My mom died when I was 13. She was young, and sweet, and so beautiful. She always smelt of chocolate and mint and always had a soft smile on her face, surrounded by such gentle, pretty features. Her silky blonde hair flowed in the wind and her shiny, shiny big blue eyes always spoke her pleasure and happiness she always had. I couldn’t help but wish that I would grow up to look like her one day, even if she was my mom.

But then she began to grow frail and weak and sick. And I could see the youth begin to slip away from her face and the life in her eyes begin to fade. It was heart aching, watching my mom drift away from her life, my life. It hurt so much, to watch and know that I couldn’t do anything, that the only thing that could save her was a prayer, a miracle, and hope. At night, I’d cry for her, and then I’d cry even more because I knew she was too weak to come into my room because I was crying. I don’t know which hurt more…

Suddenly, I began to die too, the grief began to choke me in my sleep, starve me when I ate, and drown me when I bathed. This wasn’t supposed to happen, my family wasn’t supposed to crumble like this. It wasn’t meant to shrink, but grow. We weren’t supposed to cry every night, but instead smile and dream of how much better our lives could be and wake up to remember that it’s already wonderful and doesn’t need to be better.

And then, one night, after my dad and I had cried ourselves to sleep, we woke to the doctor on the phone, demanding that we come to the hospital where my lovely, ill mother was a patient. My tears blinded me as my dad rushed us to the hospital, I knew what was happening, my mom was dying, her heart was giving up to the disease that had consumed her once healthy, strong body. We got there, and my mom could barely open her mouth, she could only nod and cry. She didn’t say anything, she didn’t have too… I already knew what she was thinking. “I love you.”

All three of us, my mom, my dad, and I, sat on the white hospital bed, squeezing each other for the last time, then I heard it… there was silence, the only sounds were the sniffles of my broken family, the weak breathes of my mom, and then… a long, loud beeping noise that came from a black monitor with a flat green line on it.

I wailed and cried and kept screaming. “No! No! Please! No!” but the doctors couldn’t do anything, my mom had lost her battle, the diseases prize… her life, my life, my family’s life.

And then, my life stopped moving. I didn’t want to be with my friends, or go to school, or even get out of bed. All I wanted to do was cry and think and cry again. I tried so hard not to think about my mom, but it hurt too much for me to forget about her. My soul died, I wouldn’t survive, couldn’t survive. I couldn’t live through this burning agony that was killing me from the inside out. But somehow, a small piece of me held on, held on to my life, and wouldn’t let me go. Maybe it was the thought of my dad. The thought that I couldn’t leave him, we’re all we have left, just each other.

My dad became too weak in the heart too. He stopped going to work, stopped going to the grocery store, he even became too weak to turn off his alarm clock in the morning. It would beep for hours, almost like it was counting every minute that my mom wasn’t here, with us, where she belonged. We both stopped leaving the house, answering the phone, turning on the T.V, every thing reminded me of my mom. The bathroom that she had talked my dad into painting a golden color, the hallway that held happy family portraits from the day I was born to only 6 months before she died, even the refrigerator that had her favorite coffee flavoring in it. I couldn’t even go into the fridge with out tears bursting from my blood shot eyes. Every thing just hurt, hurt my heart, hurt my soul, hurt my mind.

Sometimes I’d spend the day in my room and relive the life our family used to have. I’d recall family visits, holidays, vacations. There was one vacation that I loved the most.

My dad, mom, and I had driven out to a house in the country. It was tiny, but warm and inviting. There was just 2 bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a living room filled with happiness and joy and wonderful memories. One day, the three of us had gone out to a lovely meadow for a picnic. We were a young family then, I was just six.

We all sat and giggled and told stories and giggled some more. After a while we just lay back and watched the clouds float in the sky like bubbles. I started shouting out what the clouds looked like to my wild imagination.

“It’s a train!” I shouted.

“It’s a hula-hoop!”

“It’s a beach ball!”

Then my parents started playing along and saying what the clouds looked like to them.

“It’s a baby, a baby boy.” My mom whispered to one of the clouds. “Braden, that would be his name.” Then she put her hand on her stomach.

My dad put his arms around her and they both looked immortal, glowing, like they would shine so brightly for eternity.

“But Mommy, if it were a girl, we’d name her Jasmine, right?” I had asked as I snuggled in with my parents on the blanket.

My mother chuckled. “Or maybe Cinderella,” she told me.

“Or Sleeping Beauty,” my dad chimed in.

“Or Ariel.”

“Or Snow White.”

“Or Bell.”

We sat there for a long time and began naming princesses that didn’t even exist. But that didn’t matter, because we were happy, care free, joyous, grateful, and I, most of all, felt loved. I felt the warmth of my mom and dad as we sat together and I began to chat away and they listened with a sparkling rejoice in their eyes.

At that time, my mom had been pregnant. I learned later that it was a miscarriage and I wept. Although I was young, I felt like I knew why I was crying. I cried for my parents, for the sibling that just wasn’t strong enough, for myself. I felt terrible, disgraced almost. Disgraced that God didn’t love my family enough to bless us with a healthy baby.

But that feeling quickly subsided, at least my mom was okay. Shattered, but okay. And now, how I wish that my mom could feel that way again. Yes, she had been hurt, damaged, broken; but she was alive, still living life, not ready to let it go.

