Nostalgia | TWD: M. Greene

.:Chapter One:.

Starting today, I'm going to be different.

For years, I had been trying to outrun the sorrow in my heart, it taking the form of undiluted rage, and later on, apathy. Nothing got through to me, not my mother's worried words or our neighbour's religious prayers; after the death of my father, I hated everyone, from strangers and their empty condolences, to God and his stupid 'plan', to my father who abandoned my mum, his wife, and I, his son.

I couldn't understand how any of it was fair. He was someone's father and someone's husband, but, in the end, that didn't matter. Except it did to me. It ate away at me for years after my mother stopped crying herself to sleep. While she had begun to rebuild herself, my life continued to crumble around me until there was nothing left to take. However, amongst the rubble, I was able to find some remnants of my past.

After spending seven years in a body I didn't feel at home in, I was able to bring a piece of myself back.

It was a Saturday morning and my middle-aged mother was doing a deep clean of the house, despite my protests. She claimed to be spry enough to carry old furniture down to the basement by herself- this was a woman who had chronic knee pain and couldn't move more than five steps in winter without limping.

"C'mon mum, le'me help," I insisted, taking a couple boxes out of her hands.

In the middle of cleaning up around the house, she decided it was the perfect time to sort through boxes in the attic. Her reasoning was that, this way, we could decide what to transfer to the basement and what to toss out.

Sometimes she just couldn't keep still.

"If ya' need anythin' call me, okay?" I asked, looking into her kind, hazel eyes. They were the only thing we shared, appearance-wise. Other than that, I often heard I was the spitting image of my father. It was something I was proud of when I was younger, having always looked up to him as my hero. But now, all I could remember when I saw my sandy blonde hair and singular dimple in the mirror was a face that caused my mother more pain.

I was a constant reminder of what we had lost. And yet, the love never died, it always being present in the way she affectionately stroked my cheek.

"Oh, my sweet boy." She gazed at me, seemingly proud of the person I was, despite the lack of evidence to her claims.

Smiling, I leaned into the palm of her hand, enjoying the warmth before heading down the stairs to the basement. The steps were old and creaked under the extra weight I added to them, but they held strong like they had been doing for years.

Reaching the bottom, I walked over to a corner of dust-covered boxes, all still needing to be sorted through. There weren't too many, but it would take some time to get through them all, regardless.

Placing the items in my hands down, I began rummaging through to create the 'keep' and 'toss' piles. Once I had finished going through one box, I would use it to store the tossable stuff before moving on to a second one to form a keep pile. Then a third, a fourth, a fifth, and so on, until there was only one box left.

By this point, I had accumulated quite the mess around me. There weren't enough spare containers for everything once each object had been categorised by its value. Either way, I couldn't help the relieved sigh that escaped my lips, knowing I wouldn't have to be down here for much longer.

I knew what I said to my mother, but the chances were, she didn't listen. She was a stubborn woman when she wanted to be, and it always left me worried. I might have acted like I didn't care about things, but that wasn't the case when it came to her. I mean, she was my mum, who else would take care of her, if not me?