By: unknown writer
Growing up, I'd been a fan of being told stories when I went to sleep at night. My mother would tuck me in, making sure I was as comfortable as I could be under my blue-and-green covers before diving into another anecdote of her own choice. Her stories were always pleasant, and in the event that I found one a bit scary, she'd tone it down a bit for me. They ranged from all origins: some had been passed down through her family, some she'd memorized from books and fairy tales. Some were her own creations, and some were true stories, but typically I liked each and every one of them. A select few had appealed to me greatly, and I'd memorized them, able to retell them by heart whenever I desired.
The year of my ninth birthday, my mother fell ill. She would have various spasms throughout the day, vomiting all that she consumed. Some days were worse than others, and she would vomit blood instead. Her arms developed new scars on their own, and we never knew where they came from. Some were shallow and barely left a mark, while others were deep enough to spurt blood and beg for stitches. She'd cry in pain throughout the night, weeping out "it hurts, it hurts" all night long. I began to fear the night, began to tear up every time I saw the moon rise and tell me that my mother's pain was about to begin anew, that the cycle was about to repeat yet again.
Even through her pain and suffering, my mother still always summed up the strength to limp into my room, ease herself onto the edge of my bed and comfort me with a story.
In her last few days, her stories would become shorter and shorter, as though she were trying to adjust to the thought of a night without telling me a story, or at least trying to get me to. A night which she would sleep and not awaken. A night which was foreshadowed by her condition. She tended to stay to telling me true stories in those last days of hers, weaving tales of her childhood and the memories of her graduation from college to pass the fleeting hours by. The shorter her stories became, the more anguished I was at the thought of losing my mother.
One night, the night she passed away, to be precise, she told me a story I'd never heard before, in a tone I'd never heard her use. It wasn't evil or dark, per-say. It struck me more as a soft, motherly tone, but with a hidden inlay of sadness and depression, and just a hint of malevolence locked into the words. She'd been looking particularly sad and tormented by her pain that night. She'd cried and cried all day, gashes having opened in her legs overnight. I was considering offering to let her skip her story tonight, although she hadn't missed a single story since I was a baby. It was like a tradition, a ritual. However, my less child-like instincts had told me, in a dark cloud in the back of my mind, that this may be the last story my mother ever tells me. It had been telling me this for weeks, but I believed the voice now more than ever.
She'd sat down on the foot of my bed again tonight, as she always had. She looked weary, exhausted, crippled, ready to finally submit to death's embrace after her battle. She held my hand this night: she typically only held my hand while telling me a story if it was a stormy night, or if I'd felt scared for one reason or another. Tonight, I only felt sadness at her composure, at the way she was presented. I found myself more disturbed that she was doing this to me tonight, since there wasn't a cloud to be found in the sky. She took a deep breath and began, her voice as weary as the rest of her.
"Flowers are a delicate thing, my son. Always remember that. They have just as much voice and volume as the rest of us, and yet they choose to stay rooted in the ground, portraying messages to one another silently. Over the centuries, we've begun to understand these messages. Think of how flowers are used today, what signs they convey. We pass roses onto our lovers. White carnations are an aspect of weddings, often. Sunflowers may be the sort of thing we grow with our loved ones, to remember and cherish them by. Every flower has a meaning, and we have long yet to understand them all. As you live your life, examine each and every flower you see, for it may be trying to tell you something important."
