Page 9 - Homestead By Ann Newhouse

That was nearly five years ago, I was fifteen then. Now aged twenty, I had become a different person, I had worked out for many months. Carrying the cattle feed on my shoulders up and down the dried earth. I have swung from the exposed beams in the shack every night while my father slept. Doing press ups every chance I got to build muscle. My scrawny figure was a thing of the past. I now resembled a prize fighter! I had grown to over six foot and my muscles were like steel to the touch. I had become taller than my father when he was in his prime.
He was now middle aged and had withered from alcohol and started to show signs of illness, only able to drink half his whiskey before he fell asleep in his chair. My mother was confined to bed; so weak, just skin and bones. I had started going on the provision runs. I got mostly feed for the animals and provisions and medication for my mother. She was now in constant pain, but she refused to see a doctor saying it was too late. She wanted to die and set me free. Last time I had gone to town, I’d bought her a dress I knew she would love. A smile briefly lit up her face when I gave it to her. She asked me to bury her in it. By then she seemed to have given up. No one in town knew me, they regarded me as a stranger as I went about my business, receiving a nod from a few, politely bidding me good day as I passed.
On arriving home after one provision run, I was not prepared for the horror that awaited me. My father met me at the door. “Your mother has passed, you’ll have to help me dig her grave,” he bellowed in anger, showing no emotion or love for her loss. I turned pale and gasped at the terrible news. Pushing passed him I went to my mother’s bedside. There she lay stone cold. I took her hand and kissed it and told her I loved her. I stayed with her for a long time, consoling myself she was now at peace. I hated my father now more than ever, as he called me to help carry her outside.
“No! We have to call someone,” I protested.
“Call someone. . . who? We have no money and no one to help,” my father yelled. “They will take her away and we cannot afford a burial, I want her to stay,”
Reluctantly, I had to agree with him. I remembered my mother’s words, (tell no one, don’t trust anyone). We wrapped her in a blanket and built a wooden box, out of the fence I had made a few years earlier. We put a wooden cross at the top of the mound of freshly dug earth. For the first time I saw my father cry, but I was not convinced he was crying for the loss of my mother. I had put her in the dress I had bought and gave her a pillow and cover, so she would not be cold. I wanted to leave there and then but I couldn’t go, so soon after she had passed.