This is my micro-fiction story based on a painting by Lisa Rae Winant for my Media Writing class
My husband died four years ago. I don’t like to talk about it much, but I sure do wish he were still here. He was the outspoken one, always taking care of the rest of the family as much as he could. I was quiet and went along with whatever. I’ve never been very talkative or involved as much as he was, but I promised him I would take over his role while he sat there in the hospital bed, moments before his last breath.
I still live in the house he built and would never let me sell. It is my responsibility to maintain the four-bedroom house, the garden in the backyard, as well as our four cats and two huskies. These are stressful tasks for a 70 year old with Scoliosis and Arthritis, but I do it anyway because that is what he would want.
On top of it all, our family who has been dependent on my husband for so long has now shifted to me. I am the one to take care of my 15-month-old great grandson on weeknights while my granddaughter can finish night school because she is a single mother and broke. I am the one to pay my 44-year-old son’s phone and cable bills because he can’t keep a job to pay for anything other than rent. He can’t hold a job. I should invite him to move in with me although I wouldn’t be able to take the partying. 44 years old and has accomplished nothing. Maybe I should have been a more involved mother. My husband never saw a problem helping everyone out, and has engrained the same opinion in my mind.
Yesterday, my daughter and her third husband came over and told me they needed money because they both lost their jobs at the same chain restaurant. I barely had any money for myself. There was a chest under my bed with emergency money in it, so I decided to tap into it because my husband would believe that this sure was an emergency. I took out the $200 I had, and gave it to them. I didn’t tell them that was the only money I had left.
My family expects me to jump through hoops for them. Although it is stressful and taking its toll on me, it is something I have to do. I will do this for as long as I can until I run myself into the ground alongside my dead husband.
