Visiting Mom

Despite all of her darkness, she hated graveyards. She couldn't stand seeing her mother there, and not seeing her. There were only words, a name and some dates, they weren't her mom. Yet she was supposed to go there, and talk to it. But it couldn't hug her, it couldn't tell her that everything was going to be all right, it wasn't there with cookies after a bad day at school. It was just a stone. Just one, stupid stone. It had no right to act like her mother. Out of everything she just wanted to leave and curl up in her bed, just pretend that her mom was on a trip and coming home eventually. Just pretend that she might see her again so it wouldn't hurt. But all that hurt bubbled up and flowed down her face in tears despite her best efforts to wipe them away, walking as slow as possible to the headstone.  Her father was there, waiting for her, and so she walked because she knew she had to be there with him, no matter how much she hated it.  Her time would come later, in her own room where she would honor her mother with memories.  She would lie in her bed and think of the wonderful times they had, and she would cry, but she would not be pretending that some headstone was her mother.  She only did that for her dad.