Payback Is a Bitch (A Rock N Roll Soul Story Part I)

13. NEVER GROW UP

I stared at my mother in disbelief.

"Mom, please tell me this was some sort of sick joke." I told her as my eyes started to get watery. "It can't be true."

I felt how my stomach twisted in protest and how my body became weak.

It felt as if I was the one that was sick.

The one that was dying, no my momma couldn't die.

"I wish it was Alex. The doctor told me that I have Leukemia two weeks ago." My mom said as she looked at me. "It's a very advance staged and the expectative is low."

"Is there a way you can treat it?" I asked her, I cringed when I heard my voice it was breaking down as I tried to fight the tears. "To make it go away?"

"Yes, this is why I came to France, I'm going to get the treatment here and I hope that I can fight it off." My mother said as she looked at me in the eyes. "I won't be defeated so easily."

"Don't give up mother. I won't let you give up." I said as a tear rolled down my face. "I still need you."

My mother stroked my cheek and brushed away the tear.

I loved these little things that my mother would do; her show of affections, her baked cookies, her perfume, her smile, her laugh.

Her; just her that was all I needed and I couldn't let life take it away from me.

She was my momma after all.

"I'm not going to give up Alexandra. I can't leave Andres or you alone." She said. "I will fight till my last breathe."

And my mother was right, every single day after school we would take to her therapy. In some occasions we would be next to her all the time but there were times were we couldn't be next to her in the hospital. Blake was very nice; he would maintain my hopes high when it came to my mother. I tried to not see how my mother's long blond hair would slowly fall thanks to the radiotherapy she was getting, so her blood cells could function properly. Or how she would look tired and would no longer feel that enthusiastic when it came to trips to the beach.

How slowly she was losing that spark of life she always held.

The doctor had told us that maybe it was a matter of time before that spark died.

But I refused to let go.

We had come to the lake and it was early spring, almost four years ago I had came here to France. My life was a bit simpler back then I didn't worry about anything but about me learning French. I sat in the sand with my feet buried in the sand, I was wearing shorts and a blue blouse; the wind would often blow my now long blonde straight hair to my face and I would play with my pink neon highlight.

"What are you doing?" My mother asked me as she sat next to me. "Why are you here all alone?"

My mom was wearing a white dress and a pink cardigan that matched with her pink hat that I knitted a week ago.

I would always give her something out of nowhere; I refused to pretend like nothing was happening.

I was going to enjoy her before she slipped out of my grasp.

It was the cruel reality but at the end of the day it was what was happening and nothing less.

"Just thinking about when I first got here and how fast time passes by." I said as I shook my head. "I can still remember when I was fourteen, I'm almost eighteen and I see that corky teenager long gone but it was for good although I still have some weird on me thanks to dad, it is from his side of the family after all."