and Junior sent a photograph of their mother at a christening in 1998 and wrote look how she stay with the hat, and the whole thing turned over into laughing, the way it does, because that is the only other thing the family knew how to do.

ShaniceI found the folder. Auntie Pat there is a paper in here about the grave

ShaniceShe already paid for it. In 2016. Next to Grandpa

Marcia (London)She paid for her own grave

ShaniceAnd there is a list. Of the hymns she want

Junior (Florida)Of course there is a list 😭

Marcia (London)Send it nuh

Shanice[Image]

Devon (Toronto)That's her handwriting

Devon (Toronto)Sorry. I'm going to call somebody. I'll be back

Nobody said anything for a while after that. The picture sat there at the bottom of the screen: a sheet of lined paper, four hymns in a slanted hand, and at the bottom, underlined twice, the instruction that there was to be no long-long speeches.

In four countries, in four different hours of the same day, four people looked at their mother's handwriting on their phones.

Marcia (London)Pat, is there anything you actually need. Not for the funeral. For you.

PatNo.

PatYes.

PatI can't find the receipt for the oxygen and they keep calling me about it and I have looked everywhere. Everywhere Marcia. I have looked in every place in this house.

Marcia (London)I'm coming Thursday. Not the 20th. Thursday.

Marcia (London)We will find it.

PatOk.

PatThank you.

Devon typed for a long time that night. The others could see it, off and on, for the better part of an hour: Devon is typing. Devon is typing. He was composing something about March, about the phone call he did not properly listen to, about the fact that his sister had bathed their mother and turned her and sat up with her for eight months while he sent money twice and called on Sundays and told himself that money and Sundays were a kind of presence.

He got it down to four lines. Then to two.

He deleted all of it.

At 1:14 in the morning, Toronto time, what he sent was this:

Devon (Toronto)Pat. I know is you alone did everything.

Devon (Toronto)I know.

Pat read it in the dark at ten past two, Jamaica time, sitting on the side of the bed in a house that was very quiet.

She thought about all the things she could put back. The eight months. The night in June. The three times she had asked him to come and the three reasons he had given.

Then she typed one character, and sent it, and put the phone face down on the mattress beside her:

Pat👍

And then, with nobody in the world to see her do it, she cried for eleven minutes, and washed her face, and got up, because the church needed the order of service by Friday and there was only her to send it.

❧