Mathew Williams. A twenty two year old male. A commission salary based artist. Living off of the income he made from that, a small job he had helping out at an animal shelter, and, of course, the money that he'd saved up before he'd finished high school. He was able to draw anything from realism in such detail that the drawing was thought to be a photograph, and sometimes even mistaken for something real, to the most imaginative of fantasy type drawings. He could do them all. He'd been drawing since he was four and had never stopped for anything. He'd only taken his drawing seriously when he'd hit high school though. Then, it was a kind of release for him.
He had graduated from his high school at the top of his school's honour roll, with the best grades on the list. His high grades weren't needed for what he wanted to do at all though. You don't exactly need high grades to become an artist, you just need the talent and passion for drawing, sculpting or whatever is needed for your chosen part of the profession.
His parents had been completely supportive of his decision, they were fine with anything he chose to do that he actually wanted to do, not just felt like doing. They could see that he was good enough to succeed, there was no need for them to worry about that. They were alright with whatever job he wanted to do during his life.
And they had stayed supportive of all of his choices until his Mom had died when he was nineteen. Her official cause of death was from a complication with her surgery to remove the cancer that had been in her brain. It was located just behind one of her ears. The right one. The doctors had found and removed the brain tumor growing inside of her, that hated cancer; but, the doctors doing the surgery just weren't careful enough when they were taking it out. An air bubble had somehow wriggled its way in and once it had gotten into her brain, it had traveled to her frontal cortex, made her go into spasms and killed her within hours of her surgery. No one had been around when it happened, his mom had always been strong willed. As soon as it was done, she had left. His dad had found her when he'd gone to be with her afterwards.
Mathew had been in University at the time to learn more about how he could improve his drawing. The worst thing about her unexpected death was that he couldn't even remember the last thing he had said to her. After all, he had thought the doctors had done a marvelous job, they had told him the surgery was successful, although her death proved it was anything but successful. And so at that time just before the negligence of her doctors cost her that one thing Mathew had wished for her to never have to pay, she had been the one that had driven him to his new and exciting University life.
She had had somewhere to be, they were both horribly nervous about him going off alone and so they had rushed to move his bags out fast. The day she had dropped him off they hadn't thought of how much they would miss each other or about committing to memory every word each other said, they had only been filled with the hyper, non-thinking feeling a person gets when they have been scared into their fight or flight instinctual response, or have either stayed up too late or have woken up too suddenly. They thought of nothing on that trip but to go fast and efficiently. He couldn't even remember what she'd been wearing that day.
Mathew could only hope that among everything that he had called after her were the words "I love you" or "I will miss you". He couldn't remember. He couldn't remember anything she had said to him, nothing at all.
His Dad had made Mathew stay in school while he cremated her, his lovely artistic Mother, alone. And then, a year later, his Dad had also died. This time it was the cancer itself that had gotten to him. Mathew kept both of their ashes together, side by side in little jars that a friend of theirs had carved for them, they rested together at home, safe from the hazards of this strange world now forever more.
Mathew had graduated from University and had been selling his artwork since, just like his Mother used to sell her paintings, the paintings he had already given away to the rest of his distant family. He had only kept the paintings she had been working on when she died, all of them unfinished reminders that she was gone. There were times that he wished he could hate her behaviour, and how she'd left so many things unfinished; but, he couldn't. There were 53 paintings in his home, he'd counted them after a while just to tell for sure how much of her he had left. Most of them stayed covered up and out of sight though. It was too painful to see them every time he turned around.
So it was in memory of her that he had this little tradition of his. On the day of her death every year he would always walk to the parks around the city he lived in and would draw the people that he saw along the way; because, the human figure had always been her favorite subject to bring to life on her canvas, sketchbook, or in her journal. It had always been her favorite, always. The nature paintings that had made her famous had never even come close in her heart. It was always the people around her that shehad loved.
'In memory of Mom.' Mathew thought as he walked out of his front door once again. His sketchbook was clenched tightly in his left hand and there were different pencils shoved into his back pocket. And just like that he left, shutting the door behind him softly and readying his sketchbook so that he could draw as he walked.
'In memory of Mom. I love you and I miss you so, so much right now. I think about you everyday. Would you have expected better of me had you lived? You had always wanted grandchildren and I had never told you, not once before you and Dad had died that I was gay. You never got to have your grandchildren. This is the only way that I can honour you now that you're dead, I guess. I'll draw you up a world full of people that you can talk to all of the time wherever you are right now. You can tell them all of your thoughts just like how you used to talk to everyone before and then maybe I can hear them too.'