PROLOGUE
It was not my face that my mother saw on that
unnaturally cold September day, but the face of a cruel and savage stranger. It
was the day that she gave birth to me, the day that she chose to keep me and see that face
for the rest of her life.
I’ll never know why she chose to make such an
incredible sacrifice under the most deplorable of circumstances, but I would
come to know that she lived with no regrets of it. She would defend my very existence—time
and again, declaring that I was but a delicate flower born from the twisted
root of a poisonous plant; and would further assert, that even some poisons are
used in healing. But her family would hear none of it and I was not to be
accepted. To them I was anything but a healing balm—my innocence lending them
no comfort to my presence.
I was an abomination, plain and simple—a child born out of
the malice of rape and rage; a mockery of decent, civilized folk. And as my
grandmother would so callously put it, “…not
to mention, a horse of a different color!”
But to my mother, I
was beautiful. I was the absolute sunshine of her life and she loved me more
than anything. She saw nothing different or lacking in me. All she saw was her
precious baby girl who happened to have creamy caramel-colored skin, and crinkly
hair the color of gold. As far as my mother was concerned, there was nothing
more to see…and nothing more to be said of it. I was hers and she was mine, and
the two of us would endure and conquer any and everything together…even until the
day that death would come and do us part.
Little did we know on
that unnaturally cold September day that her death would soon eclipse my birth,
and—little did we know—that from my unseemly beginnings to her fragile ending, a
bond of love would be forged so powerful and so strong as to transcend the
boundaries of life and death, to reach far into the distance of time and
space…to live forever in the heart of a little girl.
This is my mother’s story, and these are my Letters from Heaven.
This is moving. I like it. though I imagine it to be a sad story and I hate weeping on books... which, as you may imagine from my words, I do too often for my liking. Ehhhh....
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