I sit at the kitchen table beside my grandmother. We each take a sip of our coffees. As the hot liquid touches my tongue, I cringe. I’ve never liked the bitter taste of coffee, but I drink it for my grandmother. When my mother was alive, she had a cup of coffee with my grandmother every morning. I know that my grandmother misses that. As a child, I would watch them sip their coffee and talk about different things happening in their adult lives. When it was early in the morning and I was supposed to be in bed, I would sometimes hide in the pantry and listen to what they were talking about. I realize now that it was mostly boring adult stuff, but I was fascinated by everything. I thought that adults were so cool, and I wanted to grow up more than anything. Now I wish I could be a kid again. I wish I could be blissfully ignorant and as happy as I was back then.
I remember the majority of my childhood as happy and sunny. I had two loving parents, one loving grandmother, and a garden that was always full of flowers. It reminded me of one of my favorite stories, The Secret Garden. It was my mother’s garden. While she was alive, she worked on it every day after her morning coffee with my grandmother. Our house was always filled with love. We had a good life.
One morning, that all changed. I was 6 years old at the time. I was sitting in the pantry with the door slightly cracked so that I could see and hear Mom and Grandma talking as they sipped their coffee. I could smell their drinks from ten feet away. As much as I have always hated the taste of coffee, I have always loved its scent. There was something different in their voices that morning. They sounded sad, a feeling which had rarely had a presence in our house. At first, I wasn’t concerned, but then I saw tears stream down my mother’s cheeks.
“I think I might have cancer, Mom,” my mother whispered.
At that time, I didn’t know much about cancer. Dad had told me once that it made people really sick. I gasped, but they didn’t seem to hear me.
My grandmother’s face became pale as a sheet and her eyes grew wide. “Are you sure? Have you seen a doctor?”
My mother looked down at her hands as she said, “I’m waiting for the results. It isn’t looking so great. They’re thinking . . . leukemia.”
My grandmother began to cry as she squeezed my mother’s hands. “Let’s try to stay hopeful. We can fight this!”
Mother looked up. I had never seen look so hopelessly sad. “What if I can’t fight this, Mom?”
Grandma sighed and said, “You can. You will, for you daughter and all of the people who love you.” My mother rose from her seat and walked out to the garden. My grandmother buried her face in her hands and wept.
That was the last time I ever watched them drink their coffee. I quickly learned what was happening to my mother. She fought it as much as she could for the following months, but it beat her. Every time I think about it, it feels as though something is tugging at my heart. The weight of my sadness still crushes me, like there are bricks weighing down my back. I miss her every day.
Now, ten years later, I sit across from my grandmother in the same seat in which my mother once sat. My father is in the garden. He is trying to keep it alive so that we can have a piece of her. Try as he might, nothing blooms the way it used to. It feels as though all of the sunshine has left us.