Lung Moss by James Cessford

Author:James Cessford [Cessford, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chapelkill Press
Published: 2023-12-14T00:00:00+00:00

PART TWO

THE JOURNEY

“Friend or foe is too reductive a question. Fungus and flower are so inextricably linked, they can scarcely be considered apart.”

A Field Guide to the Woodland Floor, Andrew Forde, Chapelkill Press

Corpse flower

Even before the phone rang, I knew. More than a month had passed since my last visit, despite their warnings time was running out. Mum quickly forgave me, but Tom was not so kind. He told me of Dad’s lucidity at the end, how he had cried out for me. He described his eyes, filled with hurt and regret, when he saw I was not there to say goodbye.

The funeral was hard. I wrote a eulogy, but when the time came, I could not get up and read it. Tom managed to, and he managed to read mine. I bent forward, my head hung, my back shuddering, as the hollow words I had scraped out were scattered over me. The wake was no better, a procession of dark strangers with sympathetic smiles and tilted heads, waiting for the moment to express their condolences – He’ll always be there if you keep him alive in your memories.

Tom continued to make it worse. He told me Dad visited him every night in his dreams. He described how reassuring it felt, how the connection between them had not frayed. Dad had yet to visit me. Even with one of us gone, the space between us was there.

I went back to Mum’s after the wake and stayed there, abandoning work, my studies, and my housemates. It was comforting to be back in my childhood home. I quickly came to appreciate the simple rhythm of life with Mum – shopping in the morning, afternoon walks, soaps in the evening. I could relieve my guilt by caring for her and helping her out around the house. Looking back, she was no doubt engineering her fragility for my sake, knowing it would help me recover. The vastness of my parent’s love for me could be overwhelming. Grief would periodically creep up on me out of nowhere and my feet continued to itch unbearably, but on the whole, I grew more content than I had any right to be. I remember this time with clarity and fondness, despite other moments beginning to cloud.

Mum saved some of the lilies and orchids that smothered the house after the funeral, flattening them inside a large wooden flower press in the kitchen. The rest had wilted and died before I could bring myself to go into Dad’s study. He had converted the attic himself when Tom and I were boys. Dad had never forbidden us from going up there, but we both knew that space was his. Though he tried to conceal it by leaning his head through the skylight, cigarette smoke would occasionally seep down into my bedroom. The smell was soothing, not intrusive, a reminder that Dad was up there.

It was a bright summer morning when I first opened the hatch. Mum had gone shopping, and the house was quiet.

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