My mother left when I was twelve. My dad raised me in the house he later left me, my anchor. Two weeks ago, she called, dying, and asked to see that anchor one last time. I said no.
So she broke in.
I found her curled on my porch, a ghost with a shopping bag of pills. The police had called me. She’d tied a piece of old floral fabric to the kitchen curtain rod, a claim staked in memory. "I just want to die somewhere that matters," she whispered.
I told her she’d made her choice years ago. I went inside and locked the door.
But she haunted the edges of my life, appearing at the church meal program where I volunteer. She was thinner, with a hospital bracelet on her wrist. I hated her for making me feel anything. I took her home, not to stay, but for a shower and a meal. She slept on my couch, and in the morning, I drove her to a shelter. As we parted, she asked me to scatter her ashes under the backyard apricot tree. "We'll see," I said.
A letter from a hospice nurse finally pulled me to her bedside. She had a secret to unbury, one my father had kept from me. I wasn't the product of a failed marriage, but of an affair. My father wasn't my biological father; he was the man who chose me, who fought to keep me when my biological father reappeared. My mother left, she claimed, not for a man, but to end the war over me, to let my dad keep me safe.
She died two days later. I buried her under the apricot tree.
Later, I found a letter from my dad, waiting for years in the piano bench. "Forgiveness isn't weakness," he wrote. "It's the only real power we have."
I don't know if I’ve fully forgiven anyone, but the apricot tree bloomed early this year—the biggest bloom I've ever seen. Some roots, no matter how damaged, still hold.
