Anne was upstairs in her father’s house. It had only been a few days since her mother’s funeral. Even though she was grieving, she felt angry at her mother for the pain she had caused her. She had listened to her father talk about what a kind woman her mother had been. How she hadn’t had a nasty bone in her body. But she had been nasty, manipulative and was very passive aggressive to her brother and herself. Anne was a 45 almost 46 year old woman, but she still was reeling from the pain her mother had caused her. Now she felt anger at her mother and herself. She felt angry at herself for not getting over the pain her mother had caused her in the past and more recently. She felt angry at herself for not forgiving someone who had been in so much pain with cancer.
How could she not let the past go? Her feelings towards her mother were so confused. Through all the irritation, anger, disbelief and shame her mother had caused her, she had still loved her. She was still heartbroken. She ran away from her parents. Not literally but figuratively. She had moved to Greece with her husband for a fresh start but she knew she had really run away from her parents, their views and the oppression she had felt from them. She was angry with herself for not staying and facing up to the pain before she left for another country. She had never felt happy in England after moving from Canada but maybe moving to another country was not the answer either. Her father had gone to the supermarket, so now she could say out loud what she wanted to say to her mother and in a way to her father. She had come to understand later in life and being away from her parents for ten years that she had spent most of her life trying to be who she wasn’t. She had been trying to be the person who she thought her parents wanted her to be, because she needed their love. They were not capable of loving her the way she yearned to be loved. She knew now she had to fill that hole herself. Now while her father was away she would secretly say what she wanted to say to her mother.
“Mother, dad said you would go to heaven because no one else in the world deserved to go more than you. I don’t know if there is such a place as heaven. But if there is, I hope that you were shown the hurt you caused to me and Matthew and any other people you wronged. I want you to know what pain you caused and to finally know the consequences of your actions.
“I don’t know if you knew the hurt you caused to others. Did you lie to yourself so that you could live with yourself? Or did you not have a conscience?
“If there is a god and if there is a heaven, I hope you were shown the pain you caused. I don’t want you to suffer for eternity. I just want you to acknowledge that you did harm. I just want you to apologise to us, even though we can’t hear you. That’s all I want,” Anne said in between gut retching sobs that blinded her, as she walked down the stairs to the kitchen to clean up the morning dishes.
“Aunty Joy has been told that you are with your mum and lots of animals. Did you really love animals or was it all for show? You didn’t seem to know how to look after them. Both of your pets were enormous and that’s a form of cruelty in a way” Anne huffed in disbelief,“I don’t know if what my dad said was right. I don’t think you had a way with animals,” Anne remembered her father saying that when Anne had mentioned being bitten by a dog.
“As if the dog wouldn’t have bitten you as well, ” she sobbed with a mixture of anger, disbelief and sorrow. She didn’t think her mother was so special that an angry dog would not bite her. It was like her father was trying to rub it in her face, that Anne was so inferior to her mother because she had been bitten twice by different dogs. Anne had never planned to harm either dog and had not hurt either of them.
Anne’s despair became worse because she had been taught not to speak ill of the dead. Anne felt guilty for not wanting her mum to be special, for just wanting her to be normal, not someone who had to be worshipped. Anne knew her mother had been better than her because everyone was better than her. She was married, but she knew that she didn’t make her husband happy. She knew that she hadn’t treated her daughters as well as she should have. Anne had been so engulfed in depression for most of their lives she couldn’t imagine that she hadn’t done them any mental damage.
“If there is heaven and hell. I want to go to hell because I deserve it. I deserve to be punished for the way I’ve treated my children and the way I’ve treated Nikos. Nikos never deserved to have the life he had or has with me. I don’t deserve to die and be nothing more than dust and so be at peace. I don’t deserve to stop feeling this sadness and pain and these tortuous thoughts should be on a repeat cycle in my mind forever. ”
A loud crash shook Anne out of her thoughts. Even though she had been washing the dishes. It was not the glass that she had placed in the plate rack. It was a glass of juice she had at the side that she had left to drink, that had crashed to the floor.
“I guess someone agrees with me. A ghost is punishing me more by making more work for me,” she said sobbing, trying to see the glass on the floor, through the tears blocking her eyes. She shivered as the air suddenly became cold as she tried to carefully pick the shards of glass and clean the juice sticking to the floor. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up as she felt a cold breath on the back of her neck. She looked round but saw nothing there so she returned to cleaning up the mess.
“You’re right. You deserve to be tortured by these thoughts forever,” a voice whispered in her ear.When Anne looked round there was no one there. Suddenly, Anne heard doors banging and footsteps walking above her head. She knew her father wasn’t back yet. He would either have come from the back or the front and she would have seen him either way. Could it be the cat?
“Brownie, is that you” she shouted as she slowly walked up the stairs. The kitchen was clean now so she didn’t mind leaving it to check on the cat. As she went towards the bedroom door of her parent’s room she thought she heard a drawer creak open. She opened the door slowly finding all the drawers in the room to be closed as well as the wardrobe doors. Before she left the room she thought she heard a window open in her brother’s old room.
Brownie let out a screech, she looked to see if she could find a weapon in her parent’s room. She took her mother’s jewellery box and slowly walked towards her brother’s room. Brownie was still screeching, she opened it to find Brownie on alert and the window open. Anne looked out the window to see if she had disturbed a burglar. The burglar would have had to have a ladder because jumping from that height he or she would have broken a leg. There was no one limping around the garden so she shut the window as a sudden breeze came through it causing her to feel cold.
“Brownie, what happened? Were you having a nightmare?“she mumbled soothingly as she stroked the cat.
“Anne, I’m back! Are you okay?” her dad shouted.
"Yes, I'm okay dad. I just accidently knocked over a glass of orange juice but I cleaned it up." Anne shouted back. She didn't think he would believe that the glass of orange juice had crashed to the floor by itself. She was sure it was her guilty subconscious making her think that someone had whispered in her ear.