Goodbye, Mom

I wasn’t there when my mother died. My father became a sad excuse after her unforeseen diagnoses and then developed an even more melancholy temperament upon the reckoning of her flesh. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to say goodbye when she was still breathing, but I did get to say goodbye. Because my mother came back. She came back.

I was nine, in the end, my mother was in the hospital and there was only so much I could take. I couldn’t be by her side 24-7, and although I felt guilty— I just couldn’t do it. My grandmother stayed with me while my father slept at the hospital like it was night school. I loved my grandmother, and if she hadn’t guided us for a decade after my mother’s passing, I believe my life would’ve turned into shambles quickly. She held my father up as well, and when it was her turn to go underground, I believed she would come back and say goodbye as well.

She never did. I don’t know what that means— whether this gift, or curse, however you’d like to look at it, effects my blood. I guess I’ll know when it’s my time to go. If I’m able, I’ll tell you what I discover.

There was a phone call— I remember the landline knelled rather than sang. My grandmother picked up the phone, and I listened to her speak, gasp, and then hold it all inside because the only thing on her mind was protecting me from the truth. She hung up, smiled, and didn’t say a word. She didn’t have to. The secret was hidden in her eyes— and then it jumped like a virulent disease into my own— heat pressed behind my iris, and I swear I could feel the throb of my heart rumbling my skull. I ran to her arms, crying without words because sometimes there doesn’t have to be anything said to know what has happened. A child knows when their parent has passed on— I knew it when my father was gone as well. Some hypothermic chill passes through your heart and you realize that it’s up to you to carry their memory, so they don’t die. They never actually die.

I fell asleep, curled in my grandmother’s lap on the couch in our living room. When I woke, the light of the kitchen fridge illuminated the room slightly and I left my grandmother’s protection to get a glass of water. There was a window above the sink, and as I poured myself a glass, I looked out into our backyard. A full moon cast its luminescence across the overgown foliage. My monkey bars glistened— a flagpole, holding my father’s favorite sports team, being blown by an invisible wind that didn’t seem to stir the branches of the trees surrounding it. There were many nights I looked out that window and imagined seeing terrible things. Once, after reading a book about a killer clown that ate little kids in the sewer; I could’ve sworn I saw a clown in the backyard. A beautiful woman zombie that tempted my lust, a werewolf, an old witch with green skin beckoning me closer so she could offer me candy. Everything awful in the world sat under the light of the moon in my backyard. But the night that my mother died, I wasn’t thinking about any of that. I only imagined her pushing me on the swing, holding my hips as I swung from the monkey bars as a little boy, and catching me at the bottom of the big slide.

And then, it happened.

A figure stepped out from the shadows of the forest. She was wearing light blue nightgown, the kind of gown given to patients at hospitals. Her legs were bare, so thin that she appeared cadaverous in nature as she sidled up next to my old monkey bars. She was dancing without rhythm, and the closer she got to the kitchen window the clearer I heard the noise her movements made. Cracking, clicking— with every spasmodic gyrate she clicked like two pieces of wood smashing against one another. Bones breaking, knuckles cracking, sticks being stepped on in the middle of the forest during a long hike. At first, she didn’t appear to notice that she was being watched, but suddenly her head jerked in my direction, and she fell to all fours and scurried across the backyard, and I couldn’t hold my screams back.

“Grammy!” I yelled, urine falling down my leg and wrapping around my ankle as if trying to keep clear of the cold floor.

She stirred from her slumber and ran to the kitchen.

“Andrew?” She gasped, “Andrew, are you alright?”

She picked me up from the ground, without concern that I’d wet myself. I pointed at the window, “She’s in the backyard. Mom’s home. She’s in the backyard.”

My Grandmother didn’t say a word and God bless her soul. She took my words seriously, even in her end, when I was a dumb-shit, know-it-all nineteen- year-old, assclown. My grandmother never took my words for granted. I often, and quite frankly too much, took her words without thinking about the wisdom she was imparting. I think that’s the price of youth— we take advantage of the ones who love us without understanding the consequences.