But now, now she will never finish her life, she has left it, ending it before it even began. And that, that was a painful thought. How could somebody, anybody!, not live life the way it’s meant to be.

People told me that God brought my mom here, and He had a right to take her back. But no! He had no right, He had no authority to take not one life, but the life of a family. A family that was small, but content. Almost like the flame of a candle, He may have blown only once, but He still put out the flickering speck of flame and destroyed my family.

And He can’t take it back. He can’t replace my mother, can’t replace what had been, can’t replace what should’ve been.

People are like fingerprints, no 2 alike. And now, my mom, yet another unique fingerprint, is gone. And there will never be another one like her. Never.

The anniversary of my mothers death. One year, one year she’s been gone, one year I’ve suffered and survived a living hell, one year and I still can’t get my life back on track, can’t forget what’s happened, can’t let go what’s become of my world. One year and nothing has changed, no blessing has come upon my father and I, only the reaper whose name is known as death.

I open my eyes from a rare restful sleep where hospital noise and funeral music doesn’t haunt me in the night. Where the scent of death and misery and despair has drifted away long enough for me to breath deeply. Where visions of paying respect to the dead and the stone head of my mothers grave slip away from my mind for just a moment.

But something is different, yet in a good way. Finally. The sweet scent of chocolate and mint have draped over the scent of tears and heartbreak. And the noise of a lovely voice speaking softly to me gently drones out the sound of wailing family and sorrowful friends. And the visions are replaced with a beautiful lady who’s golden blonde hair is blowing ever so wonderfully in an invisible breeze and her dazzling blues eye that reflect a once happy family with smiles as big as the sky and dreams as wonderful as gold.

I blink like crazy, my tear stained eyes are lying, their playing evil jokes on me, mocking my pain. But no, she’s still there, this beautiful lady, this wonderful mom, this amazing person.

“Mom? My mom? My mom!” I shout, filled with joy. Then I burst into for once unexpected tears. This is really her, standing in front of me, putting her hand on my cheek. I feel a warm brush of air, a mothers touch that I’ve missed so much, a spark of love and happy remembrance.

Then there’s silence as she smiles at me, her lovely, lovely smile. The one before she got sick, before every thing changed, before every thing crumbled. How I’ve missed it, missed everything, missed her.

Then, as if the windows are flung open in a grateful storm that I’ve needed so much, she speaks. It’s her gentle voice, the understanding one, the loving one, the beautiful one that makes every one love her the moment she speaks. Oh, such a voice she had.

“Daughter, my daughter,” she spoke like she wanted to cry but wouldn’t. Something that I had done for so long to help her, to show her how strong I was. But I had failed either way, we all knew how weak we all were, whether we could admit it to ourselves or not. “I love you so much, that when I think of how I couldn’t tell you…. That last day… I got so, so upset with myself.” She paused, taking a deep breath before going on. I waited in anticipation, almost like if I spoke or moved or breathed that she’d disappear again, and I wouldn’t get to ever hear her voice again, or be in the presence of her youthful beauty.

“I know that it’s so difficult to get back on the horse when you fall off. But you can’t just stop your life because mine ended. I want you to so much, but you can’t. That’s not how our lives were supposed to work out. I need you to forgive God for what happened and throw away your sorrow. For me, for your father. He needs you.” More tears come from me, but they came from the sound of her voice, the scent that she possessed, the visions of her presence. It’s all so real.

“Move on and live the life your supposed to, please. Just promise me, one thing.” Her lower lip quivered for just a moment.

“Anything.”

“Please, just don’t ever forget about me, about the goodness and love I brought you, about the happiness and joy I handed to you, about the goodnight kisses and morning hugs that were always waiting for you when ever you needed them. Please, don’t ever forget.”

“I swear, I’ll never forget you, even if I tried, I could never forget you.” I paused as a single tear of closer slid and glittered down my mom’s elegant face. “Is God, is God real?” I asked, the question had come into my thoughts and slipped through my lips with the grace that my mother had in her genes.

She smiled and chuckled to herself. “Oh, he’s real. So real.”

And with that, she was gone, but my room was different. The was no more grief or despair or tears, but happiness and pleasure and every thing that could ever remind me of my mother. And I breathed deeply, but there was something in my veins that pushed me out of my bed and had me sprint over to my dad and I jumped on him like I did when I was six and my mother would tickle me to get me off of him and then he’d tickle my mother and I like crazy and we’d lay in the bed laughing.

He opened his eyes and smiled at me with a smile that I had missed almost as much as my mother. “She came to you to, didn’t she.”

I wasn’t shock at all, of course she had come to him, she loved him so much, and wanted to be with him as much as she wanted to be with me. “Yes, and we’ll never forget. Will we?”

“No, we won’t.”

And we never did forget my mother. Who was young, and sweet, and so beautiful, and always smelt of chocolate and mint and always had a soft smile on her face, surrounded by such gentle, pretty features and silky blonde hair that had always flowed in the wind and her shiny, shiny big blue eyes that had always spoke her pleasure and happiness she always had. And I still couldn’t help but wish that I would grow up to look like her one day, even if she was my mom.