Simply Nadia

Chapter 2

 "Nadia?" 

 It was Marie. She was outside my bedroom door.

 I was silent, laying towards the wall. I stared at the black ink on my walls until they morphed from a blur to letters, then into words, and then quotes. Everything is a choice. Good vibes only. For time is endless. The quotes were endless, each of them marked a time in my life. It was kind of my way of coping with pain or a way to document my excitement. These walls contained all my hopes and dreams, my pain and suffering, my thoughts and feelings. My everything.

  Yet, inside, I felt nothing. Numb. My body and mind hardly registered anything.

  I felt a weight settle into my bed. A cold hand on my shoulder. Marie.

  She had let herself in.

 "Nadia, you need to finish packing."

 It had been a week and half since the funeral. A week and half without my Mother. I had spent most of time in bed, asleep. I tried my best to sleep away the time.

 "I don't want to," I said stiffly. 

  "Trust me, I know how hard this is..." Marie hesitated for a moment. "I love her too."

 I wanted to tell her that she would never truly understand what I was going through, but I knew that wasn't true. 

 Marie and I had been born three months apart. My Mother's older brother, Uncle Timothy had married at 24. A year later my Aunt and Uncle were expecting little Marie. Little to my Mother's knowledge she had gotten knocked up with me at 19- to her first love, who grew out of the title of 'Lover' and 'Husband' a few years later. 

 My Mother became excited when my Aunt and her found out they were both pregnant with baby girls. We grew up together, Marie and I. Her Mother, my Aunt, was my second Mother. And my Mother, her Aunt, was her second Mother. We were more like sisters than cousins.

 She lost a Mom too.

 She wiped her fingers across my cheek, smearing the tears that swelled into my eyes. I hadn't even noticed them until she was wiping them away. Realizing what was happening, my soft cries turned into sobs. 

 Marie curled around me, softly crying into my hair. We both cried. We shared the loss of a Mother.  A  deep rooted wound to the heart. 

 Our tears eventually dried out and our breaths became in harmony. Marie stroked my hair and sang little tunes to me. She had always been the stronger one. The more out spoken and out going between the two of us. She had this way of making everything okay when things were horrible- she got that from my Mother.

 I admired her for her strength and courage.

                                                                                        ~~~

"Is that everything?" My Uncle Timothy asked confused; looking at the half full, pale pink, duffle bag sitting on the floor. 

 I had never been one to pack light. Not because I brought tons of clothes, products, and accessories; but because more than half of my bag was usually full of books and supplies. I brought a book and a journal everywhere I went. Usually, several of them. A travel bag is never complete without a couple books.

My Uncle had learned quickly that like my Mother, I didn't pack light. We always brought tons of stuff we didn't really need everywhere we went. When we went to the beach we always said we'd read books by the ocean like old women, but that never happened. We would end up playing in the ocean or throwing mushy sand at each other. But I guess that was the fun of it, setting an expectation but receiving the unexpected. Thats what my Mother loved - the unexpected. I think she loved the unexpected so much that I often found that she was unexpected in some ways. When she had a crazy idea, you never knew what to expect from her.