The Dreamer ✓

Letter 29

NO.29; A LETTER TO THE PERSON YOU MISS THE MOST

SEPTEMBER 5th, 2014

Dear Mum,

I'm so sorry it's taken me so long to write you a letter, well, a proper letter that didn't start or end with me crying.

It's been so long since we last spoke. Eight years and fifteen days to be exact. I remember the last thing you said to me. Do you? You were lying in your hospital bed as you had been for the last year and I was crying because you looked so pale and deathly.

You'd taken my hand and said, "I promise you everything's going to be okay, all you have to do is have a little courage."

I'd stared at you with tears in my eyes, "I don't have courage."

"Morgana," you said, giving my hand a squeeze. "True courage isn't built in an instant."

I never quite understood what you meant but it'd somehow made me feel better. I've been puzzling over it for years. But I think I get it now. True courage isn't built in an instant because it takes something more than a split decision. I think that's the difference between bravery and courage, bravery is done by ignoring or lacking fear in that very moment. Courage is something deeper, more profound. It comes from the heart, from recognising the horror of your situation and despite your own fear, you push forward and resolve to do it anyway.

And I feel as if I've finally built up the courage to put down this pen and tell you everything I should have said all those years ago.

Mum. I love you and I miss you. I love you so much and I miss you every single day. When you died the whole world seemed to fall away and for a while, nothing else mattered, not really, not if you weren't there. The world lost its colour and I remember living in cold greyscale.

Dad locked himself away in your bedroom for months, he was static, I was so scared I was going to lose him too. Aunt Mala took care of us in those months. She kept telling us everything was going to be okay, and looking back, I think she was trying to convince herself. Evelyn and I argued a lot, and I mean a lot. I don't think I hated anyone as much as I hated Evelyn in the two years following your death. After that the hatred cooled down to cold indifference. Ariel was too young to understand any of it so she cried and kept the whole house awake.

Once the shock fell away, it gave way to numbness and then a heavy, crushing weight on my chest. It made it difficult to breathe. When night came, the weight became heavier and I thought I would die from the pain, some nights I wished I would. In those first six months it felt like the devil was ripping through my veins and unleashing hell in every corner of my life. Nothing can prepare for death. Not your own, or death of the ones you love.

Eight years later and it still hurts but not as much. Some days, I'll see the same grief reflected in Dad and Evelyn's eyes and I feel so furious, so suddenly furious at the world, at God for taking you away from us. Some days, I'll be okay, I'll be laughing with my friends or watching the television but then something reminds me of you and my heart feels too heavy to carry in my chest. Some days, a wave will hit me. It's black and so freezing it leaves me dizzy and breathless. And then it'll pass and just like that I'm breathing and walking again and the world doesn't seem so dark.

The world isn't dark, not really. A lot's happened since you died. Ariel was a baby when you last saw her, she's ten years old now and she has a startling resemblance to Aunt Mala when she was a kid. Oh, I wish you'd seen her grow up. She's amazing. She's the first bar of sunlight in the aftermath of a stormy night. She's growing so fast, she's already in her last year of primary school and next year, she'll be in secondary school.