She sat in the red doorway waiting as her grandaughter sifted through trinkets and treasures, old watches and glittery brooches, occasionally holding up a particularly well-kept piece to show her. She nodded and smiled, lost in the flow of memories seventy-six years in the making. How she had passed so many days to be in that red doorway she could not fathom.
As vivid as the crimson hue that framed her, she could remember herself Tessa's age, blindly feeling her way through marriage, finding a happy existence between intellectual engagement and domestic life, and then, having it all snatched away long before the years had a chance to dampen the love.
The cancer stole his joy quickly but toyed mercilessly with his life, cutting each thread with cruel tardiness, letting him and his family linger ever longer in the shade of death. She helped him sever the last thread, her hand lingering on his knee as she kissed him goodbye and closed the door.
Necessity made no space for loitering grief. Her boys needed a mother and a future. She set to work at both. Her sons grew with stifling speed. The eldest morphing into his father's son, with a handsome face and a swimmers body. When they finally left to start their own lives she started to etch out a new one for herself.
She shared a house with the youngest and went back to university. First a Bachelor's then a Master's. Sociology took her to remote islands in the pacific, sleeping on grass mats and eating rice with her hands. She observed and noted, concluded and recommended. It was satisfying but could not fill the gaping hole in her life.
So she remarried. She compromised with herself that one life-changing love was enough, she could settle for companionship and compassion. A year later she realised she could find neither in this new man, so in the middle of a winters night, she left.
As it was, she learnt to fill her life up with the family she did have. Sons, daughters-in-law and grandchildren. In the midst of warm contentment, as she watched her grandchildren play and grow, she would occasionally still be stung by his absence.
But where she sat now, as she looked on at her dark-haired grandaughter, she refused to be stung. Her life, she thought, may have pieces missing like the jewels from the brooches her grandaughter sifted through, but it was enough for her.
Her knees creaked as she stood from the stoop and walked across to the stall of glittering trinkets and treasures.
As vivid as the crimson hue that framed her, she could remember herself Tessa's age, blindly feeling her way through marriage, finding a happy existence between intellectual engagement and domestic life, and then, having it all snatched away long before the years had a chance to dampen the love.
The cancer stole his joy quickly but toyed mercilessly with his life, cutting each thread with cruel tardiness, letting him and his family linger ever longer in the shade of death. She helped him sever the last thread, her hand lingering on his knee as she kissed him goodbye and closed the door.
Necessity made no space for loitering grief. Her boys needed a mother and a future. She set to work at both. Her sons grew with stifling speed. The eldest morphing into his father's son, with a handsome face and a swimmers body. When they finally left to start their own lives she started to etch out a new one for herself.
She shared a house with the youngest and went back to university. First a Bachelor's then a Master's. Sociology took her to remote islands in the pacific, sleeping on grass mats and eating rice with her hands. She observed and noted, concluded and recommended. It was satisfying but could not fill the gaping hole in her life.
So she remarried. She compromised with herself that one life-changing love was enough, she could settle for companionship and compassion. A year later she realised she could find neither in this new man, so in the middle of a winters night, she left.
As it was, she learnt to fill her life up with the family she did have. Sons, daughters-in-law and grandchildren. In the midst of warm contentment, as she watched her grandchildren play and grow, she would occasionally still be stung by his absence.
But where she sat now, as she looked on at her dark-haired grandaughter, she refused to be stung. Her life, she thought, may have pieces missing like the jewels from the brooches her grandaughter sifted through, but it was enough for her.
Her knees creaked as she stood from the stoop and walked across to the stall of glittering trinkets and treasures.
