It was a windy autumn day, the few leaves that there were left of the tree’s shivered halfheartedly on the lonely branches. The gray sky hung low over the garden, darkening any glimpse of life there was left behind.
I stood behind my mother; she was sat near the window in my bedroom staring out at the bleak scenery, barely moving, barely breathing. She had sat there every day since it happened. Sat there waiting. I took a deep breath, subconsciously she mimicked me; she had a tendency to do that. I always told her that it was annoying, but there was something endearing about her irritating habits that I had never noticed until now.
I stood there watching her for a while in this lonely room, the clock ticked on the wall but apart from that there was silence, the intensity was suffocating. I waited until the clock struck twelve. If it were just any normal day, she would have gone for a walk around the garden. She loved that garden. I think she went there to escape the for a while, to be alone somewhere she was happy, we shared that in common, being alone was often the best part of the day.
As I walked towards the door I pleaded silently for her to follow me, I had done so every day since the incident, but she never followed. She just sat there, with that blank expressionless face, her eyes boring into the skies. I took tiny steps, prolonging every moment she had to decide that she would follow. As I got closer to the door I questioned whether she would ever move from that seat, in my old room. But just as every sign of hope started to fade rapidly I heard a shuffle behind me. I did not look back; I just walked straight on, towards the stairs just as slowly as before. I could hear her feet hit the floor behind me treading lightly over the old noisy floorboards. We walked together through the garden towards the old oak tree near the pond, the vicious wind whipped hair into our eyes, but it was okay because i knew exactly where we were going, i could walk there with a blindfold on. The garden had looked the same since I could remember, it was big, beautiful, full of flowers. But today it looked empty, dead. The vines on the tree that had once so softly wrapped them selves around it now seemed to strangle and **** all of the life out of it, like this very place had once done so to me.
we stopped at the old oak tree at the bottom of the garden. We stood for a while, staring the the old oak, tracing the outlines of the bark with the tips our her fingers. She followed the tree down with her eyes, just like I hoped she would, and found the dirt pile at the bottom of the tree. she did not even attempt to look for a *****, or anything that might make it easier; she just started grabbing dirt in her hands urgently dashing it aside to dive in for the next handful. I could see the dirt in her finger nails. She carried on digging and digging more and more frantically with every inch of dirt. Her clean beige trousers got ruined, but she did not seem to notice let alone mind. . Suddenly she stopped digging, she had found something, the rustling leaves came to an automatic halt, the clouds stood still, as if frozen.
She carefully dug around the object, lifting it cautiously out of the ground, as if it would explode at any sudden movement. She looked at it with a mangled expression of humor and fear for a few seconds of intensity. It was a box, to be exact it was the box she gave me on my 9th birthday. It was beautiful. It was oval shape, with exquisite details carved into the solid silver exterior. She had instructed me when she had given it to me to only keep my most precious of treasures inside, I was never too fond of jewelry so I kept one thing inside that meant to most to me. She did not open it straight away, she sat down next to the dug up earth, her back leaning against the tree and took in a deep breath. Her trembling fingers opened the box. Inside was two pieces of paper; the first a photograph, our eyes almost identical as we smile together, eternally in the best times of our lives. The second piece of paper was a letter, she lifted it out as cautiously as she had done the box and began to read it....
"I always told you I wanted to fly, all I ever wanted was to carry myself away from this place, take you with me where everything could be okay. But things are not that simple, i do not have wings, so I hope you forgive me as I depart to the place I can truly call home, and I hope you will never blame yourself, but just look forward to the day when we can spend eternity together. Where everything is okay."
She eventually looked up from the paper, her hands still trembling, tears blurred the piercing blue of her eyes. She looked directly through me, for a second i thought she could see me. With tears cascading down her cheeks she smiled, a smile I had not seen for a very long time, and with that I was granted my wings, I could finally fly.
© Ruby Butcher