SUMMER FEVER

5 | NOW

SUMMER VAN DOREN

Who defends the vanished souls? Who fights for their rights, pays attention to their problems and water their pots?

I'm sitting next to my mother's grave, on a worn dark brown bench, allowing her headstone to put me in a bad mood. Ever since my return to Alexandria, I've kept my distance until now.

The gravestone is a heavy piece of natural stone where only her name appears, "Dahlia Van Doren," written in the most austere handwriting imaginable.

Simple, one could even say too precise, just like she was.

She chose the design herself. Left instructions to the person in charge of her funeral.

She'd planned out the aftermath of her suicide three weeks before committing - at least according to the note she left on the end of her bed. She worked as a doctor. Made the descision to overdose on morphine, so I'm sure she knew what measures it would take to conduct death with the substance. I know very well what she wanted her tombstone to convey—that life cannot be pursued without the natural outcome called death.

Hers wasn't very natural though.

While her life has vanished, I'm certain her soul is still with me in this moment. Before I moved away from the island, I used to set a fresh pair of Dahlias each time I stopped by, and somehow they always managed to wither before my next visit.

She was never really into all that pampering and pretense though.

Now I'm holding her soul like she's water in my hands. I'm doing absolutely everything I can for my memory to not let her slip away.

At the time of her death, I was only fifteen years old. My body instantly responded by being quiet. It was like she took the sun with her when she left, and the darkness that remained wouldn't let me think straight.

My dad noticed this drastic change in my demeanor rather quickly and suggested I visit a psychiatrist to make the sadness go away, knowing he did all he could and it still didn't help.

It is probably the right thing to do when you lose someone you hold so dearly—to vent out the sadness and (hopefully) never have to experience it again.

But all I really needed to tell him was how I never even wanted grief therapy, because I never want to not be sad about my my mother's death.

However, not a tear is shed as I sit here in silence. I'm certainly still grieving, just not suffering. It's not that I don't relive the tragedy of her passing anymore. It's just that I don't let it affect my life because I understand that she's in a better place now. She did choose this after all. It was her very own choice.

I still question myself if I've fully forgiven her for leaving me like that. I'm not sure if I know what forgiveness is though. Maybe there wasn't even anything to be forgiven to start with.

I guess that sometimes we forget that it's our parent's first time living, too.

She was only 31 when she died. 19 when I was born.

We were girls together. Her and I. Do you know how special that is? We used to talk all night about love and that was the love story. We were already in it. Being girls with her was the greatest joy of my life. Anyone who has loved me after her loved us.

How sweet. I smile at the thought. I almost giggle like a little girl again.

I think I'll continue to visit her now that I'm here, despite the grief that tickles my throat this time. The grief is still there, but so is the love. For both my parents, I think, gazing to my father's grave on the left. I have my mother's lips and my father's eyes. On my face they're still together, sort of, and I find that rather lovely.