Dior Perfume

Why can’t you cry?  I scowl at my reflection in the mirror. It’s not that fucking hard. 

     I’ve cried so easily in the past. At romantic films, cute dog videos, when I stubbed my toe. I’ve wasted tears on silly things and now, when it means the most, I can’t bloody do it. 

    My mother has been crying since his diagnosis. She cried in the car after the doctor told us. She cried when his hair started falling out. She cried when they said it was terminal. Sometimes she would let him see her and they would cry together. Most times she hid herself away and did it in the bathroom or while she was alone in the kitchen cooking dinner. Her salty tears would fall over the pasta water, flavouring it with our family’s perpetual sadness. She likes to be the strong one. The one holding our family of three together. 

    But we’re not a family of three anymore.  

    The funeral was yesterday. It rained, of course, as if the Earth was crying too. I watched from my church pew as everyone weeped, sniffing obnoxiously into their hankies. My aunt’s eyes darted from me to my mother, monitoring our grief. She seemed disappointed in me. Perhaps I should have thrown myself on top of his casket, wailing how unfair life was. How God should have taken another, not my father. But all I did was sit there, in the front row, watching as a petal fell from a white rose decorating his coffin, landing silently on the burgundy carpet. Later, the minister stood on it while he assured us that from this sadness, Dad would find peace.

    Why can’t you cry? I throw my hair brush at the mirror. It cracks in the centre, long lines travelling out to the corners of the frame, like a spider’s web. 

    Mum calls me downstairs. She’s still dressed in black; the symbol of her widowhood. Tears well in her eyes but she blinks them away quickly, not wanting me to notice. We stand in silence while she embraces me, her long arms pulling me into her bosom. The smell of her Dior perfume is faint but it lingers on the fabric of her cardigan. I begin to cry as I remember Dad buying it for her birthday. 

    ‘Cup of tea, love?’ She pats my shoulder gently.