The Dying Flower

My mother never spoke to me anymore unless she was telling me how I was a mistake and when she did, I could smell the rancid scent of strong whiskey on her breath and choked on the stench of rotten flowers radiating from the excess of expired perfume. Her blue eyes, now cloudy from years of cigarette smoke and never seeing the light of the sun, would stare at me, full of resentment and loathing. She always told me that if it weren’t for me, she would have been the most famous artist, a painter of unimaginable stature and skill. Instead, she was stripped away from that future, doomed to be a mother.   

She used to love me, I think before my father left, another thing she blames me for. She used to sit me on her lap and paint beautiful landscapes of flower fields and bouquets of ultra-realistic flora. Her eyes were a striking blue, the color of the sky on a warm summer’s day, and her face was beautiful and happy. She still sold her paintings and filled galleries back then. I can still remember, although I was only a toddler, her and my father taking me to the openings and seeing all the people in awe at how real the paintings looked and praising her talents. I try not to forget them when she gets into her alcohol and nicotine-withdraw-induced moods. 

My father met my mother at one of her gallery openings and soon after, I was born. They didn’t plan for me, and my father asked her not to have me, but my mother couldn’t bear the thought, which she says she now regrets. He learned to love me, or just pretended, but for my mother’s sake, he never hurt me, at least physically. When I turned seven, we learned that I have a rare, but deadly, allergy to pollen. No more flowers, no more walks through the fields of wildflowers and poppies, no more going to flower festivals to gather inspiration. If a speck of pollen got into my system, I would have an almost instantaneous reaction and choke. This was when my mother’s love turned to enmity. Her art, her true passion, blocked by her child. She went into a deep depression, stopped painting with me, stopped painting in general, stopped leaving the house, stopped knowing me. She never smiled and she began to drink. I think my father saw this opportunity and escaped, not being able to take care of the dying flower that my mother was. She never recovered, him leaving being the last petal to fall. 

I tried my best to make her happy, maybe bring her back to her normal self. I began to try and copy her style of paintings, of flowers and fields. I could never quite get it right. I filled the house with faux flowers and used floral perfumes, but nothing worked. She never left her studio except to use the toilet and to eat, even then, she’d sometimes not eat for days, full plates of food piling outside her door. She doesn’t paint in her studio, just sits in front of a blank canvas. Her mind probably creating beautiful images of roses, lilacs, and baby’s breath; of lilies, and orchids, and sunflowers. Her hands longing for the feel of the brush beneath her fingers and the scent of oil paints and fresh flowers mixing in a strange duet of smells. All this locked away, deep in the recesses of her minds, covered by the long, thick vines of depression and despair and resentment towards her own flesh and blood. 

Even though I could never exactly produce that same level of art my mother could, I am still regarded as one of the best up-and-coming painters in the country. I have my own studio where I have countless books on flowers so that I can best replicate their delicate beauty. My mother doesn’t know about my skills or about my studio, I think she would resent me more if she thought I was becoming what she says I stole from her. I credit my talent to her in all my interviews and I praise her work. When people ask me why she doesn’t release any more pieces, I tell them that just resides in her garden, painting for her own private pleasure. I think that this is only a partial lie. Her mind, to me, is a garden, filled with flowers, and she sits there, in her mind, painting, and reminiscing.  

In my mind, she, herself, is a flower. One who was the most beautiful in the field, that all the people flocked to see. Then one day, a tree’s branch blocked the sunlight and the flower slowly began to die. Slowly losing its radiant colors, shrinking back into the earth. The people stopped coming to look at the flower and moved on, only one remained and tried to bring that flower back to its past brilliance. The person cut down the branch, watered the flower, and tried her best to give the flower life again. But the flower couldn’t become what it once was, and the person tried her best to keep the flower from withering away entirely. 

My mother’s words still sting after all these years. She still wears the clothes of the style from back when she was her true self. The distorted 30’s silhouette stands out among the fuller skirts and brighter colors of the late ’50s. I imagine her as she once was before I knew her, a beautiful, intelligent, caring lady whose talent with paints made her bloom. I think that she is still like that in her mind, a flower in full bloom. She lives as if it's her past is the present. Her mind hides her new, changed appearance from herself. 

I now sit at my easel, palette in hand, the brush moving in fluid motions across the rough surface. I am painting a rose, withered by age and rough weather. The surrounding bright and sunny, the rose hidden and bent in the shade of a large tree branch, its petals without vibrance. A single beam of sun cuts through the shadow, illuminating a fallen petal. At the bottom of the page, I sign my name in one swift gesture, Flora.