Work Text:
And they are still important. Are still there. Sometimes I actually forget they are not. I mean, isn’t it sick that I can act like they never really left me for hours just before I realize that they will never come back and everything I believe to know is not true? It’s crazy. Like they are closer than ever.
Any time I must face a difficult situation, I can hear my mom’s voice telling me “Don’t you dare, you know better” and I can barely see her rolling her eyes at me as she used to when she was still alive. Sometimes, in my head, I can hear Dad and Teddy sing a song from Dad’s band. The band he left to take care of me.
How they endured these piercing sounds me and my Cello produced from outta my room every single day ever since I started my first years of playing.
How I wish there had never been this stupid day off school. Even today I am not able to let through any happy feeling when looking at the snow falling outside my window covering the old tree in the garden. I moved to Grandma and Grandpa after they let me out of the hospital. It still does not feel appropriate.
They are everywhere. It starts when I see them on the pictures in the hallway when I go down for breakfast over to Dad’s old guitars (my grandpa kept literally all of them), to Teddy's things he had forgotten here the last time we came to visit. I still say we, as I cannot imagine anything else, though I know it is inappropriate. Actually, Adam and I should have been the new we, but I just couldn’t. He was too much memory as well. It did not last long. We had our differences and after I had moved it just got worse every day.
Sometimes I wonder, why I ever chose to stay. It does not feel like I’m living a life for myself anymore. I’m existing for those people who still care and love me, but I’m not me anymore. I am lost without my family. I mean, I knew that we would not have been able to stay together forever, but I never thought that they would be taken from me that way. If I had another choice, I would change lots of things, but it does not help thinking about that. I don’t get a second chance, nor do my parents and Teddy.
I won’t be going to Juilliard any time soon. I don’t even know if I will someday. Maybe it would be better, if…
“Mia, can I come in?”
It’s my grandma knocking on my door. I’m sitting on my bed looking outside watching the snow falling. Maybe that is the reason for me being so depressive today. Or maybe I am just really down every day, and I can’t tell good from bad days anymore.
“Sure, come in”, I invite her to join me on that terrible day. Normally she is only coming up to bring me some cookies and hot chocolate like always at around 4 p.m. but today she is carrying a box and not my usual hopefully-they’ll-cheer-you-up-cookies. I look at the box but don’t show much interest in it. She’s putting it right beside me on the bed.
“Grandpa got this from home for you. I think you should look through it. It’s your stuff, maybe you want to get some of that in here to make the room more yours”, she said placing a hand comfortingly on my shoulder. I let her, but I don’t feel any better. I don’t want to look at these things, still, I know that I can’t run forever. I put on a weak smile to make her leave me alone again.
“Thanks”, I force myself to say without my voice cracking, “I’ll look through it.”
She nods, titles her head in thought but then moves to leave me alone with the memories. Nothing more there is, but memories of them. I feel so alone like never ever in my whole life. I have a feeling that this will stay like that forever. No one will be able to fill that void.
I pull the box closer checking what’s inside.
I’m relieved to see that it is just some simple stuff, nothing special or emotionally swirling up. But then, who can tell. Yesterday I had to cry when I found my mother’s reading glasses, she had wanted me to store them for her before we got in the car that day. I can remember everything like it happened yesterday.
I still know that she smelled of vanilla, her usual shampoo, which I liked very much. I know that dad had been really hungry as he had not had breakfast (my mum’s burnt pancakes usually are not filling anybody’s bellies in the morning) and that Teddy was really excited to see grandpa and play him a song he learnt on his harmonica (it was not a good song, drove us crazy, but especially Dad was immensely proud of him being interested in something classic like that).
I untangle a garland of colourful lights which I usually had put around the frame of my bed to lighten it at night. There are some old stuffed animals of which I have no idea where I got them and my diary from when I was thirteen. I don’t dare to touch it right now and put it under my mattress quickly. But then, after I have cleared nearly everything a DVD case strikes my eye. Curiously, I put it out and look at the cover, but it is nothing I’m familiar with. I can’t remember having seen it before. Maybe some old, recorded movie (one of my hobbies when I was younger and did not have the cello to occupy myself with…I used to record movies on our TV and watch them later, as I was only allowed to stay up late when there was something with music going on). I choose to check if it is something useful or if it can be deleted right away. So, I get up to grab my laptop from my desk inserting the DVD.
I realize the title too late and I’m also clicking on pause too late for me to keep myself from seeing my mother on the screen smiling at me as she had never died at all.
Tears are burning in my eyes immediately and my skin heats up. She looks so happy for a dead person, way too alive. Just like always. I blink the tears away, trying to focus on her image in front of me not knowing what to do next. Do I really want this? Do I really need to do this to myself?
I think so. It hurts either way, so why not listen to what she has got to say. I will feel just as devastated afterwards. With shaking hands, I click resume and watch her come to life once again.
