Thirty - Everlasting

I thought a lot about my mother that night. Her eyes, her hands, the lines by her mouth when she smiled. I tried not to think about her like that too much, in memory of the smallest things about her. The things that made her my mother, the things that made her Helia, named for the sun.

Things that she possessed only for me and other things she possessed only for the rest of the world. I never wanted to think of these miscellaneous things because they made her seem so devastatingly real. They made it seem like she could appear any second, walk into the room any day; like I could wake up in the morning and smell her cooking anytime or await her goodnight kisses any evening. It is terrifying to think this when I know she is departed from me.

I spent a decade with her in my life. Shorter than that, really, since my memories as an infant are too hazy to truly recall. After her death I never r