when dad died it was like a quiet bomb had been detonated that made mum take his phone not forty-eight hours after to get it wiped and swapped out for a free upgrade and made mum gaslight lucy about the fact that dad had ever given her the epitaph that he wanted and made up her own with mary and made lucy tell my aunt all the family secrets and then worry that she had said too much and that she’d tell my other aunt and that maybe she’d even take legal action against her for things that happened thirty seven years ago and made lucy worry that mum and mary were conspiring against her and that dad was really the only thing that was standing in the way of her becoming destitute and made mum and mary’s actions not entirely inconsistent with that and made mum ring lucy using dad’s phone the day after he died and she thought for a second that he was calling her and made mum ring me not once and when i rang her only spoke about the fact that the internet was broken and how she wiped his phone less than forty-eight hours after and how she had already given away some precious things and did a spring clean of his room and gave ross the pillows that he died on and made mum text me to say that the turkish delight i got her for christmas was shit and that i should get my money back from harrods because mary had exhausted attempts to get some free shit out of them directly without my knowing and made mum decide that dad was a catholic after all and made mum decide along with mary and matthew that dad would like to come to his own funeral in jeans because that’s how he felt about mary and matthew’s wedding and didn’t realize that dad took enormous pride in his appearance for things that actually mattered and made mum scold my aunt for being too ill to come but not ill enough to be dead and made mum go out shopping for a new coat the very next day and lie to marks and spencer about the king charles spaniel with a bladder infection and congestion that she was wheeling around in a child’s perambulator being in fact a service animal of all things and made my mum insist that she could honestly look my dead dad in the eye and tell him unflinchingly that she did not would not sign the dnr in spite of the fact that she delayed calling the doctor for sixteen hours because she’d have to wait on the phone or they’d send someone she hadn’t seen before and that would be annoying for some reason and when the paramedics did finally come prevented him from going to hospital in spite of the fact that it was his wish to go to still be alive
bomb