This heartbreak, consumed me with pain I never imagined of

Chosen Topic:

Contented With the Memory of You

2nd Prize - A04

By N.M., an ‘N’ level student-inmate from Institution A4

The picture speaks to me the most. Thinking of the family pictures, I am brought back to a time when I walked along the hallway of my house, pictures surrounding me. There were framed up pictures in all shapes and sizes. Beautiful images of my family, lovely images of my mother through different aspects in her life. As I smiled in contentment at the pictures, I could feel a bead of moisture trickling down my eyes to my cheeks. I brought my fingertips to a picture of my mother in a wheelchair. I touched her face on the picture and I felt the rhythm my heart dancing along to my heavy breathing. I sighed, a sad smile playing on my lips as I was reminded of the saddest yet most memorable year of my life.

I was turning sixteen, with a little sister aged four, and my parents both thirty-nine. My life was structured with simplicity. I attended school on Mondays to Fridays, church every Saturday. My sister attends preschool and everyday my parents would fetch us home, we would spend family time together. Up until my sixteenth birthday. I started mixing with the wrong influence, finding love in all of the wrong places and I eventually had my first heartbreak. This heartbreak, consumed me with pain I never imagined of. The only way I felt could numb the pain, was drugs. The drugs turned me into someone I could not recognize. I stopped attending school and the only time I spoke to my mother was when I was arguing with her. The drugs consumed me too, and I only cared about myself.

I never knew the last argument I had with my mother would change my whole life. After a session of me screaming, she threw a stack of papers at me. It was her diagnosis. She had been diagnosed with stage 4 of stomach cancer. That news alone was enough for me to be plunged back into reality. I immediately remembered all the happy times I had with my family and I would do anything to be brought back into simple life and have time with my mother.

I stopped drugs, I stopped contacting my old friends and I was destined to make each and every day count for my mother. My family and I took her to medical appointment regularly and we knew that there was not much time left. I sat on my bed in my room, and my head clouded with heavy thoughts. There were too much emotions circulating and all I could do was cry in desperation. I cried and wailed, begging for a way to go through this period of my life without wallowing in my own pain of knowing the time I have left my mother is running. That’s when my vision came into focus of my camera. I decided to start capturing images of my family in every moment, so that we could hold on to all the beautiful memories a picture holds.

As time passed, my mother lost all her hair. On some days she looks more sickly and drained, only coming out of the room to vomit. And on those days, I wept silent tears at our plight. On some days, my mother has the strength to spend time with the family. She makes funny jokes that sends the whole family laughing, with moisture surrounding our eyes. On those days, my hand is always gripped tightly around the camera, capturing too may pictures of everything.

After a month of a rollercoaster of emotions, mother has passed on. I stood in the hallway of my house, framed pictures lined the walls. Each picture has a story, a story of mother and how she impacted us. She will live forever inside my dear heart. The loss of mother left me filled with sorrow, but I remembered what mother told me, “Nothing can console a person who lost a loved one but yourself.” And this is how I consoled myself, through the breathtaking pictures of mother.

Sometimes the lesson we learn in life just hit us in the most stunning painful ways. Looking through the pictures, I remember everything of the memories of you. I feel contented of everything I have learnt in this journey with my mother, although my heart still feels heavy everytime. This is why family pictures triggers a myriad of emotions within me.