The Deal

The Rotten Apple

TW: death/suicide

The morning that my mother's soul departed this earth, I knew the exact moment she took her last breath before anyone even realized she was missing.

I jolted out of bed in a cold sweat, my lungs gasped for breath, but felt as if they were filled with liquid. My dreams were plagued with underwater visions of floating carcasses and treacherous waves constricting my throat like talons.

Salt scraped my throat like sandpaper, the cold water seeped into my bones and froze my limbs, and the darkness below seemed never ending.

And then... in the distance, a streak of yellow billowing in the dark blue waves. The water stung my eyes, but through the pain I squinted, desperate to see what it was and knowing already.

My mother.

Beautiful sunflower eyes pecked out by greedy fish, tanned skin pale with the color of mortality, and an eerie calm settled over the face that I saw every day in a mirror. When I woke, my skin was slick with sweat, my throat felt like a desert, and my eyes burned with salty tears.

The air smelled faintly of kelp and death.

There was a hollowness in my chest that was unmistakable, permanent. It was as if a part of my soul had shriveled up and died away overnight. My whole body felt heavy, but also unbelievably void.

I knew that she was gone before I even read the note left on the counter in her dainty cursive. Before I called for my father to show him the note and watched as the happiness drained from his eyes.

"Gone for a dip. Take care. xx"

Short and sweet, but telling for anyone who knew her.

My mother never learned how to swim.

When they pulled her body from the reeds a week later I watched from the cliff above as my dream came to fruition right before my eyes. There was no shock and no grief, just... a hollowness in my chest that has been there ever since.

My dad was inconsolable for days leading up to the funeral. For him, the death was completely unfathomable and unexpected. He couldn't comprehend why it happened and I didn't have the heart to explain it to him.

I wanted to keep his image of her alive and I guess I wanted his image of me to remain in tact also.

I never set foot in the sea again.

For a few years after her death I couldn't even look at the ocean and I lived right above it. Even though I couldn't set my gaze on those wicked waves, I could still hear the waves crash against the rock and taste the salty air in every dish I cooked.

A ghost in and of itself.

When we finally put her in the ground, her spirit found its resting place on my shoulders. I just woke up one morning and there she was again. I tried for weeks to communicate with her, to get her to move on, but she clung to me like a leech. Like a conscious.

She never left me, not really.

I can feel her today -restless and oppressive- stirring above me. She is so jittery and vibrating with energy that it stirs me awake before the sun even crests over the cliff.

This is probably around the same time that she took her last breath eleven years ago today.

Like every year on this day, I wake up feeling discombobulated. Not sad or angry, just dizzy and a little off-kilter –a little like I've had too much to drink. That void in my chest deeper and darker than ever and thrumming for attention.