My pen rolls across the table as my fist slams heavily upon its surface. I feel my skin grow hot, as my thoughts tear into a panicked frenzy. My vision begins to haze, as my breathing quickens. The booming of my heartbeat fills my ears – marching steadily into a piercing ring. 

Sadness? I think to myself, though I know it could not be further from the truth.

Anger? This one, maybe. 

Fear. Definitely.

How many days have I spent sitting here in the endless cycle? Desperately staring upon a blank sheet of paper, with the only change in movement being to stare into an empty white screen. 

Nothing has come, and nothing has gone.

I am a writer, who does not write. 

I am a thinker, who does not think. 

I am a human, yet so far from what I chose to be. 

“You’re tired.” a soft voice nags, piercing through the ringing booms in my ears. The sound of wind chimes fills the air, as the scent of fresh snow beneath a warm winter sun stirs my nose. 

I close my eyes, as I feel a firm but gentle hand on my left shoulder. 

“You haven’t eaten in days,” the voice follows, “You don’t sleep. You offer your body no rest and wonder why your mind refuses to be at ease.”

“This is all I have,” I answer, “All I’ve been, for years. The act of it alone, should come as easy as breathing. Yet the more I perform it, the harder it gets. Like it’s deliberately trying to tell me that i’m just n–”

“–not cut out for it”, the voice sighs, finishing my sentence. I feel the hand slip from my shoulders, and as it does I notice my body has calmed down. The anxiety has almost vanished, a sense of ease now remains. The tension from my fists meeting the desk dissipates, as the numbing in my hand also subsides. 

“So,” the voice snaps, as my attention redirects, “You are a writer, who writes conversations people are afraid of having. Yet now, you are a writer who does not…hm, cannot write. Does that mean you are all out of meaningful conversations?”

“Maybe all that there is to say has been said,” I answer defeatedly, “All the conversations already had.”

“Then why don’t we have a conversation that was never had?” the voice suggests.

I feel my body tense as the idea crosses to me, my heartbeat quickening once again – more intense than before. A state of panic flows over me, but this time the fear no longer lingers at my incompetence. This time it threatened to pull on something much deeper.

“Aye, and what would that be?” I muster all my courage to enforce indifference into my tone, yet all that comes is an awkward chuckle. I can feel my eyelids flickering, as I suddenly grow conscious of how hard I was trying to keep my eyes sealed shut.

Silence. Then, a blood curdling reply.

“Let’s talk about why I had to die, just so you could live…aye?”

It takes me a while to muster more courage to answer back.

“That’s not how it happened.”

“It sure looked that way from here,” the voice answers, “You live in a house bigger than the one I died in. In a country I’ve never been to before. You’re making money, albeit inconsistently. And you’re even donating it to old folk homes around your area. Funny, I never saw a dime from you when I was alive. Though I remember you took a lot from my retirement funds to—”

“THAT’S NOT HOW IT WENT!” I yell, slamming my desk.

“Isn’t it?” the voice slowly asks, “So it’s not true? I didn’t have to die, for you to have this life of great meaning and purpose – or so you claim it to be?”

“My therapist says suffering is the key to human growth. That only through suffering, are we afforded the chance to become better. To learn. To grow. Only through conversations we don’t get to have, and chances we never get again – do we appreciate the ones we do have, and do get.”

“How convenient that is, aye?” the voice snickers, “That so much wisdom can be learned. After someone else has paid the price.”

“I am simply sharing a perspective,” I grunt, resisting the urge to snap back.

“I do not seek perspective,” the voice dismisses bluntly, “I seek an answer, from my boy. From my son. Do you deny me this, even in my death?”

I bite my lip at those final words. This is not fair, I thought, as I clench my fists. So much time had passed, yet in mere seconds I unravelled so. Years I spent burying the idea of this woman. Years that only began after I buried her. 

I desperately seek something to set my anchor on. But nothing comes.

“Yes,” I give up, hotness in my cheeks, “I needed you dead, if I was ever going to live the life I live now.”

“Why?” the voice pushes, a hint of hurt mixing with rising tone.

“Because I was weak!” I erupt, “Because only from the decomposition of your body, in that bloody soil, could I grow! Is that what you want me to say?”

