Picture beneath the oak tree

“Honey, what’s this?”, she asked softly as her eyes glazed over something flimsy between her shaky fingers. I watched her standing there for a moment, the scent of old belongings and dust mingling in the breeze racing through the crumbling apartment she called home up until recently, flowing swiftly past me and dancing in a circle in the room around her. The silhouette of the woman I used to know had changed much the last few years, but seeing her in this light in front of my old window, it truly hit me. The woman before me, she had grown old while I wasn’t looking, and only now that I had more than a moment to spend with her, I finally recognised her age and with that, her illness. 

The apartment was a small set of rooms, now decorated in off-white sun bleached walls and a greying wooden floor. There were some remnants of a beautiful yet aged wallpaper, loosely hanging from the tops walls touching the ceiling. There were strips of newspapers, once important documents, old clothes and small unremembered trinkets spread across the ground, but all of it looked like the background of a painting when I looked at her, standing there, with that picture in her hands. The window before her cast her in a beautiful ray of light, framing her like a hero of a myth reaching the welcome end of his story.

With a small forced smile now plastered onto my face, I approached the weakened frame of a woman once so powerful and commanding, now slightly bent forwards, her fingers very mildly quivering like leaves in the wind. “What’s this, honey?”, she said, her voice now repeating herself more confidently, her eyes slowly lifting from the picture to meet mine.

“That’s me. That’s me and Stefan on our wedding day, mom. You don’t remember-” Just as soon as the worlds escaped my lips, I felt the weight of my mistake sink in.

I found myself falling into her sad and confused pupils, recognising that the words reached her and left a wound, even though they were spoken so rapidly. In the recent years, I had learned to be more careful about what I said to her, what words to pick and what topics to avoid. One of those sentences was “Don’t you remember?”. Something so easily rolled off the tongue, something so habitual, yet something so harmful.

“It’s okay, mom, it was a long time ago. I can tell you about the picture, if you want? You were the one who told Stefan and me to move beneath that very-”

My mother pushed the picture into my hands before I reached the end of my sentence and shook her weary head violently. “No.” Without wasting another breath on the memory and conversation, she glanced around at the creaky floor beneath her feet, littered with dust bunnies, pieces of paper, and various old keepsakes from the home. “Who made this mess? Who left all of this shit here?! I’m sick and tired of-”, her eyes drifted towards the window, slowly, looking desperately for the words escaping her grasp. “Of…”, she repeated herself, trying to find that red thread that had slipped so easily from her mind.

This is what had become of my mother. A strongly opinionated woman, who was once a nurse, always caring for others, always going the extra mile for anyone in her path, but especially her family. A woman of significant intelligence and character. Someone who once lit up the room with her presence alone, once so strong and brilliant, now reduced to a shadow of a memory even I could barely recall.

Not only had she grown old, she was robbed of a peaceful end by an illness so despicable, it killed not only my mother, but also my father, my brothers and myself. With every memory lost, a piece of myself joined her in that void that was eating her up from the inside out.  

 “Mom.” I fought the tears back from surfacing, and once again, forced the corners of my mouth up to feign my thinning patience. “Why don’t we sit down and look at the pictures you found?”

With a few minute nods, I placed my hand on her shoulder and brought her to the large armchair left in the living area, surrounded by a vast emptiness, with exception of the old kitchen bar and counter in the corner. The apartment had been emptied a while ago to move her into her new room inside of the retirement home, and it didn’t happen without leaving its scars. Deep down I was happy my mother wouldn’t remember this day for very long, seeing the place I once called home stripped down to its very bones, with little left other than decaying reminders of what we once had. It hurt me deeply to see its dilapidated state, and I merely lived in it for a few years. To my mother, this was more than just ‘home’. This was the apartment she had bought up with her own hard earned money, she had transformed from the ground up and had made ever-changing iterations of to turn it into a warm nest and hearth for herself, her husband and her children, now ruined and shattered like an old mirror. Haunted and abandoned, by the memories of what once was.

Once she plopped down into her chair with a loud groan echoing in the room, I returned to fetch the picture of my wedding day and knelt down before her. I carefully placed the picture on her lap and gently leaned on her knees myself as I waited for her to pick it up, pretending that for just a moment, I was a child again, vying for her mother’s attention without a worry on her innocent mind.

“You took this picture, mom, in 2002. It was summer, June 13 to be exact, and the day of my wedding. It was a little after the ceremony, and the photographer had already taken most of the pictures that day, so me and Stefan were getting ready to hop into the car to go to the party after, but you stopped us, holding this tiny red disposable camera in your hands. You stopped us from leaving with just one sentence: ‘No, honey, we’re not done taking pictures yet.’, and then you pointed at the camera in your hands. You told Stefan you’d found the perfect spot for a picture and that you were incredibly disappointed in the photographer for not taking our picture there, and that, and I quote, ‘You know how they are, they take some good pictures but leave out such wonderful picture opportunities, and it takes forever for them to send anything through. No, no, we’re taking a picture by that oak tree as insurance, that we’ll have this day on camera.’ And you know how you are, mom. Once you set your mind to anything...”

My mother’s eyes lit up slightly, a content smile gracing her thin lips. “That- Yes. Quite.” She gently touched and caressed the figured in the picture, tilting her head to the side as the words came to life in the shape of the image beneath her fingertips. “So this is you and…”

“Stefan.” I filled in, without leaving much space for her to ponder. “You liked him very much, mom.”

“Doubtful.” The woman chuckled, now looking back up at me and playfully grasping my chin. “No one is ever good enough for my little girl, and don’t you forget that. I’m sure I wouldn’t let him forget that. Hm, Stefan.” She winked, and then returned the picture to me, looking around the room but not quite registering the state of the home. It was as if for just a moment, my mother had returned in her full prowess and figure, but just as quickly as she had came back, she slipped away again. I wanted nothing more than to grab her and wrap my arms tightly around her, beg her to hold onto those words and stay with me, but it was already too late. With tears welling up in my eyes, I gently squeezed her knee and stood up again.

When I brought her back to the retirement home that evening, I didn’t know it back then, but it was the last time I had interacted with my mother.

I kept visiting her for another set of years, but the woman that had raised me had long since passed, and was replaced by a confused child in the body of an old woman, who happened to be my mother’s. Some days she was kind, some days she was angry and frustrated, but most days she simply wasn’t there anymore. Two years later, 5 years after her diagnosis, she finally found peace. She had passed on in a room filled with, in her words, strangers.

I kept the picture she took so long ago, of me and my husband beneath that oak tree, forever on my wall at the entry of my house, so that whenever I return home, I can see my life through her eyes and be reminded of the beautiful woman she once was, not the shadow she became in the end.