Dear Mom

If you haven’t read my pervious post Deep into the Abyss give it a read. This is a sequel to that post. 

                               

I’m sitting under the shadow of the tree on your gravestone, murmuring under my breath the rhymes you taught me when I was four. This is a special day, for me as well as you. 
I sometimes wonder, 

How many birthdays you have spent like this, waiting for me?

Maybe the answer was buried the same day, you died. And there it lies inside your tomb secure from the outside world. Protected by your warm embrace. 

Haven’t you realize the only footsteps you hear beside your tomb have grown up over the years? 

And the toddler, whom you once held his gentle hands and helped him to stand up, can now run faster than many. 

On some days I have this creepy sensation that in some corner of this graveyard behind a tombstone you are hiding underneath your shroud, trying  to memorize as much of me as you can. The broad smile on your translucent face speaks volumes of stories unspoken. 

Closing my eyes, I bathe in your memories and feel the sunlight filtering through the leaves dancing on my face. I could feel you warmth radiating from inside the tomb and for a few seconds could imagine you looking at me through the tombstone shading tears the same way as I’m.

 
I caress my hands over the worn out tombstone —— the delicate build and the curved out impression on your engraved name, pulls me back to that day when your estranged husband brought me here  for the first time. I never came in terms with the reality, not even today. 

So many days, I have searched for you in the dark corners of our house, waiting for the slightest hope that never ignited. Yet you presence was so evident. So close as if everything felt like a bad dream. 

I have stood up against innumerable gales in these twenty years after you have left me. But every time when the vigorous agony had hit me hard, how much I longed for you to hold me, just the same way you did when I was a toddler. 

Perhaps someday I will meet you again in a different place at a different time, when you can embrace me in a tight hug never ever letting me go out of your sight again.