She looked out the window for maybe a minute before dropping back down to my level. “Let’s get you cleaned up, my love. Let’s get you cleaned up.” She smiled; it was reminiscent of the way she looked after learning the news that her daughter-in-law passed. “You’ll feel better if you get some clean and some rest.” She stuttered slightly as she used the word rest, and I couldn’t help but absorb her pain while thinking of the phrase resting place. My mother wasn’t resting. The thought plagued my head and before she put me to bed. I checked that my windows were locked and there was nothing in my closet. I don’t know, it wasn’t like I didn’t want to see my mother. But I didn’t want to see her like that. I never wanted to see her like that.

Black suit. Black tie. White undershirt newly bought because a boy wants to look his best during his mother’s ending ceremony. A boy needs to look his best during his mother’s burial, it’s an unwritten rule— a requirement that all children have signed without their knowledge upon their conception. We sat in the front row on the left, my father is to my right, his mother, Grammy, to his right. This was the wake, and tomorrow we would put her in the ground, and for some reason I found it relieving. There was a body in an oak casket in front of the room. My father and his mother had already paid their respects. What does that even mean? Paying their respects. “Are you sure I can’t take you up there, son?” My father asked me, and I shook my head because I was afraid. Sometimes when I dream of the incident, I pee myself the same way I did when she first revealed herself to me in the backyard.

“No, dad.”

“Alright.” There was anger in his tone, but when my grandmother pinched his arm, he yelped and took my hand for comfort.

I closed my eyes and thought about all the good stuff. And the bad. And that version of her crawling on all fours in my backyard. But there was something else in the back of my mind shouting at me to go and see her. She’s your mother, that voice said, and I listened because one wouldn’t want to miss their last opportunity to say goodbye.

As I stepped towards the casket, I swear I felt the eyes of people I never really knew attached to my back. I closed my eyes upon arrival, breathed deep, and then opened as though I was trying to wake from a nightmare.

Mom was smiling. But it wasn’t her smile— it was a smile that belonged to a monster— a monster wearing my mother’s skin and tormenting me upon her death.

I screamed and fell backwards, once again evacuating my bladder as everyone in the room screamed and cried. I was embarrassed. And for the first time in my life, I blacked out.

When I came to, I was in my bedroom. It was dark, and my father and grandma were sitting at the foot of my bed with their backs to me. I looked around the room, that same moonlight that had ignited our yard the night of my mother’s appearance was with us.

“I just don’t get it.” My father said.

“You don’t have to get it.” My grandmother replied.

“He’ll have to confront Emily eventually. He has to talk to her.”

“I know, honey, I know. But he has to do it on his own. Maybe he’s just not ready yet.”

There was something groaning under my bed … I heard it. Something that shouldn’t have been breathing— because each breath it took was too painstaking. Each breath it took became decreasingly obtainable.

“He has to say goodbye. I need him to say goodbye, mom. She won’t leave unless he says it … it must be him.”

My blood turned cold, and my lips shuddered.

“He will,” My grandmother said, “He will.”

My father and grandmother got up, and as they did, I heard something sliding out from under my bed. They turned and looked at me, and I looked at them. But they didn’t acknowledge my alertness. They didn’t acknowledge me at all. They walked out of the room and left me with the smiling version of my mother. She’d slid next to me, joining me under the covers, never speaking, I don’t think she was able to. Her body, cold. Her heart, immobile.

I turned and looked, because I knew that she wouldn’t go away without my permission. Because sometimes mothers need to be let go by their children before they can rest. Especially when their babies are young. I think it was the cancer that made her smile— that rotten disease that killed her still had a piece. At least, that’s what I tell myself when I think about her these days.

I looked at that smiling face and I did the bravest thing I will ever do in my life.

“Goodbye, Mom.”

END

BIO: Nicholas Kellogg weaves chilling tales from his home in Connecticut, where he lives with his partner and balances fatherhood, with two toddlers under five and a full-time job. Early morning prior to work, he creates nightmares while many are still having them. Drawing inspiration from the eerie realities of everyday life while exploring the darkness beneath the ordinary. He has recently signed a traditional publishing contract for his debut novel Green, with Wicked Tales, an Imprint of DAOwen Publications.

Nicholas Starr Kellogg - Author Website

Follow on Social

Literary Garage: Storytelling with grit, heart, and no off-ramp.

© 2025. All rights reserved.

Connect

Follow us on Substack for updates and news

Special Features Editor and Warrior God: Michael Downing