She hit the top floor landing and burst through the bedroom door to the left, her little voice drifting down as I started up the stairs. “Nana, breakfast is served!” she sang as she banged inside. “You is gonna be so excited!”
I could barely make out the distorted, raspy voice mixed with Daisy’s boisterous shout, and my chest tightened and squeezed and panged with each step that I climbed.
I did my best to pin a smile onto my face when I rounded to the door, but I could feel it slipping when I looked inside and found my mama struggling to sit up against the headboard.
Her face ashen, as if she’d aged a thousand days in the last week, the cancer sucking the life right out of her body.
It took everything I had not to drop to my knees and weep.
“Violet,” she whispered when she saw me standing there, and even with the pain I could see written on her failing body, she smiled the most brilliant smile.
One wholly directed at me.
Dark eyes the same color as mine brimming with the love she had. That single expression alone left no question of who I was to her. What I’d always meant.
It was something no distance or space or circumstance could ever change, but that didn’t mean that made this any easier.
“Good morning, Mama.” I tried to keep the warble of emotion from my voice. It still cracked.
Her smile shifted to stark somberness. My mama reading me the way she always could.
In tune with my emotions.
Heck, she’d written the dictionary on them.
And considering those emotions were tugging at me from every direction, there was no question she felt me unraveling.
“Come inside.” She patted the bed beside her.
Daisy took that as an invitation and jumped onto the spot on her knees, bouncing all over the place and jostling Mama.
“Daisy,” I corrected her.
Mama tsked and waved me off, shifting her attention to the child. “You are my sunshine, aren’t you, sweet girl?”
Daisy nodded emphatically. “Yep, I’s am!” She started to sing off-key in her voice that should be a balm, “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy, when skies are gray…”
But today, everything was too raw. Too real and wrong and devastating.
I tried not to choke on that clot of grief that always lurked in the recesses, but somehow today, it felt suffocatin’.
Agony so intense it fought to overwhelm.
It left me wondering if I might not make it.
Daisy continued to sing, her innocent joy echoing through the room, while I stood there, frozen to the spot. When she finished their favorite song, she leaned forward and plopped a messy kiss on my mama’s cheek.
So sweet.
Mama melted, this puddle of sorrow and joy, her thin, sunken arms wrapping around my child as if she wanted to imprint her embrace on her forever. “Beautiful, my darling Daisy. You keep singing your songs forever.”
“I will, Nana. Forever and ever. You’ll hear me, right?” she asked, suddenly worried, pulling back to look at my mother.
We’d prepared Daisy. Been as honest as we could in a delicate way.
But I’d learned quickly there was no way to prepare myself.
My knees wobbled, and there I stood, still holding her breakfast tray while I fought the stinging at the back of my eyes.
Mama brushed her fingers through Daisy’s hair, solemn affection on her sallow face. “Forever and ever. You keep singin’, and I will be listnenin’. Just turn that sweet face to the heavens. I promise. I’ll be there.”
Mama cast her attention on me, no doubt feeling the waves of torment coming off me.
I sucked it down and forced myself to move farther inside. Carefully, I set the tray on her lap and made sure the legs were adjusted just right.
“My, my, what is this?” she gushed, plucking up the picture and opening it to a squealing Daisy who started bouncing on her knees again.
“It’s for you. It’s for you.” She got up close to Mama’s face, hunting for the truth. “Do you likes it? It’s got all the colors and all the flowers and the amor, amor, amor!”
Love. Love. Love.
It swirled and danced through the room.
She cupped Daisy’s face. “All the amor.”
Daisy beamed in high voltage.
“Thank you, my darling Daisy.”
“You’re the welcomest, Nana.”
“Why don’t you get me a piece of tape and hang it right there so I can look at it all day?”
Mama gestured at the wall that was already covered in the pictures that Daisy colored for her each morning. The display was interspersed with the get-well cards that had been coming in at a steady stream since the news had spread around town and the neighboring counties.
Daisy scrambled off the bed. “Be right back,” she shouted as she flew out the door, taking all her energy with her.
“Sit with me,” Mama said, coaxing me to the spot on the opposite side of where Daisy had been.