Millionaire Man (Part Two)

I couldn’t help looking at my reflection in the musty old mirror of the apartment, and seeing hate in my eyes. My mother and I couldn’t go to the movies or a baseball game. We couldn’t spend a weekend at the beach or the nearest amusement park or anything that was considered a luxury in life. We were blessed to rent at the nearest dollar video store. It was our only relief from the day to day stir.

I’ll never forget my mother’s cooking, whether it was taking some chili and Mac and cheese, then mixing them together to make “mom’s mac with a side of indigestion and farts,” Or just making a grilled cheese and hot dogs. At the end of the day, her sense of humor stayed unchanged. My mother’s humor meant nothing at 17 for me, but at 18 it would be an unforeseen memory I would never forget.

At the edge of my seventeenth year, I started to look for a place to work. My mother’s health was deteriorating and I was no longer able to watch her fight to survive without my help. So the day she left her job, was the day I began looking for mine. I lost myself to the market, searching from high corporations and local shops. It wasn’t easy on any level. The job prospects were low especially since the economy was tanking and first time jobs were being given to adults and struggling families rather then teens. However after weeks of exertion, I landed a job at a local pizza and coffee shop.

It only took weeks to realize that the state of our situation was slowly stabilizing. It was our ray of sunshine through the dark clouds. I was working almost 40 hours a week at the shop and my mother took the initiative to get disability checks from the government. It seemed that the boat that was our life finally came about. The sinking feeling of hate I felt lifted. By the time our reality hit, it was too late for me to care.

Mom and I finally got to feel like a family again. We got to take trips to the sunny and go to the cinemas. It was our Tuesday tradition to go to the movies, and junior mints were always a must. We got to eat expensive meals at restaurants and waste gas on long drive. Life wasn’t hard anymore.

Nothing stays the same though, not when it’s perfect…

Winter had come so quickly and I didn’t know how to feel about it. Cool air always put a chill down my spine, and kept me unnerved, but this time, the chill was deathly. The beauty that summer brought my mother only hushed, when the repercussion of too much good karma presented itself..

I’m trying to remember how I felt when my mother died. Her heart was always bad, and was never an issue. But the blood of excitement pumping through my mother’s veins in the last few months was killing her and soon did. After all the good luck we had, it seemed like it was only a matter of time that the beast of bad luck would rear its ugly head. I thought my mother’s death was only a dream, and I wanted to believe it was. I wanted to wake up and hope that Mom left me just for a moment in my sleep, only to wake back into happiness with her. Instead I tried to wake her motionless body with no avail.

I could only say that even gone, she left such an imprint on my life that she still felt alive to me even years after she was gone. Her last disability check was a haunted reminder of the struggle that was to begin.

On my 18^th birthday, I was alone with no one to turn to but my own sorrow and regret. Regret that I hadn’t spent enough time with my mom. She was my “shot heard around the world.”

For once, there was silence.