Short Story Mother Son – Like the sides of a river…
Photo credit: bobby from morguefile.com
To someone special,
I know, that if I apologize to you a million times, it won’t mend the mistakes I have made. So I won’t. Because it will not only tear my heart apart but yours too. And I’ve already caused you a lot of pain. Now no more.
When you needed me the most I left you. When I should have been with you to see your first smile, I wasn’t there.
When I should have been with you to see you yawn, your little pink lips opening into an O, to see your first steps, I wasn’t there. To see your first fall and I should have encouraged you to rise again, but I couldn’t.
I know that you must have forgotten me. But I remember every second of that one day in the hospital holding you in my arms. I was feeling the enormous pain in my abdomen, felt sick like I wanted to puke everything out, I am going to pass out anytime. It was like going through hell …but then the nurse entered carrying you in her arm, and all my pain, all my nausea vanished at the very first sight of you. It seemed like you where my savior from heaven.
Then the nurse took you and told me to rest & finally I was able to after a long period of time. I dreamt of holding you in my arms again and kept on dreaming your face, the soft touch of the blue blanket in which you were wrapped. I dreamt of you and your father together. In my dreams, he was looking down at you and said that you have his smile. I was content and that was the last time in my life I slept peacefully, unaware of the evil shadows creeping into all of our lives.
I opened my eyes, a smile still lingering on my face. I see your father sitting right beside me. (Well, let me tell you and your father is a stoic faced man. any problem any suffering, he likes to keep it to himself and it is very hard to read his face) .but right then he looked as if he is going to burst into tears.
I thought everybody’s way to deal with happiness is different. Mine was to celebrate like a rich princess and his perhaps crying tears of happiness.
I smiled at him “What’s the matter? Don’t you like his nose?”
“Tuhina…”He took my hand into his shaking hands and gave me that look which said everything is going to be alright. Now I started to worry.
“What? Why are you looking so distressed? Tell me what’s wrong??” He started crying, burying his face into his hands. He wasn’t ready to tell me what wrong. I was beginning to sense that.
“Please tell me. Did the doctor say something. Is something wrong with him? Tell me about his medical condition. Or is it me?”
Then I saw a policeman entering the room. He was the one to tell me that you are gone. That someone has kidnapped you.
After that everything went blur. I don’t remember for how many days the investigation went on, for many times the inspector went on asking the same painful questions, for how many days I tolerated our relatives and neighbors sympathetic looks, their clicking of the tongues in a tsk-tsk sound and nodding their heads in a disapproving way. But people soon forgot your existence. In a way it was good. Life should move on and it did, but not for me and your father.
We could never mention you again and neither could we think about a second child. The fear of “what if the horror struck again” enveloping our every decision. Our wounds were never going to heal but we quickly learned how to conceal them from the whole world. Your father worked 24\7. He worked tirelessly, every moment of his life in order to fill the silence, the emptiness in his heart.
And me? Well I searched my own ways to handle your absence. I joined a NGO helping orphans to get a better life. People said that I was doing a very selfless and noble deed by contributing every bit of my money upon these “less fortunate”. Perhaps so but the main reason was that can see you in them. I try to give them everything possible thinking that wherever you are, someone should be taking care of you as I am of these children.
And do you know what’s the saddest thing? That I don’t know where to post this letter, that I don’t know who you are or what is your name or what food you like…. that I don’t know whether you are even alive or not. If you are and if you think about me and your father, let me tell you that we love you. And no matter where you are we always will.
You and I are like the sides of a river. We think about each other every moment of our lives but we know that it is impossible for us to meet. We are like the sides of the river because though we are not together, we bear the same storms, the same floods, the same atrocities in life together. Even though I can never be with you, hold your hand and give you comfort, I hope u realize, I am there for you. And you are there for me & always will.
Your mother,
Tuhina.
__END__
