While my mother was still alive, we’d moved to a brand-new home in one of those strangely uniformed suburbs in South Miami. Because blue was her favorite color, the walls inside were mostly shades of blue, and the exterior was painted in a soft shade of sky blue. The builders of the houses in that neighborhood swept away every natural thing in sight as they put up countless blocks of new homes leaving one lonely palm tree to sway in the breeze.
***
I have two early memories of my mother: white sheets and climbing into the window of a hospital. Neither are vivid.
In the first one, I’m not sure if it’s a real memory or a dream. I was a toddler, sitting on our back patio, watching her hang laundry. Sheets were billowing all around her in a familiar, strong, warm Florida breeze—one that could dry anything in fifteen minutes. She wore a sleeveless blouse.
One of the bed sheets, whipped by the wind, fishtailed around the lower half of her body. Looking very much like a mermaid, she unfolded out of it. Then she became my mother again and continued the task of hanging laundry. She’d look at me and smile.
Whether this was a dream or a memory, I can still visualize that look from her—pure sweetness and love. My mother must have loved me because it was what I felt in my baby bones.
***
A bit later in my young life, I went with my dad and brother to the hospital. We kids were not allowed to visit, but our father believed that rules were meant to be broken, and I remember how we climbed the stairs meant for emergencies on the side of the building. Then we climbed inside a window to our mother’s room. My brother and I sat on the floor and watched TV while dad and mother were behind a white curtain. If she spoke final words, they must be buried so deep within, that any therapy, hypnosis, or guru tool on earth I’ve come across, has failed to excavate them.
***
Now my mother was sleeping in a long box and wearing a chiffon nightgown in cornflower blue. I stood staring at her instead of reaching out with my small hand to open her eyes so she would wake up. Her mahogany brown hair was splayed out smooth on a white satin pillow. She was so still. As a three-year-old, this is the only vivid memory I have of my mother.
All I wanted was to crawl into that box and lie down beside her. My face would be next to hers on the soft pillow. It was the same feeling I’d had when wanting to sleep curled up next to our cat’s newly discovered baby kittens.
I am sure I had been told that my mother went to this beautiful place called heaven where she would be happy. Staying close and holding on to her wherever she might go was where I needed to be. I wanted to open her eyes but remained frozen in my dress-up shoes.
***
The death of my mother caused a silent grief so piercing that everyone, in their own way, stepped around it like broken glass. Seeking somewhere to give and receive affection, I turned to a pet cat, burying my face in its silky fur. After my mother left me, my greatest source of comfort, entertainment, and joy came from my cats, and it still is.
It was just after my mother died when our adopted stray cat, one that didn’t stay long enough to be named, presented us with a litter of kittens in the laundry room.
A brief time later, their mother went missing. Dad suspected a male cat that had been hanging around. He’d probably chased off the mother because he’d killed the kittens. Those newborn kittens had not yet opened their eyes, and now they were dead, lifeless like my mother.
My mother did not live long in our blue house. Both she and the kittens were swept away with the rest of that original landscape. Our blue house never had a chance to put down roots.
Across the street was a vacant lot with that lonesome palm tree. My dad, gangly older brother and I went there to bury four dead kittens. I remember standing there and feeling as empty as that lot. I looked across the street at the house my mother no longer occupied and then looked up at my father and brother, searching their faces for answers.
I wanted dad to create magic and repair our kittens, saving them from being buried in this lonely place. He wasn’t superhuman like I wanted him to be; he couldn’t save the kittens or our mother no matter how tall, strong, and handsome he was. My brother did not wear his usual sunny smile to go with his halo of white-blonde hair. What a sight the three of us must have been standing there, wordless, in our Bermuda shorts and flip-flops, with a shovel.
Now, I stared at the kittens being buried as dirt flew into the hole and around me, swirling in the warm wind, as all sight of fur was going away…lost…just as the sight of my mother was lost in layers of her favorite blue. Instead of crossing the street to go back to our empty home where we were meant to survive, I wanted to crawl into the hole and cuddle the kittens.
The silence was broken when dad said, “That’s it. Let’s go.”
My feet moved to follow, but a part of me drifted back to this little hole covered with dirt, to another long box covered by dirt holding my mother. I was so stunned by death and fearful of what could come next that I moved into an out-of-body shelter. I’d created a functioning state where I learned to be self-sufficient and strong while my interior world was fragile and restless from nagging pain that only the ocean could ease. Like the white sheets that waved in the warm wind, my toddler body floated on top of the calm ocean rocking to the breeze and soft waves.
After the kittens’ burial, I kept wondering why they weren’t alive. There they lay in a little hole, blending fur into one another so that I could no longer see four kittens, but a mix of colors all becoming one. I wondered if they’d gone to heaven like my mother. Did heaven have mermaids swimming in the sea? How would the kittens find her? How could they get out of that hole and fly?
They’d put a cover over the box my mother was in. How could she get out? I tried to imagine her flying high in a sky wrapped in layers of cornflower blue chiffon to arrive in heaven…and to be happy there. Why would that make her happy instead of being here with us?
***
The only words I can recall dad saying about my mother dying was on the day he came home from the hospital for the last time when he said, “Your mother is gone. We will survive this.” I didn’t understand what “survive” meant, but I did sense it meant staying quiet.
Dad never again spoke about her death or cancer, and neither did I. I have struggled to grasp what final words she may have whispered to her barely sprouting daughter or why she died so young leaving me behind to fend for myself. Her genetics followed me to the beautiful breasts I inherited from her and then had to give up.
The loss of my mother and those innocent baby kittens began a pattern of anxiousness and sleeplessness—and yet—a great visual imagination that launched me into nights and days of magical dreaming in all shades of cornflower and mermaid blue.
Valerie Anne Burns has had essays from her book, Caution: Mermaid Crossing, Voyages of a Motherless Daughter published in Grande Dame Literary, Sea to Sky Review, HerStry, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and Rituals Anthology. In September 2021, she received a Finalist Award from Page Turner Awards for manuscript submission and was awarded scholarships to the 2022 Santa Barbara Writers Conference and the 2016 Prague Summer Writing Program. She earned a certificate diploma in Creative Writing from Santa Barbara City College. Additionally, Valerie Anne created a workshop titled “Living and Healing Through Color” that she presents to women survivors at retreats overseas. Valerie Anne comes from an island of a green, salty sea. In her spare time, she enjoys art walks, ballet, power walking by the ocean, and sipping rich espresso with friends. She is a breast cancer survivor living in Santa Barbara with her therapy cat, Lucia. https://www.valerieanneburns.com/