The Letter
To send or not… it could affect the best day of my life
I came out to post a letter but, even though I walked past a post box, it’s still in my bag.
I’m now sitting on a park bench in the sunshine, mulling over my life.
At the ripe old age of forty, I’m soon to be married for the first time. Get that!
A shiver of excitement goes through me. It’s to be just a small wedding to my gorgeous Simon; the date is fixed, the invitations sent.
Except for this last invite, here in my bag, addressed to my mother and Leo.
I lift my face to the warmth of the sun. My lovely stepmother, Stella, died years back and now Dad, too, has gone.
I miss them both so much – ‘orphan Annie’, I call myself. Pathetic, eh?
I don’t count my real mother. She has lived in Spain for years – ever since meeting Leo, her Spanish Lover, as I like to call him.
To be honest, Leo – loud and boisterous – would have been good fun at the wedding. But Leo is not the problem.
As I watch a small dog tear after a ball, I mentally add a few extra words to Mum’s invitation: This is not my idea. Why should I ask you – the mother who abandoned me all those years ago – to my wedding? But, for Dad’s sake…
I’m still bitter, despite the fact I had such a great life with Dad and his Stella, whom he met after Mum left.
Luckily, his second marriage was a true love match.
I sigh. Asking Mum was Simon’s suggestion.
“Your dad would have liked you to have your mother there, Kelly,” he said. “How do you feel about it?”
I gaze across the park, at the families and couples strolling about, laughing and joking in the summer heat, supposedly without a care in the world.
But I reckon we all put on a bit of an act every day.
How do I really feel about my mother, I ask myself?
Still angry, as well as bitter, I’m afraid. But I gave in to Simon, didn’t I – at least as far as writing the invitation goes.
And Simon said something else that I can’t forget.
“Your dad hinted to me that he blamed himself – for your mum leaving, I mean. He said she always put that career of hers first and he hated that.”
I frown, kicking at the gravel in front of the bench. True, Dad was kind of Victorian in that way and I picked up how he’d brush aside Mum’s obvious talents as a children’s book illustrator.
And I applaud her success – Mum is well-known in her field these days and that’s great.
But it’s still no excuse for leaving your child.
Thank heaven for the gentle Stella, who loved me to bits.
I’ve met Mum and Leo twice in the last few years. When they last came over, not long before he died, Dad did his best to reunite us all at a pub meal.
A disaster! Mum ate nothing, just spent the time trying to win me round – gabbling on about my PR work, holidays and stuff, before pointedly giving me her mobile number.
Dad would ‘tactfully’ chime in now and again, with Leo adding a few silly jokes. And I hardly said a word…
I stand up; time I went home. I pick up my bag; the invitation sticking out of the top, like a stiff white flag.
A flag of surrender, you might call it.
As I walk towards the postbox, silly clichés whirl through my head: forgive and forget, life’s too short… And how will Mum take her surprise invitation?
Back at the flat, there are wedding reminders. I need to ring the restaurant and the florist… and get back to my pal, Jane, who is to be my maid of honour.
I smile. So much love from everyone, especially Simon.
Well, they say it’s the happiest day of your life. I smile at my precious photo of Dad and Stella on their wedding day.
Behind them is his mother, my late gran, throwing confetti and beaming away.
I so want my special day to be like theirs.
That white envelope is still poking out of my bag. I pull it out, tear it in half and throw it in the bin.
Because I know now, without a doubt, that if my mother is absent, there will be a terrible, gaping hole on the day. A missing link…
Mum has her faults – but, then, so do we all. She has to be there.
And an invitation by snail mail is not the answer.
Mum needs to hear how I feel – and listen to me telling her just how much I need her to be at my wedding.
I take out my phone.
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