The Journal Gift

I was feeling extremely exhausted from the day's events. We buried my mother today. I had cried so much that my eyes had dried out. Only the ocassional heavy sigh would escape me. My body fell on the bed and without changing my clothes, I pulled the comforter over me and fell asleep.

"Here I want you to have this" my mother said. As I stared at her, my brain was telling me this couldn't be. She was gone, but how was she here? "Here, take it. Its about you." I extended my hand to receive this book. I was tangled in the covers. I was dreaming. I kicked off the comforter and bedsheets and the pillows that somehow felt like they were all suffocating me. And I suddenly I recalled that just two months prior to her death, she had given me this journal as a birthday gift. She told me it was about me. My mother had written it over the course of a few months.

It was late, almost midnight. I had slept several hours. I pulled the journal from my closet. In my haste, I had tucked it away to read it when I was ready. I suppose now was a good time. We had always had a strained relationship. She had given me away for adoption when I was seven years old. She couldn't care for me anymore. She had remarried for the fourth time and was moving to start a new life, a new family. The date on the papers was December 31st, 1965. New Year's Eve. I guess it was her way of doing away with the old and starting new all at the same time. I always wondered why she couldn't take me with her. Now into my late forties, I realize things work out for a reason and am glad for the way things turned out.

I began to read and turn the pages as if they were fragile leaves that had fallen from the trees of Autumn. But there were things missing. I kept reading and realized this woman hadn't written about me. She had written about the things she thought I should know about HER life. How selfish! What about my life. I wanted to scream at her 'What about the time up to when I turned seven years old?' That part of me is missing. Couldn't she have at least given me that? I closed the journal. Tied a rubberband around it and tucked it back into my closet. What's the point, I thought. She is gone and I'll never get those first few years of my life.

I cried some more and went back to sleep saying good-bye to her in my dreams.