Counting To Fifteen [Grey's Anatomy]

chapter forty eight - a mother's day

Daisy hated Mother's Day.

Father's Day was up there too, and as a result, Daisy sort of dreaded May and June.

It just wasn't a fair concept. What were people without parents supposed to do? Sulk all day and hang their heads?

Daisy hated that she didn't have the opportunity to celebrate Mother's Day because her mother was gone. The day felt heavy, the world seeming to taunt Daisy as everyone else was able to hug their moms and send their moms flowers and tell their moms they loved them.

The girl's head was hung all day, bad thoughts brewing in her mind. Daisy stared blankly at the white sheet of paper in front of her, the rest of her English class obediently scribbling away with mechanical pencils.

The black ink of the dry erase marker gleamed off the white board at the front of the classroom, each letter haunting Daisy.

1) What words come to mind when you think of your mom?

2) Write a letter to your mom entailing all the reasons you're thankful for her.

Two embarrassingly simple prompts, and yet Daisy couldn't think of anything.

Mom had been kind, and warm—like sitting outside on the sunniest day of the year. Mom had been gentle and tender and a billion other positive adjectives that Daisy couldn't possibly list.

But the matter, of course, was that Mom had become past tense. It wasn't Mom is kind or Mom is warm.

The wording consisted of past tenses. Mom was warm. Mom had been warm. Mom was the warmest, and then death had taken her warmth and replaced it with a bone-chilling coldness, pushing the woman into a wooden death trap six feet below the surface of the Earth.

And a letter? How was Daisy possibly supposed to write a letter to a dead woman?

Hi. How are you! Are you okay? I miss you. When are you coming back? I miss you.

It felt wrong, the most twisted reality that Daisy was living each day.

Daisy glanced over to her other peers dutifully writing sentences as they filled their paper with pencil marks, forming the most sickeningly- sweet words to smother their moms with via letter.

Daisy didn't have half her paper filled like everybody else did. Her sheet of notebook paper remained desolate and blank, and Daisy figured she wouldn't be able to write anything of use. Lest she did, the quality of her work would be incredibly unauthentic and gloomy.

The girl stood from her chair, making her way to the large desk at the front of the classroom. Daisy's English teacher was sat grading papers in the midst of the silence, and she looked thoroughly surprised to see Daisy stood in front of her.

"You're finished already?"

Daisy didn't respond to the woman's questioning, handing her the blank sheet of paper.

The girl watched her English teacher's expression flip, her features contorting to showcase more annoyance than Daisy had ever before seen.

"You didn't write anything."

"Your assignments aren't very accommodating to people that don't have parents." Daisy spoke firmly, the woman in front of her frowning.

"You don't have any sort of mother figures that you could write about?"

Daisy supposed she did have mother figures. She had an Aunt Callie, and an Aunt Arizona, and both women acted like makeshift moms when Daisy needed it. She had Octavia, the familiar woman who had always taken the time with Daisy when nobody else would.