My lips quiver as the words slip through, thoughts senselessly flowing through to plug the leak. How many days had I been at this very question I was being asked now? Sleepless sorting my memories, for an answer that took mere minutes to admit.

“But it was not your absence that taught me the value of presence,” I continue, my voice a hoarse mix of frustration and desperation.

“I did not learn this lesson, at your expense. Nor at your demise. That has entirely to do with my weakness. My shortsightedness. My naivety, and my arrogance.” 

This is the truth, is it not? The truth about grief, as we experience it?

We foolishly allow the death of those closest to us to be the strongest driving force capable of enacting change. 

To start appreciating our lives. 

How does that separate us from murderers, who derive pleasure from killing?

I was a bitter, arrogant, foolish, and stubborn man… until my mother’s death. 

I took every moment, person, creature and object for granted…until my mother’s death. 

I only appreciated my life, recognized my mortality, and saw my lack of contribution to the world…after my mother’s death. 

“I could not see it fast enough, okay?” I say, words slurring with desperation and shame,

“I could not find it, until you were lost. I could learn it soon enough, Ma. I’m sorry.”

Though my words slur, a strange calmness washes over my thoughts. Memories from specific moments I tried so hard to bury now flood my mind. Like a movie I cannot pause. 

And the face of my mother, in every scene. 

I catch flashes of long winded arguments on prolonging the inevitable. Fights had over an old  dining table riddled with empty pill bottles, and stacks of medical bills. 

Angry confrontations over my insatiable demands for money, which would always end in the exact amount I needed – and more – in my bank account the next morning. 

The final scene is of her frail arms, clinging tightly to my tattered shirt as I spat poisonous curses at her for bringing me into this world, upon which I have only known loneliness, and unlove. 

My final gift to her at that moment had been a firm shove, as her fragile body cracked along the steps of the old folk home I would then abandon her at; for all the funds had run dry.

The very home she would take her own life in – two weeks later.

Leaving behind a letter with only four words:

“I’m just sorry, son.”

I open my eyes to see a woman standing right beside me. She has flowing gray hair, and baggy skin that clung loosely to fragile bones. She looked down at me with an expression I struggled to discern between pity, and shame.

“I’m just sorry, Ma.” 

“I figured you would be,” my mother answers softly, the gentleness she once gazed at me with flickering, “A sad life to live, if you were to go through all that and not be. A sadder death to have died, if I could not teach you that in the end.”

“It should never have been me,” I mutter, tasting the salt of my tears as I turn away, “I am your greatest failure.”

“I agree,” she replies, “But it is not in a parent’s nature to kick their children, when they are already down. 

Her words shock me briefly. Part of me expected her comfort rather than her indifference. Yet it adds little to what I already carry. 

“I have nothing to give you, that you have not already taken,” she continues, as if she read my thoughts,

“Your grief is your prison, as endless as your days. Your guilt is your poison, eating you alive, as they say. Even now, I am but an imagination, drawn from your memory. A ghost you conjured, in your desperation for inspiration. No longer alive, to validate nor deny the words you are having me say. But aren’t you curious, son?”

“Of what?”, I turn to her with dried stains upon my face.

“Why your imagined version of me speaks to you with such malice? 

Why your conjured spirit of me, is so resentful of you?

Why you choose to believe that the woman who gave you everything, in life, would offer you nothing in death?” 

I do not answer. She is right. 

This false apparition before me was little more than my pitiful effort to tarnish a woman who had been nothing but brilliant in her life. 

A poor image, of a woman who lived a proud life, spoiled only by her useless son. 

This was not my mother’s spirit before me. 

This was a version of her she would have never been. Ruthless, indifferent, and blunt.

It was merely who I wished she had been. That she would resent me, for my brutality. Treat me, as I had treated her – perhaps it would have been easier to live with that pain, than this guilt.

But such could not be further from the truth. 

For I know my mother would have given me in death, what she had given me in life. Kindness, warmth, and forgiveness for all the sins I committed. 

And in doing so, she’d undo all I had learned since her death.  

But that’s just it, isn’t it? 

Though I believe myself changed, even in death I seek something from her. 

For a chance to have a conversation I know I will never get to have.

So I will write. I must write. 

For the people I’ve yet to speak to. And for the people I’ll never get to. 

I will be chained to this desk until my life leaves me.

But for now, all I wish to do is lie down.

For now, all I wish to do is cry.