Dark eyes the same color as mine brimming with the love she had. That single expression alone left no question of who I was to her. What I’d always meant.
It was something no distance or space or circumstance could ever change, but that didn’t mean that made this any easier.
“Good morning, Mama.” I tried to keep the warble of emotion from my voice. It still cracked.
Her smile shifted to stark somberness. My mama reading me the way she always could.
In tune with my emotions.
Heck, she’d written the dictionary on them.
And considering those emotions were tugging at me from every direction, there was no question she felt me unraveling.
“Come inside.” She patted the bed beside her.
Daisy took that as an invitation and jumped onto the spot on her knees, bouncing all over the place and jostling Mama.
“Daisy,” I corrected her.
Mama tsked and waved me off, shifting her attention to the child. “You are my sunshine, aren’t you, sweet girl?”
Daisy nodded emphatically. “Yep, I’s am!” She started to sing off-key in her voice that should be a balm, “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy, when skies are gray…”
But today, everything was too raw. Too real and wrong and devastating.
I tried not to choke on that clot of grief that always lurked in the recesses, but somehow today, it felt suffocatin’.
Agony so intense it fought to overwhelm.
It left me wondering if I might not make it.
Daisy continued to sing, her innocent joy echoing through the room, while I stood there, frozen to the spot. When she finished their favorite song, she leaned forward and plopped a messy kiss on my mama’s cheek.
So sweet.
Mama melted, this puddle of sorrow and joy, her thin, sunken arms wrapping around my child as if she wanted to imprint her embrace on her forever. “Beautiful, my darling Daisy. You keep singing your songs forever.”
“I will, Nana. Forever and ever. You’ll hear me, right?” she asked, suddenly worried, pulling back to look at my mother.
We’d prepared Daisy. Been as honest as we could in a delicate way.
But I’d learned quickly there was no way to prepare myself.
My knees wobbled, and there I stood, still holding her breakfast tray while I fought the stinging at the back of my eyes.
Mama brushed her fingers through Daisy’s hair, solemn affection on her sallow face. “Forever and ever. You keep singin’, and I will be listnenin’. Just turn that sweet face to the heavens. I promise. I’ll be there.”
Mama cast her attention on me, no doubt feeling the waves of torment coming off me.
I sucked it down and forced myself to move farther inside. Carefully, I set the tray on her lap and made sure the legs were adjusted just right.
“My, my, what is this?” she gushed, plucking up the picture and opening it to a squealing Daisy who started bouncing on her knees again.
“It’s for you. It’s for you.” She got up close to Mama’s face, hunting for the truth. “Do you likes it? It’s got all the colors and all the flowers and the amor, amor, amor!”
Love. Love. Love.
It swirled and danced through the room.
She cupped Daisy’s face. “All the amor.”
Daisy beamed in high voltage.
“Thank you, my darling Daisy.”
“You’re the welcomest, Nana.”
“Why don’t you get me a piece of tape and hang it right there so I can look at it all day?”
Mama gestured at the wall that was already covered in the pictures that Daisy colored for her each morning. The display was interspersed with the get-well cards that had been coming in at a steady stream since the news had spread around town and the neighboring counties.
Daisy scrambled off the bed. “Be right back,” she shouted as she flew out the door, taking all her energy with her.
“Sit with me,” Mama said, coaxing me to the spot on the opposite side of where Daisy had been.
Carefully, I sat down on the edge of the bed, drawing up a knee so I could face her. I brushed her matted hair from her sweaty forehead, praying another prayer that I could take it away. Make it better. Do something that would change the brutal reality of this.
She reached out and touched my chin. “Don’t be sad, my beautiful daughter.”
One of those tears I’d been fighting slipped free. “How could I not be?”
She traced the pad of her thumb over the trembling of my bottom lip. “Because I’ve lived the best life I could have lived. Have loved and have been loved. Have been given the greatest gifts.”
Agony stretched tight.
I’d been wearing an armor of strength for so long, trying to hold everything together for my mama and papa, for Daisy, but I could feel it getting stripped away.
Piece by piece until I was brittle and bare.
Unable to handle the itchy feeling, I pushed to standing and paced toward the window as if I could hide it, hugging my arms across my middle as I stared out on the fields of awestriking color that rambled for acres behind the house.
“You saw him last night.” It wasn’t even a question.
I glanced back at her with a weary smile. “I did.”
“How was it?”
I choked out a laugh. “Horrible. I haven’t felt so weak in a long time, Mama. I thought I’d overcome it, and one look at him, and I realized I’m not even close. I shouldn’t have gone.”
Mama’s expression twisted in compassion. “Just because you continue to grieve someone you lost is not the same thing as weakness. It just means you have a soft heart. A good heart. One that continues to beat. And even though it hurts, you get up each day and you live your life beautifully. That’s what I call overcoming.”
“Mama,” I whispered, not sure how to accept her praise when I was feeling this way. I shook my head as if it could toss Richard Ramsey right out of my psyche. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s just forget him.”
Mama blew a huff of air from her nose. “Oh, I’d say it does.”
“He left me. That’s that.”
She stretched out her hand for me, palm up, like she could reach me from there. “Oh, Violeta…there is a very fine line between love and hate. Between condemnation and forgiveness. Between cherishing the memory of a beauty that has faded and hating that it existed in the first place.”
I huffed like a petulant child. “I do kind of hate that it existed in the first place.”
“But would you take it back?” she pressed. “What does your heart say?”
Mama had always taught me to listen with my heart.
I bit down on my bottom lip, wavered, memories rushing too fast.
His face and those hands and the songs he’d left written on me.
“I don’t know.” That was about as honest as I could be.
Desperate to change the subject, I pointed at her tray. “You should eat before your food gets cold.”
She picked up her fork and pushed her food around, not taking a bite.
“Mama,” I begged.
This time, her smile was sad, the look in her tranquil eyes telling.
Knees weak, I moved her way and knelt at the edge of her bed, unable to remain standing. “Mama,” I said again, gathering up her hand in a fist and pressing her knuckles to my lips.