29 Mar Let Go

📅 Published on March 29, 2026

“Let Go”

Written by Sarina H.
Edited by Craig Groshek
Thumbnail Art by Craig Groshek
Narrated by N/A

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🎧 Available Audio Adaptations: None Available

⏰ ESTIMATED READING TIME — 9 minutes

Rating: 10.00/10. From 1 vote.

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Hayley has new highlights in her hair. A subtle caramel that I don’t notice until she stands—elegant, low-key, conceivably not too expensive. Mom would have liked it. And probably told me that I should get mine done, too.

“Just the large matcha latte, Marin?” she asks. “You sure?”

I nod, closing the fancy menu to block my view of the prices. It’s not like one drink actually makes any dent at all for me. Even if they always price the regular size to not feel worth it unless you upgrade.

Hayley returns with a single slice of strawberry cheesecake from the front display, along with the number for our table. “I thought about buying one for you anyway,” she says as she sits back down, “but I remembered you don’t like gifts you didn’t ask for.”

She’s right. I know people are being generous, I know they’re doing a nice thing, but I’m always afraid of disappointing them by not being excited enough. “Thanks,” I reply, “that’s okay.”

“So how’ve you been? Sorry. I mean.” Her cake fork clinks against the plate. “That was a stupid question. I meant to say, how are you holding up?”

My mouth almost curves, not quite a smile, but getting closer. “That’s okay,” I repeat. “I’m managing, I think. I guess it’s something everyone has to get used to eventually.”

“I guess,” Hayley says. “How long’s it been now?”

“Five weeks.” And a half, or thereabouts. It had happened on Tuesday. The funeral had been Friday.

My friend fidgets her fingertips along the fork handle. “I’m really sorry, still,” she says. “I know you guys were close.”

“Yeah,” I echo. “Thank you.”

Her words are a little awkward, in the way of people who don’t know how to talk about a thing they haven’t had to contend with, but they’re sincere. I appreciate that. Hayley’s close enough to her parents, too, I know, though she hasn’t had to bury either of them yet.

My dad passed when I was two. Mom would tell stories about him, sometimes, while we were doing chores together. Cleaning out the stove with old toothbrushes, finding creative ways to throw together leftovers, working out how to alter my too-small clothes by hand since we didn’t have a machine—that was how I learnt to cook. And to sew.

It’s been five-and-a-half weeks, and I still glance at a fabric pattern and wonder what she would think. The last two Fridays, I almost picked up the phone to give her a call. At least I hadn’t tried to knock on the door of the spare room.

“How was the wake?”

“Really nice.” It had been. “Just an intimate service, but life insurance still covered everything.” Actually, they’d paid for way more than necessary, considering our modest gathering of family friends. We don’t have any other relatives here.

There’d been cake, I remembered as I looked at Hayley’s untouched plate. I hope the conversation hasn’t put her off it. An entire cake left over, and so much fruit, and cheese. I asked the caterers what they were going to do with it, and they told me they’d have to throw it out. They couldn’t re-serve dishes that had been out on the table, of course; it was a hygiene thing. It made sense. I didn’t like that it did.

I told them to give it to me. That I’d find a way to get through it. And I did, even though I’d gotten pretty sick of cheese and crackers, and the fruit had been a little fizzy by the end. Mom would have done the same. She knew what it was like to grow up never having enough, even if I didn’t.

Mom could find a way to make use of anything.

On the other hand, maybe she’d have suggested I give it out around my building, or the office. She was generous like that, too. She would have brought me a piece of cake without asking first.

“That sounds lovely,” Hayley replies. Her eyes soften. “I’m glad to hear.”

I smile.

The drinks arrive faster than I was expecting. By the time I notice the packet of sugar on my saucer, the waiter is too far away to hear that I don’t need it. I slip it into my pocket instead. Hayley takes a sip of her dirty chai, and thankfully spears her fork into her slice.

“Are you still off work, then?” she asks between bites.

“I am.” My lips press together. “They’ve been really understanding about it. Plus, I have so much PTO saved up.” My mother’s estate has been proving surprisingly challenging to sort through. Mom was one of those people who never stopped living like she had to scrounge every cent, even after she’d gone from housewife to a pretty decent career in office management.

