The Comfort of No one

Chapter Eight: Unconditional love

Chapter Eight: Unconditional love
"Did Hope ever see her grandmother?" Dr. Salvador asked.
"Noah's mother?" I asked.
"Yes" Dr. Salvador answered "Karen is Noah's mother, which makes her Hopes grandmother."
"Karen rarely saw Hope. She would show up on random occasions to visit Hope but of course she and Noah did not get along at all. When Hope was twelve years old Karen passed away due to failure of the liver. She was an alcoholic and one night, her liver gave up on her and she passed away. Noah, Hope, and I attended her wake and funeral and at that time I saw something about Noah that seemed out of the ordinary."
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ "My mother's services are from 4pm till 8pm so we have to get there an hour early before people show up." Noah said.
"Okay, I am going to help get Hope ready for the wake." I said.
Hope and I got ready together without a word said to each other. We barely talked anymore, but Hope barely talked to anyone. When we all got ready, we drove to Sampson Funeral Home in Brooklyn, New York. Noah hadn't been taken PCP since he found out his mother passed away which I found odd. I expected him to abuse angel dust after hearing the news, but it seemed as if an evil demon escaped his body for a little while. We were the first ones to arrive at the funeral home and Noah, Hope, and I went to pay our respects near Karen's casket. Karen wasn't very liked by many people and only some of Noah's family and family friends showed up to Karen's wake.
After everyone showed up, the priest said some words from the Bible and we had a moment of silence to remember Karen. The only thing that popped into my mind was how she treated her sons and how it really impacted their lives. Andrew was still in jail and even though he was allowed to go see her, he had no desire. After the priest was done talking, we all walked around, talked, and looked at old pictures even though there weren't many of them to look at. At eight o'clock, we said our last good byes to Karen before she got cremated. I saw Noah starring at his mother with sorrow in his eyes. I've never seen Noah look at his mother that way and I was curious on what he was thinking because the way he looked at his mother was not hate; it was love.
One thing I have learned from my many long hard years on this earth is that a child will love their parents unconditionally. Even parents that are abusive and don't deserve it are still loved. Just like Hopes love for me never faltered.
Hope was constantly making me gifts and doing very well in school so that she could get some positive attention from her guardians but we were not very supportive. I think Noah was jealous of her success in school. He didn't want her to succeed him, so he didn't let her. He shot her down at every chance that he got. He added on to her chores so homework was impossible, didn't feed her breakfast so she wasn't at her healthiest during school, and he broke her alarm clock, she was late every day.
I would love to tell you Hope's point of view while this all went on, but I kind of isolated myself during this time. As a mother, I should have known what was going on with her, her pain, her struggle. I didn't, I didn't know how she felt, but I can only imagine her little heart breaking to pieces.