We stood together in front of her grave. His arm was still around me, and I was blinking back the tears that were trying to escape and roll down my cheeks. My dad was breathing heavily through his nose, trying to get a hold on his emotions. Tears were freely flowing down his cheeks, or so I assumed. I didn’t want to look at him because I knew if I did I would cry with him.
His grip around my shoulders tightened and I leaned into him. I could feel his chest moving roughly up and down. My hands shook, I clasped them together trying to make the shaking stop but it didn’t.
Finally getting enough courage I looked at my mother’s grave stone. It wasn’t a very big nor was it fancy, but my mother had never been a very fancy or flashy person. It was modest and humble like she had been.
It read: Katrina Green 1967-2006. A loving wife, mother and person.
My lips quivered as I read the grave marker over and over again. Pictures of my mother’s face flashed through my mind. I pictured her pushing me on the tire swing we had in our front yard; the time we had made cookies and we ended up eating all the cookie dough before we even got the putting them in the oven; the surprise tenth birthday party she threw me with all my friends coming; then finally her in the hospital lying on the stiff white bed her eyes closed, unconscious.
“You remember that time she tried talking you into being a ballerina?” my father said, shakily. He forced a small nostalgic smile. “She had bought you all ballerina type things and a tutu and slippers…” He trailed off, taking his free hand and wiping the tears away from him face.
I began to cry. My body shook and I silently sobbed. I fell to the ground not being able to stand anymore, and sat on my knees, hugging myself. My dad squatted down next to me, hugging me. He whispered soothing things in my ear, and rubbed small circles in my back.
“She really did love you, you know that right?” he choked out. “You were everything to her. She didn’t want to leave, Odette.”
I nodded, the tears falling harder. My mother did love me. She loved me a lot, and I loved her a lot back. But that didn’t stop me from missing her, if anything it made me miss her more.
“Before she died-d,” my dad said between gasps. “she wrote you a letter to give to you when you turned eighteen. I didn’t want to give it to you because of everything that was happening. I didn’t think it was what you needed…”
I could feel anger flaring up in me and I pulled away from him, but then softened again. He was staring at me with a sorrow filled look. He had only been trying to help, so how could I be mad at him for that?
“Here,” he fumbled through his coat pocket and pulled out a yellowed envelope with my name addressed on it in my mother’s loopy handwriting. “You can read it now… maybe take a walk?”
Nodding, I got to my feet in a daze not taking my eyes off of the letter and left my father alone at my mom’s grave. I walked a ways in the opposite direction of our car until I found a big gnarled tree. It was the type of tree my mother always liked to sit under and have picnics, read a book to me, sit and talk, do anything under. She loved trees and the older and bigger the better.
She had always said that the deformed trees, the ones with twisted branches and roots half the leaves missing even when the other half of the tree was in full bloom with leaves, were ones with character, if they could talk they would have a story to tell and you’d learn a lot from them.
YOU ARE READING
Falling Colors
Teen Fiction"The unfixable; the shattered; the torn; the broken. They all come here. It's my job to remake them, because once its broken there is no going back to the way it was. It must be remade." Six individuals. Six unique stories. Five exercises. One...
