24th March, 20??
Mom's Letter.
Dear Dia,
I would be going home, today. Home, how weird that sounds… totally odd to call the place where we live now home. From the books and movies, I've read and seen. There are many speculations about what a home is. Some say it's a place, others say, home resides in the heart. There are even others, who say it's the people.
For me, home is mom– or was mom. She was the only person that made me feel safe, my warmth during cold nights. A rock for me to crash my waves of problems and have solutions crash back. My ray of sunshine during dark days, for every stage or phase of life I faced, mom was there.
Now she's gone, it feels like I no longer have a home. That safe feeling had left with her. Had we not relocated, I would have been content, living in our old house. The place was totally mom, her pictures lining the walls. Her laughter trapped in echoes behind the blue floral wallpapers that decorated the walls. Her small flower and vegetable garden just beyond the lawn. Her memories on every part and object in the house, there's hardly any object or part of the house, I would touch without been reminded of the last time she had held or gone there. Even the cutlery was a reminder of so many memories, both good and bad.
Like those times, she would ask me to help me set the table and before we do, we would first swordfight with the spoons, forks and knives. I would giggle when she makes that dying face when I have any of the cutlery pinched on her stomach or heart. The truth was that, mom had fenced when she was in high school and from the trophies that deck the mantel of the fireplace in grannys place, she was pretty much badass, so those times I supposedly won, she had let me.
What about those times, we would drum with the cutlery after dinner. The polished wooden table, giving rhythmic beats as we drummed and sang our hearts out. Her voice had been rapturous, like that of an opera singer. The neighbors had complained, especially no-fun-nosy-ass, Mrs Jones but we didn't care. We were happy, we were each other's home and nothing else mattered.
It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, there were bad times too. Terrifying memories like a storm crashing into our lives. I haven't forgotten the white bowl and spoon, she had been eating with before she had been hospitalized. Her cream nightgown that hung in her closet. Or those days, I would spend by her bedside nursing her through what she had termed fever, whereas it was the godforsaken ailment that took her away from me.
It would have been hard living there, where her smell still lingers in the air, where her soul still lives like a phantom, always near but never visible, but I would have grown to accept it. With time I would have welcomed the pieces she had left behind. Would have allowed the fragments of our time together stitch the gash her demise left. Would have let her memories fill the void.
This new place lacks her subtle touches and colors. It's like she's not part of our lives anymore. Her things lay in the dark walls of the attic. Dad, Felicia and her son had made the place theirs. Their frames line the walls of the stairway, the hallway, the desks and even the mantel. Only a few of mom's and my pictures were placed in between. I really don't care, not when my room held her memories and pictures everywhere in plain sight. Not when it would have been wrong if they tried to make this foreign place, hers.
Like her, I don't really belong in this new life, dad had orchestrated for me. I don't belong in St. Nicholas High and after what had transpired during my birthday, I doubt I would ever do. I don't belong with Felicia and Henry, I'm awkward with our new neighbors and my coldness just keeps everyone at bay… dad himself doesn't even feel like a part of me– anymore.
The flowers, balloons and get-well-soon cards on the desk may strongly disagree with me but those aren't there because I'm loved or cared for, they are there because it's the right thing to do. Because it's the dictates of society. I used to be like mom, social, kind and everyone's favorite. I guess it was one of those things that entered the six-feet depth that had swallowed her, forever.
Since yesterday evening, her letter lay on the desk, just an arm stretch away. Dad had brought the letter in earnest but he was alone in his sentiment. I didn't share that same eagerness to hear the words my late mom had written to me, five years ago.
Now, I wonder if it was five years ago, had she written it when she was first diagnosed– 10 years ago or when the blasted thing came back five years later. Any way I look at it, it's clear she knew her death was certain and it pains me that she had just accepted it. She had prepared for it like an event on a planner. She didn't even fight… she just let the damned thing win.
Countless times, I had reached for the envelope, it was a standard C7 brown envelope sized 83 x 112 mm. Something so small, so frail, so easy to rot, something so simple held the dying words of my mother. Inside it's boxed edges were her thoughts which I had thought myself ready to know but clearly I was anything but. The farthest I had gone was holding it in my hands, letting my fingers flex and dig at it but never trying to pry the glue seal open.
Dad had given up when he stayed at the distance waiting, watching– for what exactly, I don't know. Did he know the contents of the letter? Has he been there when it was drafted?
Or is he like I am, totally clueless of the words the envelope held? Or is he merely waiting for my expression as my eyes will take in the contents of the letter?
I never got my answer and neither did he get whatever satisfaction or anything he had been hoping for. He had left when it was clear, I no longer bore that initial wit to grace my mom's words.
Time passed, morning gave way to noon and yet I hadn't opened the envelope. It lay there daring me to lift it once again and share in the secrets that laid beyond the glue seal. Dad had told me that I would be discharged later this evening and that didn't help matters. Was it better to read her words in the comfort of my room, surrounded by her images and magical moments frozen in time behind the four corners of a frame? Or should I read it here, in a place similar as where she had written it? The walls I had been facing as I brooded on which was better, stared back at me, mute, indifferent and offering no suggestion.
