My mother’s pension letter arrived the morning after her funeral

Dear Delyara, We buried Mum yesterday. This morning, a brown envelope arrived saying her pension would increase by £8.70 a week from next month. I laughed. Then I cried. Then I became angry at the envelope as though some civil servant should have known to stop printing good news for a dead woman. Mum worried about money constantly. She would have been delighted with £8.70. She would have calculated how many loaves of bread, bus fares, or packets of tea it covered. I sat at her kitchen table reading the letter aloud to an empty chair: “See, Mum, you got a raise.” My brother told me to throw it away because it does not matter now. Maybe that is why I cannot. It matters because she would have cared. Death turns practical improvements into insults: a pension increase, a cheaper energy tariff, the appointment finally brought forward after the patient is gone. Tonight, the letter is inside her handbag. I know the money will never arrive. I just want one piece of paper to remain somewhere saying the world had planned to give my mother a little more.