It’s near the end of May. A few days after Mother’s Day with Memorial Day just around the corner. That sounds like a battleground for some. A reason to celebrate for others.

My mother spent Mother’s Day at the bar, the Big Sky Bar, I think it’s called, celebrating motherhood. She was one hell of a great mom. Until the bottle changed her mind.
Seated alone in my childhood home, I felt empty. Every passing year, I yearned for my mother to make amends and heal our estranged relationship.

Empty beer cans littered the living room like vacant dream clouds, fat with the doomed memories of her baking cookies and tucking me in at night. The scent of stale beer and staler cigarettes hung like a veil over the furniture, making it difficult to distinguish death from life.

Lost in these thoughts, I heard a knock at the door. Who would come here? This place was a dirty reminder of a maudlin life. The paint on the front door was chipping, the front steps cracking with age, and the yard had overgrown with dirt blonde grass from lack of water. Surely, it was too soon for a real estate agent? My mother had only been dead a week. I hesitated, unsure, before navigating the empties toward the entrance.

As I gripped the knob, I had the sudden fear that the door itself would fall off its hinges and the entire house would tumble in a heap. The knob turned slowly. I pulled, but it didn’t give. The doorframe felt loose, while the door held tightly to the rickety frame.

Then it gave way, and to my surprise, I found myself face to face with my mother. Her disheveled hair covered most of her bloodshot eyes. An unkempt woman in a tattered dress and winter coat. She stared past me, into the remnants of her drunken past. Against the outdoor light, the room looked dark and soiled, like an underground cave. A barren wasteland of cigarette butts and beer cans.

The only sounds were my breathing and the leaves rustling in the misplaced breeze.

“Come in,” I said.

The woman stood still. “Is your mother home?”

“I’m afraid not,” I said. She was frail, too feeble to weather the news of my mother’s death.

“Know when she’ll be back?” Her raspy voice reminded me of a thousand barrooms, eyes on the back wall and away from me.

“Couldn’t say for sure.”

Her wild hair was a tangled mess. The stained coat clung loosely to her body, frayed edges like tattered pieces of her heart. Despite the winter chill, she appeared unfazed. In the fading daylight, she could have been my mother. But that wasn’t possible. I’d seen Mother’s cream-colored face at the funeral, her hair neatly coifed on a soft pillow.

The floor beneath me seemed to bend and buckle. I placed my other hand on the door for balance.

“I wish I could see her,” she said.

“I know.”

She turned away, suddenly. Her skinny frame wobbled its way down the porch steps and onto the street. A circus mirror image of my mother ambling off, a reminder of who she was for all those painful years. A message that any chance to reconcile was gone.

The woman somehow disappeared into the wide open spaces surrounding my mother’s country dwelling. A dream perhaps. My eyes adjusted to the dusk, and still I did not see her anywhere along the road.

I cleaned up the living room. Every empty beer can represented another stride towards the home my mother had once made for me. My chance to fill the void with hope and love, to erase the vacuum of addiction.

The cleaning revealed a set of photo albums I had forgotten. As I flipped through the pages, memories of my childhood returned. Happy times with Mother before the bottle kicked her feet from under her. A montage of wonderful memories obscuring the bad ones. The sun set, and the living room absorbed the golden hour.