A toddler bed is pressed against the wall, low to the ground, covered with the quilt my Grams made me when I was born. Pink with a large purple octopus stitched on. I still have that blanket, tucked away at the top of my closet. But here, in this memory, it’s spread across my bed, covered with stuffed animals and sticker books. A pair of ballet slippers hangs from the wall, pictures of flowers and fairy kingdoms, but mostly the room is filled with Mom.
I look at her now, in all her illness, and I see my mother as she was. She’s thinner than any of the pictures I remember seeing. Obviously frail. Her head is full of flaxen hair, but it’s brittle, dying.
Like everything else about her.
She’s propped up on large white pillows, and there, lying in her arms, is me.
Three-year-old me.
I don’t remember this. Don’t remember it occurring, but seeing it brings a small sense of peace. It’s good to know it really happened.
That my mommy held me, that she stroked my hair.
And then the strangest thing happens. I’m aware that I’m still in the orchard, can still hear the Sabres and their music, can still feel Jake’s hand in mine, but for the first time ever I remember. It’s like something explodes in my mind.
I don’t remember her touch or her voice. I don’t remember the room or the bed or even the brush in my hand. What I remember crawls inside me and twists itself around my heart, squeezing until I’m just sure it will burst.
For the first time ever, I remember what that moment smelled like, what my mother smelled like. I choke and sob at the memory. The first real memory I’ve ever had of my mother.
She smelled like worship. She smelled like curling, fragrant tendrils of adoration. My three-year-old self breathes her in, again and again.
Standing in the orchard, watching this memory in the eyes of Virtue, I do the same. Inhale, exhale, and again. Remembering, remembering.
I watch as my three-year-old eyelids grow heavy and the hairbrush in my hand falls to the mattress next to my mommy’s shoulder. She lies there, her thin fingers tangled in my hair, her mouth whispering praises. In broken sentences and stuttering pauses, her cancer-wracked body thanks her Lord and Maker for every moment she has left with me. With Dad.
“I’m not ready to leave,” she says. “To leave my husband. To leave my little girl.” These are the first full sentences I’ve caught. The first words I’ve fully understood. “But You’re taking me, I know that.”
Her eyes are open, her pale face soft in the yellow light pressing against the blinds.
“If there’s anything I can do for You, Father, before I die, anything I can do here, I am willing.”
And then Virtue stands before her. Uncloaked, unhidden from her human eyes. She doesn’t gasp. She doesn’t flinch.
He’s expected.
“Hello, Hannah,” he says, his lips still, his wings rubbing one against the other, their music filling the room.
Her eyes fill with tears. They run down her face, wetting the hair at her temples, dampening her pillow. “Are you here to take me? Am I to see my Father now?”
Virtue smiles. “Not quite yet,” he says. He gestures to my sleeping figure, the tiny three-year-old body curled around my mother’s. “May I?”
She pulls me tighter to her chest. “Will I see her again?”
Virtue runs a silver hand along Mom’s brow, and she takes a deep, shuddering breath.
“Will such an answer help you say good-bye?”
The tears fall fast now, her voice thin and weak. “No,” she says. “I don’t think so.”
She squeezes me, her arms straining against the tubes in her hands, and she kisses my blond hair, her eyes pinched shut. Her chest shakes and her lips move against my head. I wish I could make out the words, but I can’t. It seems they were for the Father alone. After a moment she nods at Virtue, who takes me in his arms and lays me at the foot of the bed. I watch my three-year-old self sprawl on the quilt, my arms spread wide, my tiny chest moving up and down. There, next to my heart, is Olivia’s necklace.
“Please,” Mom says to Virtue, “take care of her, protect her. And my husband. I want him to know the Father like I do. Give them eyes to see and ears to hear. Can you