A Year to the Day

It drove him nuts, the way his mother was with the lights. 
The Complete and Total Loser, walking to the house from the train station to have dinner with his parents would see the house as a glowing beacon of energy waste, outdoor lighting throwing weak photons on spaces in need of no illumination. He'd enter the house and turn the lights off. His mother would turn them back on. A mild argument would ensue.
"Why?" was the Loser's main point of attack.
"Because I like them," came his mother's counterpunch.
She died a year ago this morning, a shriveled body in a hospital bed, teeth bared like those of a road-killed animal. (Her husband of nearly sixty years, the Loser's father, died 52 days later.)
The Loser thinks now of her reason for the illumination. It was because he was coming home.
Her own light is off. The lights of her house, in which the Loser lives today, are, tonight only, all on.

The Loser's house, earlier this evening, October 25, 2012.