Letting Go

ENTRY 1

My mother is a corpse. Her lustreless eyes are fixed into the walls, unmoving.

This morning I awoke to the sounds of muttering. Ever since the day of Peter's passing, the house is empty. Quiet. Any sounds that managed to perforate the thin walls of our cottage were jarring to my ears, even if it were the distant scuttle of mice within the walls. I crept out of bed and opened the hatch on the floor of the attic, where I slept, climbing downstairs to the place where Ma did chores. But instead, there she was, sitting on her knitting chair doing all but knitting. She had a pair of scissors in her hands, snipping away at a long, pleated woollen blanket, each thread precise and multicoloured. I gasped; she was undoing the quilt she had made for Peter when he was a child. I ran at her, gripping her wrists tightly to stop her enterprise. She merely stared straight ahead, eyes unblinking. Then, her head lolled to the side, and she passed out, her breath withdrawing from her chest shakily. After being certain she was in shock, I slowly padded back to my attic, thoughts swirling in my head like a flurry of snow. That was when I realised; things would be very different from before. Ma had been like this before, when Pa had died in the Winter season. The winds had spun and swirled, ravaging life from the drained. Warmth did not exist, and hypothermia had etched itself deep within Pa’s chest everyday. Soon, the lines had cut deep, cavities could not be replenished, and so he passed into the aether. Ma was in shock for months, and I had to care for Peter and myself. Things were harder then because Peter was merely a toddler, and I was only ten years old. 

My hand falters on the neat scroll, a quill wavering above the sepia parchment as I paused to glance out the window. Rain falls in soft splatters, drops bleeding down the small glass panel, cutting pathways across others. The sky, an ominous grey hue, talks volumes about the next weather season. Telltale struggle and diminishing crops and abundant food. I sighed, my hand turning back to the page to write. Writing was easier than speaking, and to write down my thoughts was to venture in the depths of my mind. My eyes pierce through the clouds, taking in the shrinking rays of light, and without another thought, I blew out my candle, and got ready to sleep, a place where dreams and nightmares chased me to ends.

ENTRY 2

Peter's death has eluded Ma, pulling her in depths of fathom and unknown. He passed a week ago, succumbing to the similar fate of Pa. The claws of sickness had dug deep, and Peter fell, a moth never finding its flame. 

This morning I caught Ma muttering to herself whilst sitting in a chair, staring at the walls of our small abode. I write within my room, just four walls put together under a roof spanning the size of a horse’s stable. Money is hard to come by in the village, as there a few jobs and many tax collectors who come knocking on doors for fees that aren't to be argued with.

Ma seems to have forgotten about the fees, as she has stopped working and going out to buy the dwindling food we can barely afford.

Hunger sweeps its talons across the town, food slowly diminishing whilst my hunger escalates. I am alone, and no one is here to help me. The cold weather threatens to take me, and Ma is not doing anything to help. I admit, I have grown to resent her. All this suffering wouldn’t happen if she’d just help. I have been working tirelessly around the house, doing chores and keeping it running. To no prevail; Ma is still trapped in the walls of her mind.

Tears choke my eyes, wrapping its spidery hands around them, seizing and hindering my sight. The chains on my heart speak louder, each pulse groaning with effort beneath the barbed metal. I feel heartache and pain for what was lost.

Hands aching, I slip the leather bound journal beneath my pillow for comfort, and clamber into bed, seeking the warmth of the threadbare covers that took weeks of work to acquire. As I shut my eyes, an empty ebony black void welcomed me, and I seeped into it like ink running on cloth. Sleeping was a regular thing for me nowadays; anything to keep my mind off things. The sun poured through the window as I napped, waves of sleep pulling me under rapidly.

ENTRY 3

It has been weeks since the start of Ma's unruly behaviour. She seems to have gotten better, milling around the house, aimlessly scrubbing at plates that haven't been used. My stomach aches more than ever, and something inside me snaps. This isn’t life, or living. I merely exist. Waking up each day takes a toll on me, so sometimes I don’t. All I do is sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep.

I woke up this afternoon after a nap, and something in the air has shifted. Springtime has come around, with fresh light filtering through my window. Despite the happy note, Ma keeps staring at a wall again. Unresponsive. This is a house of ghosts.

I pause, my feet resting against the cold timber floor. For the first time in weeks, I thought deeply to myself. My eyes scrunched shut, and in response, my heart cried in pain. I had gone a week without food, and Ma was deemed unresponsive. She no longer looked at me, only sat still and stared. I have had enough. Deep down, I made a decision, a choice that decided life and death.

I got up and walked out the cottage, passing Ma who didn’t spare me a single glance.

Cool air breezed passed me, its tendrils grasping my hair and playing with it fleetingly as I pushed through, my feet sinking in dry grass. It was the first time I had gone outside in forever. And perhaps the last. I stole one last look behind me, then shut the door softly.

Birds wove their song, chanted in the air, and tweeted their goodbyes. Melancholy pressed deep within the woods, heavy as the fog that resided amongst the ground, snaking across pathways, obscuring trails. Small black beetles scuttled across undergrowth, and the sounds of roaring water amplified as I crept closer to the nearby waterfall. Here. This is where I would do it.

As I finally reached the edge of the waterfall, I looked back, the way home replaced by trees and branches. In front of me was a deep drop, a chasm with a sheet of water that fell steadily down fathomless. Light ricocheted off the sheaves of cerulean blue, clear as day. In my hands were the recent journal entries I had made upon the neatly rolled up scroll of paper. I had written several more entries, but they were mostly rambles to pass time in the house. I stepped closer to the edge, scrunching my eyes shut. I whispered my last goodbyes, the world darkening around me. 

Then I dropped the scroll down the chasm. 

I watched its length splutter open and shut, paper light as a feather, left desolate and bare as the water tore in, ripping and drenching the pages. As it tumbled further down, the last I saw was the faint writing already blurring together in splotches of grey. 

It was time to let go. To live. To embrace

The sun dipped low, touching the crest of the trees in the horizon. I headed home, following my heart.

I arrived back home late at night, and found Ma crying, the first bout of emotion I had seen in weeks. Instead of thinking, I flung myself in her arms, and cried too, begging for forgiveness. For I had given up on her. Selfishness had seized my soul, and I only saw her suffering as an act of neglection where she no longer provided for me. But she had stayed. Gratefulness swept through me, and instead of giving up on her, I vowed to make things better. But this time, I let Peter go. He was gone now, but I was back. And Ma would too, in time. After all, time is the best remedy, they say. Time closes wounds that no doctor can stitch up, they say. Time is the first step in healing. And I chose to take that step.