Bring Me Home

The sun was about to set, its brilliant dying rays shone through the canopy of leaves above me. The trees around me started their restless rustlings. I wondered why it made that noise, especially when dusk approached. The constant noise sounded eerily like whisperings and sighing of entities unseen. The night descended and I was still on that beaten track walking home. Home was a couple of kilometres away from the bus stop where the big bellied bus spat me out.
I turned my thoughts away from nature’s norm and about my trip home. I have not been back for the last five years. I wondered how everything was. I had left in a huff those many years ago, due to some family quarrel that seemed so petty now.  I recalled that it was about our father’s land where my sister and her husband wanted to sell and I wanted to keep. My mother was for my sister and that irked me as it seemed to slander our father’s memory.
We ended up in court and it was decided that we divided it instead. I still have the land, yet I never went to look at it. My sister sold her share and had since left to live in the city.
I was going home though, as my mother was gravely ill and her second husband had called me and told me that she wanted to see me. I felt guilty for not being there for her those many years, but then again her husband Michael loved her so much, and  always took good care of her.  They have been married for almost 20 years, five years after my father died. I was about ten at that time when Mother remarried, so Michael was more real to me than my own father, whom I mostly remembered through photographs.
My thoughts jolted back when I felt somebody walking behind me. I turned back to look and saw a young man, maybe in his late teens walking behind me.
He had this lovely smile and when I said Hi, he answered with a hi too, his eyes sparkling with inner joy. I asked him where he was going to and he said he was going to fetch his mother and bring her back to his home. I said hey, that’s a coincident I am going home to see my mother.
He said hey imagine that, and I nodded. He started talking about his mother and father, how they loved each other. He talked about how his father would kiss his mother’s hand and bring her wild flowers from the woods. How he would chance upon them kissing under the apple tree, or chasing each other around the pond, trying to push the other in.
I listened mostly, holding my jacket closer and hitching my heavy rucksack on my back. The night seemed to grow colder and I shivered a little.
On a crossroad, or actually a cross junction of the jungle path, the young man went to the left turning, waving. I called out, hey I don’t know your name…and he said ‘Steven…’ and I said I am Shirley and he answered ‘I know…’ I stood there puzzled for a while, and then I realised my rucksack had an identification tag with my name on it.
The nocturnal sounds of the woods receded as I walked into the space my parents called a farm. It was actually just a pretty little valley with their house on it, a barn on one end where no livestock lived, a field of corn and huge tracks of woods. It was accessible by transportation actually, just that I took the bus. I needed the walk.
Michael was at the veranda to greet me. He wrapped me in his huge arms and once again I remembered loving this man like a father when I was a child. His huge frame was a comfort. He whispered welcome home and ushered me into the house. I went right to their bedroom to look at my mother. What I saw killed me. She looked like a small child on the bed, her long glossy hair spread out; which showed that what little of it was brushed well.
Michael was weeping silently as I sobbed into my hands. How can I have left and never came back to see this woman who gave me life, I thought. I remembered how this petite woman loved us. I remembered her sorrow when she miscarried her baby with Michael after carrying it for three months. I remembered how Michael held her and loved her through her sorrow.
My mother stirred and Michael came and held her hands. Shirley is here, he said and Mom opened her eyes and looked at me. For a moment there she did not look sick, she had brilliant eyes that seemed to sparkle with inner joy. She smiled at me brilliantly, oh you are so beautiful, such a fine young woman, my baby, she said softly. She turned her eyes to Michael who was silently weeping, his face flooding. She said thank you for my life with you My darling. I will be alright, Steven is coming for me. Michael gasped out his sobs so hard that it sounded painful. My mother then looked away and her breath rattled in her throat. Steven…she breathed out and never breath in again.
I looked at Michael and he nodded, still crying.…gasped out Our unborn child, Steven…memorial stone under the Apple Tree.
Dumbfounded I looked towards the window, and for a brief moment I thought I saw silhouettes of two people walking away hand in hand.

Ends

http://deepundergroundpoetry.com/poems/58657-wanderings/
http://deepundergroundpoetry.com/poems/113193-good-night-children/