Prologue
My dearest Florian,
I love you with everything that I am. But I’m sorry, my beautiful son. I can’t live this life anymore. We’ve been through too much, and now that you’re old enough, I know you can survive this world without me. As a mother, it’s been one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make, but I feel it’s best for you and me because I’m so tired of living, anyway.
I regret a lot of things in my life, one being your bastard father, as you know. But the one thing I will never regret is being your mother. You deserve peace and love, my son. You deserve to experience everything life has to offer you, including love. Don’t let your father ruin that experience for you.
Also, get as far away from your father as possible, live your best life, and find someone who will love you as much as I do. I will watch over you from wherever I am as I take the next step in my journey. Don’t cry for me. I’m in a better place. I will see you in the next life.
Love Always,
Mor
January 17, 2005
Standing under the gray cloudless sky, I clasp my frozen hands behind my back, feeling the chill scurry across my body. I do my best to ignore the chattering of my teeth and the numbing sensation in my fingers and toes. The large snowflakes stick to my worn-out suit and cling to my unruly hair, reminding me of the urgent need for a haircut.
I wish this were any other day. Or at least that I was somewhere else other than here. But it isn’t any other day. And I’m not somewhere else. I’m standing by my mother’s grave, questioning what’s left of my life now that she’s gone.
I’ve always hated Swedish winters, but she always loved them. Maybe that’s why she ended her life in the dead of winter, so she’d have one last giggle at my misery.
Today, with temperatures dipping well below freezing along with the constant snowfall, I can hear my mother’s silly laughter mingling with the cool, crisp winds as she listens to me complain about freezing my nuts off to say a last goodbye to her. That’s just the person she is…
Or was.
I run my hand through my snow-covered hair. “Fuck, it’s gonna be hard getting used to saying that,” I mutter.
She always made me smile when there was nothing to smile about. After today, there’ll be nothing to smile about again. This will be the last time I see her.
My heart aches at the realization, and I rub my chest to soothe the pain, although I don’t believe that will ever happen. Once her coffin is lowered into the ground and covered with the hard, cold dirt, I’ll never set foot back in this cemetery. More than likely, I’ll never step foot back in Uppsala. At least, I won’t if I can help it.
It’s a bittersweet moment because she finally escaped that bastard, which she always wanted, but left me here alone. I’m sure it was tough for her to leave me behind because I know my mother loved me. I shouldn’t be mad at her decision because I know the shit she’s been through with my father. But I am mad. I shouldn’t curse her gods, but I curse them. I’m pissed I’ll go through this life without her. She’ll never see me become the man she always said I could be.
I howl out my rage, all my frustration and pain, over her deciding to punch her own ticket. However, I refuse to let the tears fall as another shovel of semi-frozen dirt hits the top of the pristine white coffin, the thud as hollow as my heart. The black chunky soil clings to the top, covering the beautiful, immaculate red roses I tossed in earlier, while the rest slides down the sides, leaving a trail of black muck.
With each thump of dirt, the realization sinks in even more, like sharp claws ripping through my chest and tearing out my heart. I used to call it nagging, but now I miss having someone in my corner pushing me forward. I no longer have anyone to love me despite my shortcomings. I used to think it was suffocation, but I would give anything to turn back the hands of time. I would give anything to have her nag or suffocate me as long as she was there with me.
I sigh, causing a white cloud to form in front of my face. It’s a longing that will remain, but I need to move forward. I’m no longer a boy but a man, and men don’t cry. “Men don’t complain,” the voice of my bastard father shouts in the back ofmy mind. But no matter the words on replay in my head, the heaviness in my heart will never leave me. I fight back tears that will soon flow. The only person who loved me couldn’t bear this painful life, even for me.
Her only son.
No family or friends are here. Only the cemetery’s caretakers burying my mother share in my grief, and I can see the discomfort on their faces as they do. I can’t spare them, though I wish I could. Grief and bitterness are all I have. It’s all the world will see of me.
I don’t know why I expected anything different from my father. When I called, I’d hoped I’d imagined the cheerfulness in his voice when he found out she was dead. But the “good riddance, bitch” he’d sneered before he ended the call told me otherwise. He’s happy she’s finally dead, freeing him of a burden he could have rid himself of a long time before today.
I was stupid to believe he gave a damn about either of us. He’s never hidden his feelings about us or the man he is, and I vow on my dead mother to be nothing like him.
I watch more snowflakes blanket the once-green grass in a sea of white. The snow hasn’t stopped falling since I found her lying alone in a pool of her own blood in a bed fit for a queen. The white satin sheets she loved so much, and the cream-colored walls she just painted last year because she needed a change, were stained with crimson and brain matter. The gun she placed against her head had lain next to her right hand, and her suicide note, splattered in blood, laid next to her left.
In the note, she asked me to find peace and apologized for leaving, but she hadn’t had it in her to stay any longer. She prayed to her gods, ones I’ll never believe in and curse until the day I’m in the dirt, that I find love and get out of life everything I deserve. But finding love and finding peace are not what I’m searching for in this life, whether I deserve it.
Peace, I don’t need.
Love, I can live without now that she’s gone.
But revenge…now that’s a tale as old as time.
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