Visitation

          Scrunch, scrunch, scrunch, the snow complained beneath thickly padded boots as the figure carefully stepped through the closely laid grave markers in the old cemetery.
          He paused briefly at a tombstone and brushed the new fallen snow from the raised lettering.

          “ Oops!” his breathe escaping his mouth in a cloud of white. “ Wrong one.”
His youthful face winced, “ Damn!”

          Plodding forward, he repeated his clumsy blunder a couple more times before he finally found the grave he was seeking. The slender man leaned forward and awkwardly placed a bundle of bright, yellow daffodils in the snow at the base of the monument, he then quickly backed away to stare at the result. Frowning, the man, wrapped tightly in his long winter coat, retrieved the dainty flowers in a gloved hand and brushed away the crisp snow from the cold hard ground before replacing the yellow blossoms on the bare earth. He stood back again but, this time, he thought how much prettier the flowers had looked on the snow than now, on the damp brown dirt.

          Concerned, the man considered pushing the snow back but he felt stupid now and inadequate, so he remained standing, peering down, shuffling his feet in the snow. His mother had always said that he had a penchant for doing the wrong thing at the right time.

          How long ago had she died? Murdered actually. He was still in high school at the time. What was that, 10, 12 years ago? In a flood of memory, he pictured that day. Coming home from school and finding his cold, dead mother lying naked on the white tiles of the kitchen floor. Face down, in a dark, near dry pool of thick blood. Her legs were spread, her private area exposed for everyone to see and there was something sticking out of her, in that spot that, the then boy, could not recognize.
          The sight terrified the child, and he suffered from vivid nightmares for years, however, the end result was the same. His mother was dead. The woman who had given birth to him was gone. And he had been freed from her tyranny. Her drunken rages, her cruel, foul-mouthed insults, her naked forays into his bedroom in the middle of the night. Even then, as now, he felt a sense of relief as he stared down at the fairly recent grave marker.

          “ You know,” the man started softly, crouching before the icy tombstone.
“ I’ve been coming to see you for the last 10 years. Every third Sunday, like clockwork. What you did for me I will never forget. I will keep coming, as always. I promise!” His words hung in the air as a cloud of mist.

          The man tearfully rose and placed his hand gently on the icy stone. He stood silent for a moment then murmured softly,
          “ I love you. Thank you Dad. Thank you for killing my mother.”