Sparks by Yolanda Olson

It’s beena few years since Mom died and as I flip through her bible searching for answers, I have to keep focused on the task at hand. She was never right in the head after Trenton fucked her for the first time and I guess the only way she could keep what little bit of sanity she had left was to love me the way he loved her.

It wasn’t a big deal to me the first few times, but when it became more of a demand than a loving moment between a mother and her son, I started to feel like I was being taken for granted.

I sigh irritably as I scan page after page, book after book, looking for something that might tell me that I did the right thing.

Nothing from the words that have been passed down for thousands of years from some great man in the clouds, but clues that I know Mom must have left in these pointless scriptures.

Come on, goddamn it.

I keep flipping with a rage in my heart. Not for the things she did to me because I know she only taught me how to love—how to truly love.

Even on the days and nights that I tried to fight her off, I knew it was the only way for her to convince me that her love was the purest thing she could offer me.

And I offered her nothing in return.

Not a fucking thing I ever did was useful to the woman that gave me life and it’ll haunt me ‘til the day I fucking die.

I think she spent so much time at that fucking restaurant because she hoped one day she would see Trenton again, and even Father Moore, but I’ll never understand what she would have gained from those “chance” meetings other than spiraling further into her self-loathing.

With a sigh, I move from my knees and rest my back against her headstone, still searching for my answers on the flimsy pages of countless words that I’ll never take time to read.

Trenton knew something was wrong the night he met us for dinner. When Taylee went to the bathroom, he asked me if there was anything he could do to help—to take me away from her, but I … I couldn’t. I couldn’t leave her alone in a world she obviously forgot how to understand.

Did she deserve her end? I don’t know, and I try not to think about it, yet I can’t seem to feel proud of myself for stopping her before it became too late.

She told me that something was growing inside of her, but she was so goddamn paranoid that it could have meant anything, and I honestly didn’t want to see what it was.

I raise my eyes to the bright blue skies for a moment and watch a cloud lazily drift by wondering if she’s finally happy with her great man in the sky, before I look back down at the bible in my hands, ready to close it and give up.

And that’s when I see it.

When I’m ready to give up and throw the book into the garbage can near her grave, I finally fucking see it.

It’s Mom’s unmistakable handwriting in the book of Revelation. Almost as if she knew that I would be looking for her to continue to guide me after she died.

I take a deep breath and smile as I run the tips of my fingers over her last words to me. The ones that will stay with me for the rest of my life and the lives of those that I choose to create and love in the same special way that she did to me.

You can be defined by this, or you can let it destroy you.