My mother died on a Tuesday, not peacefully, not in her sleep.

She died with her eyes open, staring at the ceiling of the hospice room, with an expression

I will never be able to scrub from my memory.

The nurses said it was normal.

They said the muscles sometimes contract. They said

the jaw locks, and the eyes fix on a point, and it doesn't mean anything. But I was there. I was

holding her hand. And in the last 40 seconds of her life, my mother squeezed my fingers so hard she left

bruises, and she said something I couldn't understand because her throat was full of

fluid, and then she was gone. For three weeks after the funeral, I didn't go into her house. I couldn't.

My brother Kevin offered to do it. My aunt Patrice offered to do it. Even my cousin Deborah,

who hadn't spoken to my mother in six years, called to say she could

handle the paperwork if I wasn't up for it. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to be the one to go through

her things. I told them all no. She was my mother. I would do it. I wish to God I hadn't. The house

was exactly as she'd left it, which was worse than if it had

been ransacked. Her reading glasses were still on the kitchen table, sitting on top of a crossword

puzzle she'd never finish. There was a coffee mug in the sink with a dried brown ring at the

bottom. The television remote was on the arm of her recliner, positioned just where her hand would have rested.

It was as if she'd simply stood up and walked out of her own life. I started with the bedroom because

that's where she kept her important documents. Top drawer of the dresser, birth certificate,

social security card, the deed to the house, her will.

Everything was organized in labeled Manila folders.

My mother was meticulous about that sort of thing.

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