My Melancholy Monet Memory

This post was written in response to a writing prompt for  RemembeRED from Write On Edge. In an apparent attempt to make us all need some major happy pills after writing this week, this is this week's prompt: 

We all have them.

Memories that we wish we could forget…things that we wish we could banish from our minds.

Imagine that writing down your worst memory will free you of it.

What is it?

Why does it haunt you?

What could you have done differently?

Write it down and let it go.

Let’s keep it to 600 words or less.

 


I thought I would be haunted forever. I thought this time would live in my mind more vividly than any other in my 29 years. I thought I would relive it over and over in my mind for the rest of my existence.

I was wrong.

Instead, I was scarred. The outcome, everyone knows, but the details - oh those stubborn old details. My healed and scarred soul allowed only formless, broad coverings of the worst attack it has ever seen. Only a few power images force their way through to build this impressionist view of the most life-altering event of my life.

Sometimes, though, that scar itches.

**

The first day, a Thursday, the skies turned black and opened whole, ready to swallow me. They threw water at me. They shouted with thunder. They blinded with lightning. They left me behind saturated and beaten to battle with their elements as I gave the only give left giving... bring her home.
I was her rock. For the love of all things heaven and Earth, I promise you, this is what she said to me the day before. “You have always been my rock. You have to bring me home.”

**

“Help me,” she said weakly, but her frail frame, her eyes and soul screamed  it. We were alone in the hallway, in the middle of the night . She tried to go to the bathroom by herself. A reminder that she, too was eroding on this trip.

“I will.” This night, I believe my words. I believe in my power. The rock has only begun to be battered by the winds of defeat.

**

Hospice arrived with the chisel of reality. I feel the debris fall to my feet and wonder how long the rock will last. I make a phone call before it is too late. I call the Pastor and tell him, “You must do what needs to be done.”

**

I check on her incessantly. I bring her ice. I bring her morphine. I touch her hair, her arm, hold her hand and rest my head on her shoulder, remembering a time, pre-rock, when that is where I belonged. That is my spot.

**

I cried in the shower. There wasn’t enough water to wash away the tears. I would emerge a clean, water-beaten rock. A little more eroded, but shiny all the same.

**

“Help me,” I would hear her whisper, now lips cracked from lack of fluids, as the evil inside her stole everything we gave.

“I’m trying.” A new response as the evil inside also stole my confidence, my power, my hope. I began to understand that no matter the size of this rock, the erosion will win.

**

“Help me,” no longer words spoken, but now just mouthed and I’m the only one lip reading. Tears hot in my eyes that I hope her yellowing eyes can’t see, my mind screams back, “I can’t!”

**

And then a self-inflicted avalanche, “It can’t be much longer, can it?” Guilty to want to keep her. Filled with an unnameable darkness within realizing granting her reprieve meant wishing her death.

**

It took ten days for my mother to die after I brought her home. She was widowed with two children at the age of forty. For 29 years she never let me go hungry, cold, or want for a damn thing. She was my rock. While I know, if she were here, she would tell me that I did everything I could have, all I know is that my worst memory will always be being helpless when it really mattered.