My Mother: When I Find Yourself In Waiting Room

My mother.

You know something is about to change when you find yourself in a waiting room. Waiting for a job interview. Waiting for your turn to audition for a part. Waiting for the results of a test.

Or in my case, waiting for the kind blonde lady to come out of my mother’s ward to let me in.

I think that in those past four months, I had spent over 24 hours in that waiting room. Hours and hours I would wait for that lady to come out, to be able to finally ask what I had been meaning to ask ages ago. When she did, however, I would chicken out and leave.

I have great time management skills, I know.

So on august 20th summer 2007, I found myself clutching my purse once more in the waiting room of St. Mary’s hospital. A child no older than five was trying to

This was it. Now or never. I had to ask. I had to. Come on. Come on.

Never before had I realized how hard it is to think while crying.

“Mama, are the letters from him? The love letters? The letters with money? The letters from..” I trailed off.

Silence again.

“Mama, are they from Papa? Are they from my dad?”

I said it. I said it. Grace, you said it.

“Give them back. They are not yours.”

So much effort put into something that could be so easily resolved. Taken aback, I possessively clenched the purse even tighter.

“No, I won’t, not before you answer my question.”

“Give them back.”

Fire in her eyes. The fire I had seen too many times before.

“No.”

It escaped my mouth before I even had time to think about it. She looked up at me. Tired, oh so very tired. Tired her whole life.

“Are they from my father? Is Henry Mills, the bloody former minister president, my father?” I desperately half shrieked.

As soon as the name “Henry Mills” left my lips, she winced. She looked at me. Tired. More tired than ever before. Every ounce of concentration she had left was put into that last word.

That last word.

“Yes.”

And that’s when the monitor beeped and the kind nurse came in again.

Nothing was ever the same after