I buried my mother’s body in the little garden by the sea. Maybe I felt guilty, but I thought she would want a nice place to rest. It gives me comfort to think of her remains threaded through the roots of the lilacs. It makes me feel like the world maybe isn’t as horrible as it seems.

I make a point to visit her each day. I made her a little marble gravemarker, shaped like the Yorkshire terrier she always wanted. It took me weeks. It was the first time I fully accomplished something on my own. I don’t count her death as an accomplishment, though.

This morning is particularly windy. The sky is gray and the dark waves are crashing against the cliffs with such vigor it feels as if the rock itself were being killed. Maybe I think about death too much. My mother told me that when I was a child.

She would always say things like, “No darling, death is a grown-ups only word,” and “You mustn’t ponder such grim things.” She looked preoccupied whenever she would tell me this. I felt like maybe she thought more about death than she let on. It changed nothing. My mother is still dead.

My thinking about death brought me to the conclusion that what most people consider dead is not in fact death. Death is loss. One does not have to have ceased breathing to be dead — they just have to be lost by the ones who cared about them.

The woman in my garden is very much dead to me, although I doubt the government would consider May Snyder, postal worker of the month, to be dead. My mother is as dead as can be, I assure you. She’s in my garden, after all. 

The puppy statue has flecks of mosaic tile in it. On a sunny day, it would send rainbow light dancing across the wispy grass. The stones that line the garden would be glowing in the spectrum of hues cast over them, much like the effect she had on the people who didn’t know her.

But today the clouds blot out the sun, and the mosaic puppy almost tips over in the wind. It looks so tiny as I approach it.

A rustic metal fence encloses a small patch of land on the highest point of the island. After the fence is a foot or so of grass before the ground plummets off the steep cliffs to the black rocks below. The garden is dotted with the occasional wildflower. I never tried to grow my own flowers, so I appreciate the pale white and lilac speckles. I trimmed the grass in the garden as well. I found several ticks after I buried her, so it seemed like a necessary precaution.

Then there is the statue. She always wanted a puppy, and said she would get one when she got better. That always confused me because she had a really good immune system. It took me a while to figure out that she didn’t mean to get better physically. The statue has started to grow tiny moss on it. Its back faces the ocean spray. It marks where I buried her favorite brooch. It stands as if it’s guarding the small garden, waiting for me.

I sit on the cool, damp grass in front of her grave and cross my legs. Even though I visit her every day, I feel myself forgetting how she died, why I had to kill her, and why I needed to lose her.

Maybe forgetting is for the better. I’m always happier when I forget. My mother would always tell me that I forgot too much and that maybe the sad things were worth remembering. I never meant to forget anything before she died, but a part of me wonders if that’s why I killed her. Maybe she was right, maybe I shouldn’t try to forget.

I find my hands clawing at the cool earth in front of me, like I was subconsciously trying to dig her up. I wasn’t trying to dig her up. I was just fidgeting. I fidget a lot. My mother fidgeted a lot as well.

She would tell me to stop, but I couldn’t stop, because I would be itchy and feel like I needed to scratch at my clothes and my skin, or else I would explode. I feel the same itchiness now, too.

My fingers are itchy. I clench my hands into fists. I can feel my nails digging into my palms. Normally I just have to wait for the feeling to go away before everything gets better, but it’s really bad today.

I start to scoop up the dirt and make a pile by my side. The feeling goes away and I take a deep breath. Earth, flowers, and ocean salt fill my lungs as my hands fly.

I didn’t bury her very deep. It doesn’t take me too long to find the old amethyst brooch she would always wear when she was tending to the little window-box garden of daisies. When I was little, I would make fun of how silly she looked when she wore it. It would always clash magnificently with her frocks, a fact my younger self found quite amusing. Whenever I would laugh she would just smile sadly and not say a word.

When I got older, I would fight with her more — especially when I noticed her window garden was just an excuse to smoke. She thought I wouldn’t notice if she leaned out the window, but I always caught her. She always promised to quit right after I did, and she upheld it for about a week.

I confronted her. I think I must have upset her because when she turned slowly to face me, cigarette in her gloved fingers, she looked like she was crying. She told me that I really couldn’t understand anything. She told me that smoking is bad, but that didn’t mean she could stop. She told me that dying is also bad, and we can’t stop anyone’s death either. 

She was shaking as she whispered, “Maybe I still want to die, but it feels less like a desperate need when I smoke.”

I felt guilty after, like maybe my obsession with death did this to her. I sat alone in my room gagging on the sickly sweet smell of the daisies. I remember noticing that she always would wear her brooch whenever she said she was gardening. Maybe her brooch also made her want to die less. I wonder if she felt happy when I killed her and returned the aubergine gemstone to the peaceful earth. Maybe I did the right thing.

A sharp pain stabs me in the chest. I thought unburying her would hurt less. I’m about to put the brooch back into the grave when I decide against it. I pin it to my shirt instead. It clashes so horribly with my outfit that it makes me chuckle despite myself. I take a handful of earth from the pile beside me and slowly fill up the hole where my mother used to be.

She left shortly after I killed her. She decided that maybe someplace new would be good for her. I’ve been alone in the house by the little garden since. Her little window garden has wilted in her absence. I never had much of a green thumb, and maybe I worry that her ghost would be upset if I tried to grow something there. This garden has been mine for a while, and if someone killed me, I wouldn’t want them to mess with it.

My eye is tingling, so I reach my dirty up hand to rub it, but only succeed at getting dirt in my eye. They start stinging, and I can feel myself letting all the tears I’ve been saving wash all the dirt and sorrow out of them. I don’t know how to stop crying. My mom would know what to do to comfort me, but it’s too late for that now. I wouldn’t want her to waste time comforting me when she should be comforting herself, anyways.

She would always say, “There, there, honey. Everything will be alright,” when I would trip and skin my knee or when other kids would tease me. I wonder how much she believed what she told me. Did she tell herself what she told me whenever she put on this brooch? Did the glittering jewelry make anything better?

I spent so much time thinking that she was fine after she left, that my killing her made everything okay. Now I feel the bile rising in my throat because what if she isn’t fine now, and it’s all my fault?

I take a deep, ragged breath. Maybe she was right, though. Maybe everything will be alright. Maybe her death was a fresh start for her. Or maybe I killed myself when I killed my mother.

I slowly uncurl my body and stand up in my garden by the sea. It’s windy and a storm is brewing on the horizon. Tears are still running down my face, but I probably will be all right. Because even though my mom couldn’t comfort herself, she could comfort me. I have an amethyst brooch and I plan to plant some daisies in the garden where I unburied my mother.