An Open Palm

            Locked in the arms of my mother, her fragrant tickling my nose, my heart beating against my rib cage, I heard her soft whispers of forgiveness. It wasn’t too long ago when our tongues exchanged words of bitterness. It was a battle of pride and guilt that ended up with me storming out of the home I grew up in. I didn’t bother to look back. She didn’t care to call after me. In a blink of an eye, 20 years passed and I fought every chance to go back to visit. I didn’t want to look in her eyes to see the hurt I’d caused. I didn’t want her to think less of me if I were to return. I left and vowed to never return.

            People have strange ways of avoiding the truth. They beat around the bush. They make small talk. They dance around the topic. But they never, for once, will be blunt. It’s almost something we all avoid for our own reasons. For 20 years, each holiday that passed, I said a silent prayer to my mother, in the hope, that in the back of her mind, she was thinking of me, her only daughter. I wished upon stars at night that she was well and for the heavens to watch over her with a steady arm ready to protect. But I never dared picked up the phone to ask. I never sent a letter to say I was fine. I never drove to face the truth.

            I danced through the 20 years to my own tune. It never mattered that everyone else celebrated Mother’s day with their mothers or special occasions together. I wasn’t going to back down or apologize because I was stubborn. I didn’t want to lose my pride. I didn’t want to be the first to break the silence. It was all I had. But one day, a letter changed all that.

            It came in white envelope addressed to me from St. Jude’s Hospital. With shaking hands, I stared at it and didn’t have the courage to open it. I let it sit on the counter for two days. Whenever I passed the counter, it spoke to me. It gawked at me with its presence until finally I tore it open and read it. Two weeks to live. Two weeks, it said, for your mother to be on earth, for her heart to beat, for her eyes to open, for her lungs to breathe. Two weeks.

            The moment I arrived at the house I grew up in, I suddenly wondered why I let my pride weaken me. Due to her failing health, the house was broken down, just like her; overgrown grass, chipped paint, broken windows, and an unearthly odor that roamed around it. When I entered the house, she laid in bed wearing a thin white cotton gown. Her eyes were almost hollow, her hair gone, her cheekbones stood out like angry mountains. The hands that caressed me and brushed my hair were now little gnarly sticks. Her breath was raspy, uneven, and the stench of illness clung to her. I admit it, I burst out sobbing. I went to her and I cried. I got down on my knees and cried for the woman who carried me in her womb, who endured sixteen hours of labor, and who suffered 20 years without me. The walls of my foolish pride fell down revealing my vulnerable self, the woman my mother had raised. I cried until I became as exhausted as her. And when I finally let go and looked up at her, she smiled at me, took one last breath, and closed her eyes.

            Peace and forgiveness is something we all search for and we hope we receive it with an open palm. We want to live our lives in the hope that we can establish a solid foundation of love and hope. But we forget that sometimes, life throws us a few curve balls that are meant to test our strength. My mother was one of that tests and I failed miserably. I tried to make up for all that I lacked, but it still doesn’t make up for what I had lost. It’s like a sweet madness that slowly consumes you until you fall to your knees asking for forgiveness, for the truth to set you free. Its redemption wrapped up in a silky red bow tie meant to taunt you to cave. An open palm of forgiveness, did I receive that? I would like to think I did.