Title: Mothers Day
Disclaimer: I know they're not mine. I'm old and tired so, PTB, please don't slap me around for playing with your toys.
While something tells me Michael does it far more than I, I often stop the madness and despair banging around inside my head by thinking of our mother.
Memories fade over time but tiny pieces like her face, her warm smile, and the gentle, even tone of her voice reassuring me of her never-ending faith in both of us remains complete and intact in my mind to this very day.
While most of it is patchy and sketchy, a few moments have remained crystal clear and retrievable at will.
These scenes of the past that flood back into my brain so easily are always ones centered on pain, fear, even anger. While that notion bothers me and I wonder why I can't recall the happy times like Michael can, I've come to understand that those things are the emotions at the core of who I've become, the ones that stir my imagination deeper than any other.
I've always lacked Michael's gentle way so the warm, comforting memories that see him through have always eluded me.
Always, until recently when one of the most vivid memories I have of her began to shift in my mind.
For as long as I can remember I've been able to recall in startling detail the night before my father left.
I remember hearing them arguing in the other room as I crept out of bed and down the hall to peek through the door, cracked open just enough for me to see her standing there, facing him in the faint light of their bedroom.
For years and years I'd seen her face, angry and frightened as she shouted words at the man who, unseen to me in my memory, I barely knew as my father.
Forever I remembered hearing her shouting at him to ' Just leave! '.
Watching her weep softly as she told him to ' get as far away from her as he could and never come near any of us ever again'.
I could never see his face, see him in the memory at all, until I woke to see his face hovering over me in that junkyard three days ago.
Suddenly he was there.
There in reality and there in my memories...
Since that moment my mind has begun to play out what I truly saw that one painful night all those years ago.
The words are the same, but everything else has changed. He's there with her in my memory now.
He's standing in the room, so close to her; making me wonder how my mind able to shut him out all these years?
Closing my eyes tight, remembering, her voice shifts from anger to hurt and desperation.
Wrapped tenderly in his arms, the words I know so well ' leave... never come near any of us again ' become soft, tear-filled pleas instead of shouting.
In my mind I see him holding her close, his fingertip tracing the line of her cheek, soft kisses chasing away her falling tears as he whispers ' safe...you, Lincoln ...' and the word baby lingers on his lips as his hand drifts down to rest on her still-flat stomach as he says his last good-bye.
The memory is different, yet stronger than ever.
What I see now goes against everything I thought I knew, and has begun to make me realize that perhaps they actually loved one another very much and were simply torn apart by forces beyond their control.
That she, both of them, wanted nothing more than for all of us to be together.
Makes me certain that for her sake, for both of them, I'll do anything it takes to make sure nothing will tear apart what's left of our family ever again.