Flower for your thought

Of course I didn’t tell anyone. It would have literally taken the rest of my life to prove it, and it’s hard to relish in your victories when you’re dead (even more so when everyone’s dead along with you). So I kept quiet, doing all kinds of things I would never have done otherwise: I broke the record for the fastest installed depression of all time and I also managed to hide it all from my family. Cheers to me.

‘This is worse than cancer’, I muttered, continuing to prune the flowers at my mother’s command.

‘Consider it physical exercise,’ my mother answered from a few rows behind. ‘Didn’t you want to go to the gym? Well, here you are, doing cardio, breathing fresh air and not paying a penny.’ The last few words were punctuated by a grunt. Her mother’s knees were as opposed to the activity as her daughter usually was.

‘Wasn’t talking about gardening, mom.’

‘Then what, pray tell, is bothering you so?’ The older woman was sensing an impending rant, and rightly so.

‘Say, if you were to have seven da- no, six days to live, what would you do?’ I asked casually, not sparing her a glance.

‘Is this for one of your stories?’ she said after a while.

‘Yeah, it’s part of my story.’

‘Why would you chose that for a premise?’

I hesitated. My mother always asked pertinent questions. Damn it.

‘Mostly for how difficult the situation is,’ I replied objectively. ‘It forces the person to reevaluate their actions in life and it brings out their deepest wishes as well.’ I was surprised at myself for coming up with that, considering it was utter nonsense. Knowing you’d die early only made you more confused with life. What's truly worth living for?

‘Well, then I wouldn’t do anything about it,’ spoke my dear mother with certainty.

I said nothing at that. I just pulled some weeds out.

‘I would just... live, I guess’, she muttered, frowning a bit.

‘Most people would have a bucket-list of sorts.’

‘True. Most foolish thing I’ve heard of.’

I huffed. ‘It’s not foolish, it helps.’

‘I doubt so,’ she replied. ‘No conscious person has ever died without regrets.’ She got up and went for the hose. The gardenias needed some watering.

‘Then let’s say it isn’t about regrets, but about living life to the fullest.’

She watered the whole row of gardenias before answering.

‘That’s bullshit.’

A dry laugh escaped my throat. My mother rarely swore.

‘Living life to the fullest should be done by meerly being alive in the moment,’ she explained quietly. ‘Pity our minds complicate even the simplest of needs.’

I blinked owlishly at her. ‘People are just blind, then? That’s it?’

She giggled. Weird.

‘No. They’re just scared.’

I turned to my pruning then. Nothing new there, I said to myself.

I tried it the moment I understood her words. It was surprisingly hard when haunted by thoughts. I wanted to go, grab her arms and shake her, asking: 'How is it done? How do you forget and forgive and forgo? All my life, that's all I've avoided doing, so what now? What do I DO?', but I didn't. It took me a while to realise she might have not known the answer. Of course, it took me less than six days.

Others definitely didn't know the answer either, and I was oddly relieved by that. 'Good,' I thought. 'I'm not the only one bad at living.'

I truly lived for the first time after taking the pills. I was waiting for the numbness to come and when it did, my thoughts halted and I listened to my own heartbeat quiet down. The utter absence of sensation made room for true emptiness and, oh, how good that felt. I wanted to keep feeling it so I managed to put my fingers down my throat before it was too late.

My mother found me afterwards. She helped me clean up the mess, asking me if it had been something I'd eaten. 'It wasn't food, mom, it was LIFE,' I wanted to scream. 'Life has hit me in the guts. Finally.' She stared at me like she could have understood my thoughts.

How wondorous that would have felt.

Should I have told her? Maybe. Although, right before we died, she looked at me and smiled. It didn’t reach her eyes, but she was at least trying.

She’s feeling the regrets, I thought then, and also, She knows.

How she knew? Who cares. Don’t mothers know everything?