Bittersweet Lovesickness

Departure

  My name is Aiko Song. Appearance wise, I'm different from a lot of the people I'm around. My mother being Japanese while my father being African American created little me. I took more of the genes from my father, strongly inheriting his dark skin. Born in the small town of Annecy, France, my mom adored her hometown in Japan and always wanted to name her child Aiko . My name means beautiful child and she always tells me how beautiful and mesmerizing my dark skin is. I always remember in Primary school when I was asked by teachers if I was adopted because I barely look like my parents and even my parents stand out. But now, Interracial couples are more widely accepted but back then, it was weird to see that. Not that back then was a long time ago, but It was obvious it took a while for people to notice it was beginning to be the norm, especially the boomers.

My parents would always tell me that the color of your skin cant trump love, you can't look at the world in black and white. While my mother is Japanese and my father an African American, I understood the confusing looks Id see walking down the street. It was because those people saw the world in black and white. Having darker skin made me a little conscious and I would always expect a sly comment from my more faired-skinned peers in my school. But, my dad would always tell me that the area we live in is very accepting of all people. Knowing that I lived a free life of happiness,

That happiness didn't last for long.

My mother always hated being sick or the idea of her being sick. She loved being healthy with a vegan diet and plenty of exercises. Unfortunately, If my mom had to cook, then it was vegan. We were an odd family and we were vegan which just made us weirder, but we were happy. We had each other and that's all that mattered. Until January 4th, the day I'll never forget. It was a few days after my mom went to her usual check up. It was just a harmless check up until the phone call. Vividly, I remember this day. 8:45 PM is when the phone rang. I remember the time because I was so impatient because of my mom taking forever to make dinner, I started staring at the clock. The ringing of the phone made my mom stop what she was doing and make her way over to answer. Another disruption that made me suck my teeth and put my head down on the island.

She said a few small words like "Okay" and "mhm" but then, she paused. I assumed she was done and I raised my head. I looked in her direction and she was stuck, it seemed like she was frozen in time. I was thinking of the many possible things my mom just heard. Maybe a death in the family? Or she just got fired? For what had seemed like forever, she finally said something. "I see, thank you" and then she hung up. It was such an odd sentence to end a call but as I said, We're odd regardless. I was about to ask her what happened but she fell to her knees. "Mom?!"

Normally after hours, it is sort of inappropriate for a doctor to call a patient but I understood as to why. Her doctor received my mom's checkup report and immediately called my mom to tell her the horrible news. My mom was diagnosed with early onset Mesenchymal Chondrosarcoma. To this day, it's hard for anyone to understand but essentially it's a cartilage cancer. I wasn't sure how they figured this out without her even showing signs of a tumor growing on her body, but they sure as hell found it. This disease is so rare, honestly, I wasn't even sure why it had to be my mother, out of all people to have this happen to her. After a month or so, her tumor started to grow on her shoulder.

This made my mother spiral into extreme depression. My father begged my mother to get the tumor surgically removed but after the signs of the tumor started to show, she went mute. She wouldn't talk or eat and would stare at herself in the mirror. She didn't even seem fazed about the tumor anymore but I know it was painful for her. What surprised me is that she fired our doctor. Every day would be terrible, the atmosphere in the house was so stagnant, it would be hard to breathe.

Then it got worse.

  One day, my mom suddenly disappeared off the face of earth. She was gone. She didn't take any of her belongings, she was just gone. For weeks, my father and I searched for her everyday for hours. We reached out to the police, they barely lifted a finger to help. As the days went on, we slowly lost hope. And as the weeks went on, our motivation quivered. We became used to the lonely sounds of our home, accepting that she wasn't coming back. That's where our mindset is, and we learned to live with it.

I'd forgotten that i was apart of a military family until my father told me that he was getting stationed back to Japan. My heart shuttered when he said it was Okinawa, my mom's birthplace. I could see the sadness painted on my father's face and he could see it on mine as well. He went on saying we were moving after I finish my 11th year of high school.

We've lived in Annecy most of my life. There were times where we had to move to other places for a little while, but we'd always find ourselves back home. But hearing my father say that we were going to be there for longer than a year, I felt hurt. We were leaving our forever home and we were leaving mom.

  But we took the pain with us