Minutes stretched like a endless desert, the sixty seconds no longer moving fast enough. It dragged like a pregnant snail, fixating talons in my mind that drove me, nuts. Suddenly, I couldn't stay still anymore. I couldn't sit at place no more, couldn't control the charges of my thoughts. I stood and paced from one end of the room to another, which wasn't much considering that I covered it's length in seven strides. My hands were latched to my sides, tapping my laps in frantic uneven rhythm, a habit I was fond of when I was stressed or nervous.
Each pace to and fro, brought me face to face with the envelope even as I tried to avoid it's line of sight. That wasn't really possible considering the small space of the room and my eyes– contumaciousness to obey my command.
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock went the timepiece hanging on the far end of the wall, a good inches high above the headboard. It's sound had me in a frenzy, my pace quickened, deducting two strides from the length of the room. My hands no longer tapped but clenched in a fist pounded my laps, my teeth gritting in frustration until I couldn't take it anymore so I flung myself at the bed. Clawed at my already disheveled hair, covered my face with a pillow and yelled;
"Arrrrrrgh! Fuuuuuuck!!!"
The sounds muffled by the pillow as I wailed some more.
Surely in the deepest shade of red, I removed the pillow from my face, drew in deep long breathes, sniffed and wriggled my nose from the short absence of air and close compression of dust from the pillow. When it felt like a shred of decorum had been restored to my charging mind, I gently tucked away strands of stray hair from the bun that had confined them, behind my ears. Stood and ran my palms on my coat, smoothening any wrinkles, it must have incurred from moments of my insanity. Arranged the spread and pillows before easing myself gently in a sitting position at the right hand side of the bed, so close to the envelope, now barely a finger-flex away.
I had done all these because a part of me knew mom would be watching and she wouldn't be happy by my fit, brought about by the letter she had written to offer the opposite… comfort. With slightly trembling hands, I reached for the envelope again and read the words, I must have done so a hundred times over, on it's front, it said:
"From mom,
To Anna,
My dearest daughter."
Turning it slowly and carefully like a fragile parcel, I turned the back. Eased my nail into the glue seal, gave it a tug and the envelope sprang open. A smell, I knew so well caressed my nostrils from the open patch of the envelope. It was mom's perfume, how typical of her to spray it on the letter so I won't ever forget what she had smelled like. Perhaps mom had prepared more scrutinously than I had given her credit. But she never should have doubted my recollection of her smell because it is a smell I have wrapped my nostrils in so much that it could discern the smell even from miles away.
It's not once or twice, had I pressed her old clothes to my nostrils breathing in her smell, so my nose knew it now by default.
Softly sliding opening the envelope, I eased out the white document inside. Lightly unfolding it as it was folded four times, l read:
My Dearest Annabelle,
My sweet beautiful Anna, how's my baby girl doing? How's Dia, hope you are still as close as ever. Keep writing to her and I'm sure you will be alright.
If you are reading this letter then it means that I've gone to a place where I can only watch over you from a distance. It's your sixteenth birthday today. My baby girl's sweet sixteen, oh darling I remember the very first time I held your tiny body. How cute and red you were. You were the best thing to ever happen to me and I hate that I had to leave you so early.
I know you have grown into that beautiful, smart and amazing young lady that I always knew you were. I had thought that God would keep me longer with yet another miracle as he did when I was first diagnosed. I really thought he give me more time but the sands of the upper half of the hourglass is almost empty and I fear I must depart from this plane.
I had planned the perfect sweet sixteen birthday, a cake with sixteen candles, punch of sixteen different flavors, the gifts, the party etc. It would have been the talk of town, far more popular than the one your grandma threw for me. It's really a pity that I won't be there but just know that I will always be with you no matter what. I will always love and cherish you, my dear Anna.
I have some sweet sixteen sayings written out in flashcards enclosed with this very letter, try to apply each and I promise you that sixteen will be an age you will never forget. Till we meet again,my dearest Anna.
With all my love,
Mom.
Slowly, my fingers holding the edges, clenched the paper rather tightly that it crumpled and creased in. With that firm grip, I read it again and again, the hand-written words my dearest mom had saved for my sixteenth birthday, tears blurred my vision and stained the paper yet I read on.
Her words wrapped around me like the warmest of blankets on a cold winter morning. Like the sun in the darkest of days. And after reading it like the fifth time, I clutched it to my heart and wept like I have never done before. My tears streaking down my cheeks in hot fury, and drop after drop, they fell. Never ending. Never ceasing. Never stopping. It was like a dam had broken in me and it's content, overflowing endlessly.
Even as I write now, the tears still flow and I must stop writing to give them the time and effort, it needs to help heal this wound that had tore open.
Later, Dia.