My sister liked photography. She snapped pictures of everything. It always bothered me when I found pictures of animals eating other animals or of dead things.

Our upbringing shoved us from trailer to apartment, then back and forth enough that we never really understood our mother. I left home as soon as I turned of age. All I ever wanted was stability. What I wanted for my mother defied my mother’s definition of good life and she pushed her views on my sister.

When I found time to visit once, my mother called me out on my way back. At that time, they lived in an apartment decorated to look like the interior was made of wood.

“I don’t know why you’d want to go back,” she said.

“Because I have a bed there. I’ll have a bed there as long as I need.”

“You have a place here.”

“Where? I don’t remember this place from last time.”

“We moved. You left and we had to move on.”

I said, “And I moved on once. I came to visit. I’m going back to where I left.”

Her eyes became half open. “I’m getting older. You need to come back to be with us.”

“Or you can stop moving.”

“Life moves me. I have no choice in the matter.”

“We know that isn’t true.”

“What do you know! You moved out. You haven’t been here.”

“I know you.”

I saw on her face that she wanted to tell me to go to hell, but my sister was in the next room. She always played nice around her. She came out carrying her photo album.

“Hey, big bubba, you want to look at my pictures with me?”

My mother returned to her room. My sister and I looked at her album on the sofa. It told our lives in a straight line until I moved out. I finally saw some of her and others or her and mother.

As my mother aged, my sister stayed with her. My mother found ways to shake things up even in retirement. She’d rationalize it by saying that God did it. Her faith is what kept her alive longer than anything else. I tried to get her to stop, but she told me she’d stop when God let her. I told her she was a moron. We didn’t talk much as she became older.

One day, I received a call from my sister. She wanted out. The honest truth isn’t what she wanted to hear. My mother needed a place to live by herself where she would stay. My sister tried, but never left her side. From what I heard, the two talked less and less.

The end was silent between them under one roof. I came to visit with my fiancée. My sister and mother played house well, but it was clear that she hated mother.

The two argued like an old married couple when they did talk, and marriage was one of the reasons the two argued. My sister found a guy she liked. She wanted to move in with him. My mother told her that she was abandoning her. My sister packed her bags and left.

On the way out, my mother told us of a trip she was taking to Chile. I told her to watch back. She told me that God was watching her.

For the first time in years, I prayed for her safety.

I returned to life at home. My fiancée and I prepped for marriage. The weeks spun on until it seemed to blur through the year. In the middle of a Saturday morning, I was about to mow when I received a call from Chile.

“Mr. Daniels? Your mother is Flora?”

“Yes, Flora Daniels,” I said.

“I’m sorry to pass on the news Mr. Daniels. Your mother has passed.”

The news didn’t hit me immediately. The talk was short afterward except for the details of how to deal with her body. She was to be cremated. I cried in bed that night.

My sister flew in for her funeral service. She stayed in the our spare room. She asked if I’d like to see her album. I said I’d see it when I had time. She left it on the coffee table to go shopping with my fiancée the morning after the service.

After I finished my morning schedule, I went to see the pictures. I turned through all of them. My sister seemed to have left her husband and also traveled South. The last picture is what really struck me. It was of my mother’s hand, laying blue and purple, as if she was dead.