‘Gerald Bantam Says Goodbye’ by Hannah van Didden

After fifty-seven years of not following the crowd, Gerald Bantam succumbed. Mrs Amanda Ericsson pushed him to it in the end. They ran into each other in the cheese section of the local deli and took their conversation to the counter.

“You know, Gerald,” she said, peering over those purple-rimmed spectacles that otherwise hung from the clear plastic chain under her jowl, “you don’t have to say no just to be different.”

“She has the point.” Evan, the deli owner, grinned at them from behind the service counter, his dark hair caught up in a slick that appeared to have leaked into his navy apron. He scanned Gerald’s paper-covered selections, and thin fingers flourished around the payment amount on the LCD display. “It gives you more of the good life with a loved one. You loved your wife, yes?”

Gerald gathered up his edam and mortadella, and nodded an emphatic goodbye.

Behind his polite smile, he was tired. He was exhausted by his neighbours’ relentless demonstrations of cheer — at the shops, walking their critters, rolling their front lawns into submission — in the constant company of their loved ones. He was lonely. Della had been their social planner and, with her passing, the kids’ visits had slowed. But Daniel, Molly, Molly’s unspeaking beau, and Kara all came home for Christmas.

They made not a sound as they processed the sight of their dead mother on her favourite chair.

Then Molly jangled a bejewelled arm around her father’s shoulders. “Look at you, keeping up with modern trends.”

“I didn’t think you were going to,” said Daniel.

Kara, who was the youngest and most like him, shook her head. “How could you?” she whispered.

“It was what your mother wanted,” Gerald replied.

“I like,” Molly said. “This way we’ll always have her with us, right?”

That was when Kara ran sobbing into her old room, which, as she was about to discover, had been refurbished as a shrine for her late mother.