The End David F. Young (bio) My mother is wearing her favorite outfit, the one with the powder blue waistcoat and the extra fringe, along with her pearls. They've done a good job with her makeup, although she'd never wear that much blush. Her expression is more bored than peaceful, even impatient. This almost makes it easy to believe she's still warm and breathing, but I can always tell. It's in the set of her jaw, the tuck of her chin. For some reason, this is disappointing. I was hoping my own mother would be different. How many dead bodies have I seen? I could keep count once, but I lost track years ago. My best guess is probably hundreds. The truth is, they all start to look the same after a while. The skin takes on a certain pallor, just like a wax figure. The cheeks get slack around the skull. Eventually, the hands stiffen. If you leave them long enough, they'll even start to curl, like their last thought is to hold on. I stare down at my mother, lying against the red velvet lining of her coffin. Her body isn't there yet, but it's close. Across the room, shuffling from group to group is my father, cursing wildly under his breath while he goes on shaking everyone's hands. Who can blame him? My mother has only been dead three days. Everything about it was unexpected. She was washing the dishes when she brought her hands up to her head, complained for the thousandth time that evening about her migraine, then fell to the ground and died. In twenty seconds, she accomplished what takes most of my clients years. In many ways, it was an ideal death: quick, painless, ruthlessly efficient. She didn't even have time to take off her gloves. My clients aren't so fortunate. They suffer indignities. They breathe through tubes, suck their food down more tubes. They shit themselves. They lie in beds until their skin bleeds. I look at my mother's placid expression below me, the healthy pucker of her lips. Compared to all that, I think even she would have agreed she got off easy. None of this is much comfort to my father. His name is William. He's in his late seventies now, pale and gray, his hair still combed and parted in the careful way he's done for decades. He's always been a large man, a person of authority, although up until my mother's head hit the floor, he was her dependent. The tumors appeared about a year ago, little black [End Page 180] marbles collecting in one corner of his lungs. No one thought he'd outlast my mom, least of all me. But that's how it happens sometimes. I watch him wander around for a while longer, then I walk up to my father and find him a seat. "You need to rest," I tell him. I keep my voice gentle but firm, professional. I can see the telltale signs of distress: the red swollen eyes, the broken blood vessels spidering along his cheeks. He looks at me, then up at the rafters. "What's going to happen now?" he says. But whether he's saying this to me, to himself, or to no one at all, I can't tell. ________ I decide to move in with him to help out, get his affairs in order, manage all the familiar logistics of death. My father and I have never gotten along, but that doesn't matter. I make him meals, shuttle him to the doctor, sit with him while he stares at the television. I say nothing the few times he sneaks outside for a cigarette. I'm his only family now. "There's no need for this," he starts saying to me. "I'm just fine. Go home." Or, when his mood takes a turn: "Don't start treating me like one of your hospice patients." I recognize that growl. Growing up, he'd use it whenever he got angry, which could happen at the drop of a dime. I could...