“Mm, time off. That’s cool.”

I smirk, slightly. Fishing measuredly for a freer mood. “I know, right? Wild.”

It’s a well-worn topic between us. Hayley is a freelance musician—brilliant with a guitar, better with a keyboard. As much as she likes to complain about no contracts, no benefits, no job security, I know it’s a tradeoff she’s thrilled to be able to make. I don’t get it. I don’t get how she lives with the stress, the constant juggling of making a living like that. In my occasional, more irritable moments, it even annoys me a little that she can joke about it.

When I was young, I wanted to be an artist. Doesn’t everyone? I even won a bunch of awards as a child, as a teenager. Then I told Mom I was going to art school, and she told me not to be silly. I could always still paint; I just needed to do something to make money. I cried the first time she said that. She was right, though. I studied finance, and now I earn more than Hayley does in her best months. And I still paint, when I’m not too tired from the office.

Mom was always proud of me. Of how well I’d done. She liked Hayley a lot, she did, but sometimes she’d say—aren’t you glad, Marin, that you got a proper career? Look how talented Hayley is, but that’s still only the best she can do. How will she ever get a mortgage?

The afternoon dwindles with the level of our mugs. A light breeze picks up over chit-chat about Hayley’s latest gig, and the construction too close to my bedroom window. I watch Hayley flick her hair off her face for the fourth time, and ask, “Want to head back to mine?”

“Huh.” She glances through the cafe doorway, at the clock above the counter. “Not sure I can, sorry. I have to get ready for another show tonight.”

“Oh, okay,” I reply, a little disappointed. I’d expected that to be the plan. I’d already tidied up.

“I can drop you. Let’s do this again soon, yeah?”

Hayley gets up first, as I tip back the last dregs of my matcha. I dab the foam off my upper lip before feeling a mild prod of regret, looking down at the single green-splotched crescent discolouring one corner of my napkin. I’d have to throw the whole thing out now.

One time, as a kid, I’d accidentally pulled out two tissues from the box instead of one. Mom had walked across the room to stuff the second one back in, and told me three times not to be wasteful.

Hayley has left behind the last tiny corner of her cake. It’s not much bigger than the smattering of crumbs that litter the plate, too fine for the prongs of a fork. I reach over before the waiter circles back, smooshing the bits together with my fingers, and pop the blob into my mouth. Her own napkin lies unused by her saucer. I grab it along with her intact packet of sugar, pocketing both before making for the counter to pay for myself.

There’d been leftover napkins at the wake, too, along with the food. The caterers had said much the same about them. The plastic wrap had been opened, and they’d been on the table; they wouldn’t be able to be reused. So, I told them I’d take those too. Mom would have.

Mom would find a way to make use of anything.

I ask about Hayley’s dog as we cross the street towards her car, and her new girlfriend, and her new girlfriend’s dog. As she jumps to answer, I wonder if I should get a dog. My apartment allows them. But Mom had stayed over a lot when she came for dinner, and she didn’t like dogs. I knew that from all the times I begged for one as a kid.

The spare room is empty, now. Has been for five-and-a-half weeks. But pets are expensive, and I’m at the office so much. I probably don’t have time to look after a dog. Or to date, for that matter.

Mom liked to remind me that it had been six, seven, eight, almost ten years since my last serious relationship ended. And I would always reply that I’m thirty-one, not fifty. And it’s so much tougher to meet people after college. And don’t you say I should be working harder on getting promoted, anyway?

Then again, I’m not working right now. Maybe it’s finally time to give it a go.

There are three wooden sticks in Hayley’s center console, I notice by the time we’re pulling up to my building. “It gets really hot on the new stage,” she answers to my curious query. “I’ve been eating a lot of ice cream on my way home. Keep forgetting to throw those out.”

“I’ll take them,” I reply. “Can use them for cleaning.”

“Um, sure,” she says.

“Thanks for the lift.”

“No worries. See you soon. And, Marin?”

I pause with my hand on the handle.

