itsawonderfilledlife

This is another post in a series, about a woman named Amara. Every Friday I will post another segment in this story.

With Joe gone, Joy was left alone with her mother. As she stood at her mother’s bedside, she felt awkward, and unsure of what to do with herself.

She mother seemed to be sleeping, without a line of a frown on her forehead, she was perfectly relaxed and peaceful. Somehow, in the past few days her mother’s appearance seemed to have aged significantly.

Then, Amara moaned. Joy sprung into a state of alert, waiting and looking for signs of more. There were no more.

Joy sat on the side of the bed, observing her mother in a way she had never before. Noticing her mother’s round face, and perfectly shaped eyebrows. Joy could not imagine her mother owning eyebrow tweezers, let alone using them. Well she might have tweezers, but probably to pull out splinters. Her mother was more likely to be weeding a garden or building a fence … anything outdoors, over beauty treatments.

That was Amara, an outdoors loving woman. Not that she was not a good housekeeper, her house was ordered and mostly clean. Joy’s house was immaculate! Not a thing was ever out of place, and her floors were spotless! A meal on her floors would be more germ free than one on the table in most homes. This is where the two women, with similar genes throughout their bodies, were different. Amara would go for a fast paced walk, for her exercise, whereas Joy would don the most fashionable exercise wear, and head to the nicest gym in town. Amara could pull a meal together in minutes, with only the ingredients in her refrigerator. Joy planned a week in advance, her meals, and her grocery list, to include only the ingredients she would need to fulfill the intended food plan for the week.

As Joy studied her mother’s face, she started seeing something she had never noticed before. How very beautiful her mother was, Joy was always aware of. Her mother’s beauty was not the beauty of the model on the catwalk, or of the cultured woman coming from the beauty salon, it was the beauty that was there from birth, and would be there whether she wore make up, or not, until her last breath. Her’s was the beauty that women pay money for. The beauty that comes from good genes, good food, and lots of laughing.

“Mother, you are so beautiful?” Joy asked her sleeping mother, “have I ever told you that?”

Then, as she was looking to her mother, half expecting a verbal response, she recognized something familiar in her mother’s face. Not familiar because it was her mother’s, but because there was a feeling a deja vu that she could not understand, or know fully. “What is it that I am seeing in your face, mo…..”

A phone was ringing. No, not a phone ringing, but a cell phone vibration noise. “Where is my phone?” Joy glanced around the room for her purse. She walked to the window, where she had left her purse on the ledge under the window, but above the heater. As she searched through her purse, she continued to hear the sound of the vibration, but did not feel it in her purse. When she located her phone, she turned it on to discover that there was no call or text coming on her cell, but the noise was continuing.

She lifted her head to scan the room for the origin of the sound, and walked towards the sofa, where the sound was coming from. She saw nothing on the sofa, so she moved one of the cushion, and there was a cell phone, Joe’s cell phone. It must have fallen from his pocket earlier when they were sitting there.

The vibration had stopped, but there was a message on the screen, “call me, I NEED to talk with you about a ‘business trip’ I am proposing. You owe me big time for leaving just when we were so close 😉 .” The name attached to the text was Roxanne.

Joy did not know of a Roxanne, from his work … but there were many people in the company.

The text seemed so personal … but the text was just about a business trip.

She included a wink? … but workplace joking is not unusual.

So close to what? … maybe it was a business deal.

“Joe had just said, “I promise to be here for you.”

It did not matter how much convincing Joy tried to do, her imagination was taking this text into possibilities that made her heart drop to the floor. Was this new leaf that she and Joe seemed to be turning over a farce?

“Oh why had I allowed myself to be vulnerable to him?”

As Joy’s words echoed in the hospital room, Amara began to stir, in her bed.

Unfading – Part 1

Unfading – Part 15