Golden Petals

The little girl, a pretty six-year-old with curled brown ponytails, big blue eyes, and grazed knees, threw herself on the grass, giggling. Yet more green stains for her mother to wash away. She plucked a daisy from the ground, and began to gently remove its petals.

“He loves me…” A petal fluttered to the ground, to the sound of the child’s laughter.

A flower taught me how to pray
But as I grew, that flower changed

Twenty-five years and a lifetime later, the girl was barely recognisable in the adult. Her name was Chrissie Williams, and her life was no longer about daisies and laughter. It was about hospitals and tears. Her own tears, the tears she had shed over the past year, two years, three years… however long it had been. Time had no meaning to her. Time was what was seen on clocks, what the radio blared out each and every morning, an uneasy reminder that she had to work so hard to keep to schedule. To Chrissie, time made no sense. It seemed as though she had left her childhood behind many centuries ago. And yet she could still remember the feeling of her mother’s kisses.

To many, the suffering that Chrissie had gone through was self-inflicted. She had played with fire. She had been burnt. Chrissie herself thought this at times. She deserved it. But at other times, she would catch herself thinking this, and would disagree. Nothing that she had done was enough to warrant the torment she had been put through.

She had had an affair. Sometime during that affair, she had become pregnant. She was unsure who the father was, but she had hoped that that wouldn’t matter. She had kept the truth from Owen, and had prayed that he would never know the truth, because he had seemed so pleased at the mere idea of being a father. Much more pleased than she had been at the idea of being a mother.

And then… her world had fallen apart. Owen found out, and their marriage ended as quickly as it had begun. Just a memory, a distant dream. The only evidence being the empty space on her finger where her ring had once sat. And, although she had never dreamt that she could feel like that, she had been distraught over the idea of being apart from him. She had tried to pretend that she was indifferent; Chrissie Williams doesn’t need love, but it was all a façade.

She had comforted herself with the thought that she at least had her baby. The one unchanging aspect of her life. Someone who would be there forevermore. She had never seen herself as maternal, but it happened. And suddenly she cared about nothing other than her baby. She had felt every kick, treasured every movement, and looked forward to the day that her child would be born.

And then that day came. And it was her worst nightmare. If she had thought that the end of her marriage was the end of her world, then what was Amanda’s death? The end of anything resembling normality. Her life would never be complete again. There was an empty space that Amanda, in those few seconds of her life, had filled. And, although she had been told that it would get easier, it hadn’t. But Chrissie had kept herself to herself, and had made sure that no one knew how badly she was hurting. She wanted to be treated normally. She didn’t want people’s pity. And besides… when people treated her differently, it reminded her of what had happened. Of what she had lost.

If it had not been for her mother, for Tricia, Chrissie felt that it would have been impossible to survive. If Tricia had not been there, gently urging her on with her life, she could have curled up and joined Amanda. Tricia had insisted that Chrissie move on. Although she had sometimes hurt Chrissie by her mere presence, she had been nothing but help, and Chrissie felt as though she would be eternally grateful.

But there was one interference that she wished Tricia had stayed away from. Owen. Their marriage. Chrissie, if not for Tricia, would have worked on the marriage, would have tried to give it a second chance. And she thought that Owen would have tried as well. He loved her. She was sure of it. And, if only Amanda had lived, things would have been different. But she hadn’t. And Chrissie did not want to dwell on the “what-ifs”. But still… she loved Owen. And she was sure that, one day, despite their divorce, they could work things out.

She started falling in the wind
Like golden petals scattering

In another lifetime, the little girl plucked the final petal from the daisy, and looked at her grass-stained dress, at the marks that her mother would try, in vain, to remove. The big blue eyes held tears that threatened to fall. The final petal floated through the air, and gently landed on the grass. The wind whisked it away almost immediately, until she could barely see it. And yet it was there. It would always be there.

“He loves me not.”

She picked up another daisy and began again.