She’s still smiling, positioning the camera towards her face. Now she’s sitting down on our sofa looking straight at me. I look back and I want her to be her. To hug me, to tell me that everything is okay and that this is just a bad dream. That she, Dad and Teddy will be there for me when I wake up and then we’ll have breakfast together, eating her all burnt pancakes.
That will never happen.
“Hey honey”, she is striking her messy hair behind her ears, “I know this might not be easy for you, but I want you to have this so that you can remember me just like you’re seeing me right now.”
Wait, what does she mean by that? She could not have known that we would get into a car crash and that she would die. Confusion replaces fear for a moment, and I force my eyes back on the screen, on my mom talking to me.
“If everything worked out as I wanted it to, I will be dead by now and you and the others might be very sad about that, at least I hope so. I don’t want to make you feel worse with this, but I do feel like I have to explain and be there even if I am not anymore.”
I shake my head not understanding one word of what she is saying. I can’t think of anything. I do not even realize that she mentioned she would be dead by now. I’m simply staring at her seemingly so happy face. What is behind that face? What wasn’t she telling me?
“Believe me, I didn’t imagine it ending like that, I mean who does? Therefore, I am doing this as early as possible, as I want to be me, when talking to you and not the one with an untreatable tumour in her head. I want to tell you that I love you and that I loved you all the way. I have made a video like this for every one of you and with this one, I want to tell you, Mia, how proud I have always been of you. I could not be a happier mom. You’re the best daughter one can wish for and it hurts so much that I will have to leave you so early not being able to see how your life will develop. That this is not going to be very comforting is obvious, but you need to know that I will always love you no matter what happens and that you must never ever give up your cello. If you stop playing the cello, you stop being yourself, so don’t you dare to doubt yourself, even if Juilliard is stupid enough not to take you, you get that!”
She looks at me with a serious expression when all I can do is start to cry. Surprisingly, she does too, just some seconds after me.
“I hope you can forgive me that I have not been strong enough to tell you earlier, but I just can’t do that right now”, tears are rolling down her face. I put a hand above my mouth to prevent my sobs from being heard by my grandma downstairs. Now, Mom and I, are crying together about her death.
“I love you so much”, I whisper for no one to hear it. I can’t believe it.
Mom had not been feeling so well weeks before the incident, so she and Dad went to see a doctor, but they had told us that everything was fine. A few days later, she had started acting just like nothing had ever been wrong. Was I really so preoccupied with Juilliard, that I hadn’t noticed my mom had a tumour in her head? I suddenly feel so guilty for not being there for her.
“I am so grateful that I can spend these weeks with you, Teddy and your dad, so please forgive me that I couldn’t let you know. It would have made everything even more complicated.” She’s wiping her tears away, forcing a smile.
“No, what made everything worse is that you died, before these weeks could have even begun!”, I am nearly about to yell at her, but I don’t dare. Wouldn’t have found the voice inside my throat to do it anyways.
“I love you three more than everything in my life and please keep me in mind like this. Talk about me, don’t let me die for good. I hope that seeing this will make you feel better someday. It does help me, to know that you’ll understand what happened. I’m not so good at these things, but this is important. You need to be there for each other. Help each other. Keep that love we always lived and don’t let it slip away.”
Now she is crying again, and I can see that it will not take long for her to burst out sobbing just like I did. Maybe that is the reason for her stopping recording now.
“I love you so, so much. You are my life, and I could not have lived a better one”, she says turning off the camera with a last sad smile in my direction.
I shut the laptop reflexively without really seeing what I am doing as my sight is blurred with tears.
She would have died anyway. She had only a few months left to live. My mom, the woman who had so many plans for her life? How could someone strong like her die just like that? Who was making these fucking rules? Who chose not only to take away my mom from me but in the end, my whole family!? What bigger sense was behind all of this!?
Still, somehow this DVD made its way into this box, and I have absolutely no idea how. Maybe Teddy found it somewhere thinking it was one of mine. But why would my mother leave something like that anywhere in the house where all of us could find it.
I will never find out as there is no one left who I could ask for an explanation. All I have is this.
Is this the reason why we went to see my grandparents that day? So that she could tell them, she would die? To prepare them for what was coming. Well, she never made it that far.
What the heck is that supposed to mean? Why can’t I just move on?
I try to figure that out for hours, but I simply don’t know. I am still feeling terribly hurt, sad and overthrown with all of this. But there is one thing I do not feel anymore. I do not feel alone.
Maybe, just maybe, I have never been ever since I woke up in that hospital. Maybe I had not been dreaming, I really had a choice whether to live or to die and if I had been able to think about that, this must mean that I was not completely gone. Perhaps, they are not as well and they are here just like, I was in the hospital. It did feel very real to me after all.
Or maybe I am just imagining this to feel better, to forget all the pain rising in my chest.
I don’t know anything for sure yet, but that I will accept Juilliard’s offer.