Her Essence In The Ink

When my mother passed away, I looked everywhere I could possibly think of for her hand writing. You see, my mother loved to write. Perhaps she is where I get it from.  She loved to write poetry. I remember her sharing some of her favorites with me many years ago, and was so inspired to begin my own poetry adventure. It was a literary puzzle to me; Finding the worlds that fit and placing them on the paper in a way unraveled a story.

Her hand writing was so unique, I would know it in an instant. She only wrote in cursive. Her letters slightly slanted towards the right, as she was left handed and always hand her paper on an angle. She preferred to write in black ink; blue if she had no other choice. I knew I had something of hers, but I nearly drove myself mad looking for it. I just wanted a little piece of her hand writing so that I could look at it, and feel it under my fingertips one more time. I wanted to look at the letters rolling across the page, knowing that her hand was holding the pen that left them there. Her essence in the ink.

I was watching Harry Potter (it was Harry Potter Marathon on FreeForm this weekend!) and decided to go take a shower. For some reason, I decided to go through my old room and I found a box that I had forgotten about. It had old cords in it (presumably from old cell phones), pictures from middle school, a passport, and then at the very bottom…three letters. I saw “Mallory” written on the outside of one…It couldn’t be. My entire body fell to the floor, and the air escaped my lungs. My eyes began to flood, as I touched the letters on that fragile piece of paper. “M-A-L-L-O-R-Y”, black ink, cursive, slightly tilted letters… “This is it” I thought, “This is mom’s writing.”

It took me a long time to be able to gather myself, and my thoughts, enough to be able to open the letter to actually read what my Mother had said to me. The first thing that caught my eye, was the date. It was exactly ten years ago from the date that I had opened it. That in itself gave me chills and made me sob even harder. The content of the letter was about how my mother wished to regain some of herself, and how she wished for her and I to work together to form some sort of a relationship. The second letter was her apologizing to me and telling me that she was working hard on herself because “I’m sure that you’d like to have a sense of ‘normalcy’ in our relationship before you’re 30.”…Those words. Killed me.

The third letting, just reminding me how much she loved me and how proud of me she is.  

Was. How proud of me she was.

I needed that. I needed that ink. I needed to hear, read, feel her essence. She’s with me, and I know that, but I have never been happier to feel her around me, than I was that morning. I feel like it’s finally time to start healing. It’s finally time to stop being ‘brave’ and telling myself that I can do this on my own. I cannot do this on my own.

Opening up is hard, but being alone/trying to do this alone, is harder.