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Anne Whitehouse
Smuggled Images Anne Whitehouse
I
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Sister Three was on the phone, and she was outraged. Sister Two had told her about the photos I had taken that afternoon of our mother lying dead in the open casket in the viewing room of the funeral home.
Sister Three scolded me for my lack of respect and demanded I delete the pictures. She said Sisters One and Two agreed with her.
We each have our own ways of grieving, I wanted to say, but I was too spent to argue. “All right,” I said, “I’ll do it.” One by one, I deleted the pictures, while my daughter, sitting next to me on the bed in the hotel room, confirmed it to my sister. “Okay,” she replied, mollified. I could see she’d been prepared for an argument I hadn’t given her.
As soon as she hung up, I reinstalled the photos. “It’s none of her business,” I told my daughter. “These photos are precious to me.”
II
Nearly ten years after my mother’s death, I stare at these last images of her. She died soon after her cancer diagnosis. She had no time to waste away.
In my pictures she is lying tranquilly against the white silk lining of the casket. Her eyes are closed, her face is made up, and her hair arranged. She looks like herself, and yet not like herself. She is wearing a dress of navy-blue velvet, and her hands are folded. On her left wrist is a silver link bracelet made by Sister One.
I recall the mortician wringing his hands, speaking softly with the right note of sadness, yet clearly proud of his handiwork and eager for us to see what he had done.
An impulse made me take the photos after he left the room. Even though I knew I never could solve the mystery of my mother, I knew I would want to keep these images close to my heart.
Anne Whitehouse’s recent poetry collection is Outside from the Inside (Dos Madres Press, 2020), and her recent chapbook is Escaping Lee Miller (Ethel Zine and Micro Press, 2021).. Anne is also the author of a novel, Fall Love, and she has been publishing a series of essays about Edgar Allan Poe. She lives in New York City and Columbia County, New York. www.annewhitehouse.com
