Why do you think cherry trees bloom?

“Why do you think cherry trees bloom? Once they do, their petals must fall right off.”



Walking home is always a chore. There’s the sombre cemetery, creepy and awkward to try and walk through while whistling a jig; it’s not like the dead need to dance. “Here lies” so and so; people remembered, but no-one remembers why.



“Who is the founding father of genetics?”



Eyes flit in annoyance, remembering today’s lecture. Who needs to know who those people are? What they did was important. Not who they were.



They’re dead.



A date. A name. Nothing less, yet nothing more.



Here a stone in quiet disrepair and neglect, another with flowers scattered over it, silent yet screaming indifference. It is afternoon, where the sun is just beginning to take its daily rest; casting its dull glow over the stones, lengthening their shadows.



Eagerly, I hurry my way home to escape the feelings of unease.



“A vacuum creates forgetfulness, and sooner or later, people will forget my existence”



My house is not very large; it has two bedrooms, and one small room for everything else. We don’t need any more. It’s late into the afternoon now, and the yellow glow of the Sun has turned muddy and sallow; orange tinged with a sickly gloom.



I’m greeted by the smell of flowers, too many for me to distinguish. One of them would be a cherry blossom, for certain; mother has a strange attraction to them. Sneering at the ikebana on the worn table, I notice that his picture is above it. Gritting my teeth, I walk further inside.



“Oh. You’re back?”



“Yes, mother...” I stifle a groan and move past her. “Still with the flower arrangements?”



“Don’t mock me. One day you’ll understand.” She glared at me for a moment, then went back to silently arranging the stems, so that the spaces between the flowers were uniform, that the arrangement, when seen from a certain angle was perfect, symmetrical, flawless.



Maybe one day I will understand her obsession with ikebana and photography.



But not today.



It’s people like her who remember who someone is, but not what they did that makes life painful.



“Art is less important than life, but what a poor life without it” – Robert Motherwell



“Dinner!”



“Alright, alright, I’m coming” grumbling, I put down my pen and resignedly walk down the stairs, and past a picture of him.



I’ll never understand why his face is plastered to every wall, nook, cranny and recess.



Dinner on the whole is a quiet affair. One or two questions will be asked, usually of how our days were, and other polite matters, but otherwise, we eat silently.



After that was over, it was back to more silence within the confines of my room, but I’m glad I’m not forced to have photos of him all over my walls. There’s a sunflower on the window sill, but otherwise, nothing of my parents’.



“Imitation is suicide” – Ralph Waldo Emerson



Weeks pass but today on my journey home, I notice that my mother is at the cemetery.



She usually doesn’t go there, so why...



“...why did you leave me? I don’t know what to do... why...?”



Even from my vantage point, hidden from view by hedges, I can hear her quiet moans of pain.



Shocked, I watch for a small while, wondering why she never showed this side before...



I run the rest of the way home. But I can’t escape her sadness. Not now, not ever.



Why did he have to ruin everything?



“It is fearful to believe in someone. You may not receive what you expected. You may even be betrayed.”



Nostalgia creeps in as I slam the doors behind me, fills the gaps of my heart as I slump against the door, short of breath.



It makes me remember things I don’t want to.



It forces me to remember my father, before he died. The times when he truly cared, when he loved me.



When he loved us. When I could truly be myself, without a care, without a worry.



And then that night, when he left. If only I had got home earlier. Hadn’t waited around to talk to her...



“I can’t take it anymore.” That’s all the note said.



She liked to think that he was still out there, that he was coming back.



But I knew better.



One night, the call came. That he died, alone and penniless.



It was about then that she started taking to art.



Some turn to God, others to drugs, but not my mother.



“My biggest fear is “being forgotten.” So, I don’t care how tough or painful it is, I’ll bloom and fall off again and again. So that people won’t forget me.” –The fable of the Cherry Tree.



Now, I realise why she spends her time, making new arrangements, shuffling things around, taking photos; all the things I thought were a waste of time.



Somewhere, deep down, she forgives him.



And as foolish as it is, I can’t help but cry.



“To be forgotten is a fate worse than death.” – Anon.