An Imperial Affliction

Hello. Welcome to my life.

My name is Anna. And basically I'm about to die. I'm writing this so when my time has gone, people will still remember who I was. Anna Prescott. When I'm worm food buried six feet under, I want people to remember me as me, not the girl who died of blood cancer. I always think that no one will remember me when I'm gone. No one except my hamster who thinks he can get somewhere running on his stupid wheel, and my crazy one-eyed tulip-obsessed mother.

There are over 3,000 types of registered, cultivated tulips. My mother has planted every one of them. She practically lives in her garden. 3,000 tulips. The only things she'll have after I'm gone and dead. Just her and her precious tulips. She says that they're the only thngs that remind her that her world is real. She's been through too much shit to keep on believing that better things will come in the future. Only the tulips, that she remembers in her old life back in the Netherlands, when everything was good. The tulips that surrounded our old house that she never really noticed until Dad left. She had nothing left in this world except for me and her tulips. And God knows I won't be here for much longer. But I still feel like she's content. She looks so happy to see me everyday and brings me out into the garden to sit with her and discuss about how life was. I guess she just wants more time with me before I'm gone. 

My mom is special. She sees the world in a different way. Bypassers just think of her as the crazy-one eyed tulip lady, but shes been through more than anyone else I know. Through finding out about my disease, to the divorce with Dad. But as I said, she sees the world differently. She was born with only one eye. She was born with a cataract in her left eye covering the pupil, and is considered visually impaired. Apparently it makes her see things in a different way then other people. Then again, she is different then other people. She sees more about the world, and is the wisest person I know. 

Once she said to me, "The world is more beautiful this way. You get to appreciate something more as you have less of it." 

I knew. My life was about to end soon, and I was going to make the best of it as soon as I can.

I'm afraid of death. I don't want to die. It won't mean anything to anyone, just another death within the millions that happen per day. No one will bother to remember me. What I'm more afraid of is my mother losing me. There isn't any words that can describe what that fear feels like.

I feel guilty. My mother, I feel as if she has a buried anger with me. She loves me, but I see the anger whenever she messes up her planting. Snapping a tulip's stem, or stabbing the dirt. But the anger's there. But she keeps it away from me. She buries it with her tulips, the only source of happiness she has in life that I couldn't fill in. 

I don't want to die.

I don't want to leave my broken, sad, tulip-planting mother behind.

I don't want anyone to forget me as who I am.

I don't want to leave behind my mother's tulips planted in vain.