“You’ll be alright,” Hayley says, voice soft and warm. “You don’t stop loving her, just because she’s gone. She’s still a part of you.”

I sigh, squeezing my eyes shut for just a moment. “Thanks, Hayley,” I reply, quietly, sincerely. “I know.”

My front door swings back into the broken-zippered cushion that serves as a door stop. I slip off my shoes onto the new rack I’d picked up off the pavement—a great find, only slightly wobbly in one corner. Mom had been brilliant at scrounging finds from piles put out for collection. My keys clink into the cracked glass tupperware on my hall table.

It feels a bit unbalancing, being able to navigate to the kitchen in a straight line. Now possible following my haphazard decluttering in anticipation of Hayley’s visit. I click on the kettle, tugging open my drawer of complimentary motel tea bags, and pick out an Earl Grey. I’ve had enough matcha today.

The tag tears easily off the string. And the string from the bag. I grab an old pasta sauce jar out of my mug cupboard and make my tea in it with a single splash of milk. I rinse the empty capsule out in the sink without putting it down.

I hadn’t done the best cleaning job earlier. Only moved things out of sight of the main room. Still, the rack where I usually hang squares of reusable plastic wrap is clear, and there are no more stacked containers on the counter to add this one to. Leaving my jar to cool to a holdable temperature, I turn away as its steam rises to cloud the face of the decorative clock that Mom told me to take down every time she was in here.

The door to the spare room cracks open with a creak like old leather. The air beyond is palpable, warmed from the westward windows that Mom always lamented weren’t eastward. A few stray rays of afternoon sun reach far enough to tickle through the widening gap. With them, a smell also wafts.

I can’t quite place it. Musky, but not entirely unpleasant. Homey, like a familiar compost heap. I don’t remember noticing that smell this morning.

Did I also notice, this morning, how easily the backlit jumble on the bed could be mistaken for the outline of a human figure? How the folds of crinkled napkins fall like tattered clothing around the bones of plastic cutlery, and the bulging muscles of disposable plates. Sinews of elastic bands taken from vegetable bunches, ribbons cut off clothing tags, snaking around the ridges of crimped, near-empty paint tubes. Bent needles pin together sheets of carefully unripped wrapping paper into the patchy skin of one cohesive body.

Did I notice it sitting up to regard me, as I stood in this doorway?

The being moves with the sound of a dozen upending crates. Balls of crumpled aluminum foil cushion joints of splintering chopsticks and overstretched hair ties, a thousand things that had no place now fitting perfectly together. A head of foam takeout cartons twists in my direction, a small white container making up one lone eye. Then it stops, waiting.

It takes me a moment to break out of my stupor, frozen like a witness before a rising flood, a doctor before an inadvertent creation. I step forward, finally, and raise the milk capsule still clutched in my numb, quaking fingers. Offering.

It slips into place beside the other. A full pair of bottlecap eyelids blink once, twice, then settle to fix me with a placid gaze that I know very well.

“Mom?”

She extends a hand, reaching towards me. I take it, squeezing hard, ignoring the stab of her toothpick fingers into my palm. The napkin from my pocket joins the front of her skirt, the packets of sugar into the meat of her calf. The ice cream sticks reinforce the straws of her ribcage, and the teabag string I weave in carefully with the other strands of her hair. A hot tear trickles down the length of my neck.

“Mom,” I say again, voice cracking like a fracturing mirror.

I feel the torn tape of her lips against my temple. Long enough for a second tear to splotch onto her lap, where the half-disintegrated sponge cannot tell whether it came from grief or joy or terror. Then, Mom pulls back.

Her head tilts. I watch through the holes in her chest as cling wrap lungs inflate, air whistling up a stem of empty toilet paper rolls with the rattle of old memories. From behind breadclip teeth, I hear the flap of her gel packet tongue against cheeks of ballooning empty envelopes.

She yet has no vocal cords. Nothing precise enough, from all that she has made use of, to shape her wheezing breath into speech. I stand, before the immortal visage of my mother, in the shadow of the majesty I have assembled. And I don’t need words to know there is some way she is still disappointed in me.