A week before Christmas, my brother Ryan and his wife, Lindsey, arrived at our front door, bundled up and looking tired.
Their heating system had failed, and the cold snap had rendered their home uninhabitable. Despite my reservations, my husband, Nathan, and I welcomed them inside, unknowing of the calamity that awaited our help.
At first, everything seemed fine. However, on the third day, my sister-in-law’s (SIL) behavior began to wear on me.
She monopolized our master bathroom, leaving damp towels and amenities strewn about despite having full access to the guest bedroom shower. Worse, I realized that some of my sweaters and other things had miraculously migrated into her bag without her even asking to borrow them!
However, none of that compared to what I discovered on Christmas Eve morning!
We were gathering for breakfast when I saw something strange. The mantel in the living room, previously decked with garlands and stockings, appeared…Â empty.
“Has anyone seen Mom?” I inquired, my voice wavering slightly. I was referring to the black marble vase holding my mother’s ashes, which we had placed there to honor her wish to “spend” Christmas with us.
Lindsey looked up from her dish and gave me a casual shrug. “You mean her ashes? I threw them out in the backyard. That vase scared me to death every time I saw it!”
“I threw them out,” she said, as if referring to a piece of trash. “Relax, it’s just ashes. Why are you all so dramatic?”
“You had no right!” I yelled, tears rolling down my cheeks. “Mom had one wish, and you—how could you?!”
Lindsey rolled her eyes. “It’s not like she’s going to know!” she said.
Her indifference was a slap in the face. Shaking with wrath, I stormed out to the backyard, hoping it wasn’t too late.
I spent the next hour combing among the grass and the vase in the garbage can, but there was little left to recover. My mother’s ashes, like her memory, were gone!
Around midnight, a blood-curdling scream broke the silence! Nathan and I sprang upright, exchanging worried glances before hurrying upstairs. Before we approached the door to Lindsey and Ryan’s room, we were struck with a vile, gut-wrenching stench that turned my stomach.
The carpet, Lindsey’s clothes, and some of mine were all saturated in murky water, and a foul-smelling muck was pouring from the en suite bathroom!
Nathan attempted to maintain a straight expression, but I could see the corners of his mouth twitching. “Wow,” he replied. “Looks like the toilet backed up.”
“Must be some kind of Christmas miracle,” my husband joked, eliciting a frown from my brother’s irate wife!
I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to twist the knife. “Maybe this is karma,” I muttered, resting on the door frame. “You know, for what you did to Mom. This must have been her revenge—she did have a wicked sense of humor, after all.”
My SIL appeared to be about to burst, but Ryan gently walked her out of the room.
My brother was the first to wake up the next morning, and he told Nathan and me how the toilet backed up that night when my sister-in-law used it. He was deep asleep and woke up she yelled, slipping on the ooze as she returned to the bed!
Unfortunately for Lindsey, her poor luck continued on Christmas Day. The plumber we phoned couldn’t come out until the day after Christmas, so we spent the holiday with a mild sewage odor in the air.
Ryan once grabbed me aside. “Thanks for not kicking us out,” he replied hesitantly. “I know Lindsey can be… difficult.”
“Difficult?” I raised an eyebrow. “”Ryan, she threw away Mom’s ashes!” I hissed.
Because my fury had flared up again, I pondered instructing him to pack up and leave, but then I looked over at Lindsey. She sat stiffly at the table, her face pallid and her eyes darting around nervously as if waiting for another calamity.
When she tried to protest to the rest of the family about her suffering, they immediately sided with me!
“You threw away their mother’s ashes?” my aunt gasped. “What were you thinking?!”
By the end of the night, my SIL was completely embarrassed, and I couldn’t help but feel poetic justice.
Mom may not have been with us in the way we had hoped, but I felt her presence more powerfully than ever.
