Declan

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The days had gone by, each the same as the one that had come before it, all excruciating because she was gone.

I felt like I was stuck, and I would never progress past that moment.

Everything inside of me demanded I seek her, and yet I couldn’t.

I knew I had to stay away from Grace, knew that was what she wanted.

But it didn’t make the pain any less, and didn’t make it any more possible for me to understand why this was happening, for me to accept it.

I was on the brink, edging close to my breaking point, perhaps past it.

I couldn’t think of anything else, and not even what I was doing now could really distract me.

I hadn’t come to this place since the day we had left her here, but I knew the way by heart.

Michael was the one who had found the facility for my mother, was the only one who visited her, yet I was so torn in my grief, so at a loss for anything else to do, that to my shock I found myself here.

I stayed in the car for a moment, looking at the immaculate grounds, the churning in my stomach on the verge of making me sick.

I considered turning around, but knew that I couldn’t run. That I wouldn’t run.

So I took a deep breath, and then got out and walked toward the door.

I didn’t bother to sign in and instead explored the place. Michael had told me that she preferred to spend her time in the day room, so that was where I headed.

No one tried to stop me, and I wondered if that was because they knew who I was, or because the expression I knew was on my face made doing so seem like a very bad idea.

It would have been.

The way I was feeling now, so desperate, so out of control, I didn’t know if I’d be able to restrain myself.

So instead I walked grimly, determined.

I wasn’t exactly sure why I was even here, what I could ever hope to accomplish. But thinking that didn’t slow my steps, and when I finally entered the day room I paused, took a deep breath.

It took less than a second for me to find her.

She was facing away from me, the rich red hair of her youth now darker, dulled with gray.

Still, though I hadn’t seen her face, I knew it was her.

I walked toward her, slowly now, some of that determination and grimness that had been present before sapping away.

I paused behind her, looked over her shoulder as I watched her fingers nimbly work.

I couldn’t tell what she was making, didn’t look like anything to me, but she seemed content.

Hummed a quiet tune under her voice, seemed so perfectly satisfied, at ease.

I finally turned, walked so that I was facing her.

She didn’t look up, and instead continued to knit, weaving the yarn in and out, but not making any discernible pattern.

She seemed completely oblivious to my presence, a reaction that was surprisingly painful.

When I was younger, she had always been distracted, lost in thought, though she had had more than enough reason to be.

It seemed that that habit had carried over to the present.

She just continued to hum, didn’t look, not even when I retrieved a chair and sat across from her.

I knew it was foolish to feel this way, but her contentment, the way she seemed more than happy to do it while paying me no attention, nearly gutted me. It shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have begrudged her whatever peace she had found. But it did because that peace didn’t include me.

“Mom,” I said.

That word hadn’t passed my lips in decades, and when I spoke it now it was tentative, something I only barely managed to voice.

It had no effect on her.

She continued to hum, knit, and didn’t look up.

That hurt, the anger that went with it sparked deep in my gut, but I tried to disregard it.

Still, some part of me couldn’t help but think of the little boy I had been, the one who had so desperately wanted his mother, the one who had so often been disappointed.

I had never shared that feeling with the others, felt ashamed of myself for even thinking it now, but it was the truth. My mother had loved us, and she had confronted a life that I wouldn’t wish on anyone, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that she had let me down and left me with a burden that was proving impossible for me to carry.

“Moira,” I said.

She stopped then, looked up, smiled at me in a friendly yet distant manner. Her eyes seemed focused, but I could tell she had no clue who I was.

“Hello,” she said softly.

I had thought my heart had been broken before, but my mother’s polite greeting took the few shards that had remained intact and shattered them.

“Hi,” I whispered, not knowing what else to say, but seeing that it was important for her to get her response.

We sat like that, her with that friendly yet distant smile on her face, me feeling for all the world like the kid I had been once, remembering feelings I always wanted to forget.

“May I help you?” she finally asked.

I didn’t respond immediately, and instead wondered what she was thinking. How must this seem to her in whatever world she was in? Did she feel anything, an inkling of who I was?

Again my heart clenched, my mind raced with all the things I wanted to say, all the help I could use of her.

Questions rocked through my brain fast and unrelenting: what could I have done? Why did you leave us?

Many, many others, none of which I could ask.

I looked at her again, blinked.

“Nothing. I’m sorry for bothering you,” I finally said.

“No bother. I love to have visitors,” she responded.

My mother was gone.

I had known that, at least intellectually, but I felt it hit me in a way it hadn’t before.

The realization was sudden, almost terrifying with its clarity and intensity.

But it was there nonetheless.

I had loved her, I still loved her, but I couldn’t live my life to make her happy, couldn’t let her fears be the thing that defined me.

“You helped me find all that I needed,” I said.

I reached over then, lightly patted the back of her hand, the skin thin, her knuckles gnarled with her repeated activity, the faint line of the scar marring each of her wrists.

She smiled then, and for an instant I saw the mother she had been all those years ago. And just as quickly it was gone.

“Glad I could help, young man,” she said.

Then she went back to her knitting, her humming, back to the world that to her had been more important than us.

I stood, left without saying anything else, but feeling like a different man than I had been when I had entered. Just as I had accepted that she was gone, I had accepted that I had carried so much weight, anger at her, anger at myself, fear of what I could become, and absolute desire to fill her wishes, and part of me wondered that if maybe I could, it would make the lost years, the pain that we had all endured worth it.

But as I got back into my car and headed back to the city, I knew that was over. I couldn’t do anything to change what happened in the past, and as much as I loved my mother, I couldn’t live my life for her.

I had to live for myself, and that would start today.

My mind immediately went to Grace, tried to find a way to fix things between us, but I pushed that aside for the moment.

I would make amends with Grace, but first I needed to see my brothers.