text: &#x200B; **Mother’s Day** I sat crouched in the darkness as the first rays of light broke on the horizon, hidden behind a solid wall of granite. I held the dagger, tightly between my hands, trembling ever so slightly as I scanned the cemetery grounds for movement. “Mom? Why are we in a graveyard, and why do you have the kitchen knife?” Ok, so it wasn’t so much of a dagger but a really sharp chef’s knife. I mean, it was a Wülsthof, so it’s not like it was undagger-like. It was at least German steel, so that made it feel like a dagger to me. All that really mattered was that it was metal and sharp. I scowled a bit as I looked at my son standing there with a flashlight. This was his first time out. Being on cusp of middle school I felt it was reasonable to bring him along - one day he would need to take over this job - if he loved me that is. “Shhh Cy! Just watch” I hissed. I immediately felt badly - it wasn’t his fault he was in such a screwed up family. Hell, it wasn’t my fault either. The least my husband could have done was disclosed what would happen before we brought kids into this. I scanned across the field but there was nothing but headstones, tufts of grass, and old vases filled with dying flowers. I took a moment to contemplate the scene, relaxing just a bit to settle into my awareness. This had become a regular pattern for me over the past decade - each May I spend my weekdays taking the kids to school, doing the laundry, and even enjoying Michigan Spring with a bit of yard cleanup. Then Mothers day weekend would come and I would pack up the kitchen knives, jump in the Ford Flex, and head to the local cemetery at dawn to kill my in-laws. Well, I’m not really sure, now that I think of it, whether I’m actually killing them. Perhaps this is splitting hairs (ha ha!), but when they crawl out of the ground like they do I can’t imagine they’re actually alive. I mean, it sure feels like a zombie/vampire/undead kind of event (at least from my limited tour of netflix shows on the topic), though it doesn’t happen until day break. I don’t really get that either - every show where the undead rise seems to have them coming out at night. I once argued with a girlfriend over this, emphatic that it couldn’t be an undead uprising and that there must be another explanation since it never begins until daylight breaks. She doesn’t talk to me anymore - something about how I project my feelings on my inlaws to justify keeping my kids away from them. Fuck her. “Mom, what’s that?” Cy stammers. He’s right beside me now, leaning up against the big monolith emblazoned with the name “Levine Schroeder”. He’s safe there, Levine was just another dead great great grandpa who happened to die early enough that he was buried at the edge of the family plots. His stone made for a great vantage point of the rest of the field, For some reason you never had to worry about the men in the family coming back to life, only the women. And then, too, only the women who married in. I don’t know if it was a curse or a plague, but it was weird as shit. And ever since I joined the family I’ve been a central actor in this play. I looked down at his hands and saw he was clutching a small red pocket knife - a Victorinox swiss army knife, with its one and half inch blade extended. A smile crossed my lips - that was my boy scout son, always prepared. I brought him out here just to observe, to understand his “heritage” as it were. But silently I was proud that he was ready to to help out - there was a reason I brought him instead of his brother Henry. My eyes darted across the landscape and followed his gaze to a stone roughly fifteen yards away. There was movement, certainly, though in the still breaking light it was tough to tell. It looked like Susan’s stone, a great aunt who was married to my husband’s uncle Alan. “Just watch” I hissed through my teeth to him, and began to move towards the shaking pile of dirt. Despite having only done this for the past ten years or so I had developed a bit of a technique. See, if you move in slow and wait for them to surface their head above the ground you can hit them with one strike and send them back to their grave none-the-wiser that another Mother’s day had passed. Quick and painless (I think!?). What better way to honor a dead ancestor? After I dispatched Susan I went on to Janet and Michelle. Pardon me, Michèle. Supposedly she was French from the countryside, though she died nearly 20 years ago so I never met her (minus the last ten years I’ve been returning her to her grave on M-day, of course). I think I would have liked to have met her though; out of all the corpses crawling out of the ground at me she seemed to have the most lovely vintage clothing, and you just got this sense that she was well put together. I saved grandma Ruth Schroeder for the last. She passed when Cy was just a baby and, while I’m sure he didn’t remember her, I thought it only fitting that I share this experience with him. She was older than the others when she passed, and was slow, so she was an easy kill (or whatever it was I was doing). “Cy, pay attention.” I called to him, still hiding in the shadow of Levine’s stone. “The key is you have to hit them in the head, don’t just hack away at them like a tree.” The minute I said it I rolled my own eyes. Hacking away at undead like a tree. WTF. What kind of world was I living in. I approached Ruth, or what was once Ruth, and eyed her up. She shambled towards me on mission unknown - I’d never let one bite me, or whatever it is they were going to do. Hell, maybe they just wanted to give me a hug. But after all this time I wasn’t going to find out. “The eye is easiest, but anywhere in the head is fine after all this time” I called out, not bothering to look back. I plunged my knife up into Ruth’s skull just between her jaw bones on the right side. The lifeless body fell to the ground and turned to ash like the others. “See, when you do that it’s quick and painless” I continued. I heard Cy shout: “M-MO--” then pain lanced through the left side of my face and everything went dark. I came to with Cy sobbing over me and a headache beyond compare. The sun had risen in the sky and my scout den mother foresting skills told me it was mid-morning. I groaned as I sat up, pain lancing through my face. My hand found dried blood. “Oh Mom!” Cy said, a mixture of joy and desperation bringing him to tears as he grabbed me in a hug only a fourth grader could give. I saw a flower vase on the ground next to me, a twisted kitschy metal container usually attached to cheap grave markers. Next to it was Cy’s knife, sitting discarded in a pile of ashes. Bethany. Shit, I had forgotten. The cancer last year. Damnit. But Cy had my back. So I guess I made it one more year on this side of the graves. I stood up, bracing myself on Cy, and picked up his knife. “We might have to get you a bigger knife” I said, trying my hand at levity. It failed miserably and he started to sob. I picked up my chef's knife and as we walked back to the car I noticed the tip of the knife had broken off. It had been getting old anyways - a wedding present of course - and the handle on the paring knife had long since split. Couldn’t find the bread knife to save my life. Idly I thought to myself that it seemed like a refresh of the cutlery was in order. Maybe I would go down to the Williams Sonoma in the mall this afternoon and see if they had any of those Henckles for a good price. They must have a sale on, it’s Mother’s day after all.