Steemit Challenge - Season 28 Week-2 : Remembering Through Healing

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The nights were always the hardest. As soon as the sun dipped, the house shifted, quiet and heavy, as if holding its breath with her. Tina placed her cup of herbal tea on the same small table her mother used to leave hers on, half-forgotten in mid-conversation. She couldn’t sit there without feeling something tighten in her chest.

But tonight something felt different. A faint vibration rattled the hallway door, a familiar tremor she hadn’t heard in years. It sounded like the house was knocking gently, inviting her in. Tina stood, walked slowly toward the hallway, and pressed her palm against the wooden frame. Warmth spread through her arm, subtle but undeniable.

You’re wearing yourself out, sweetheart.
The voice wasn’t real, not physically. But it wasn’t imagined either. It was memory, grief, and longing woven so tightly that it felt like presence.

“I’m doing the best I can,” Tina whispered.

The hallway didn’t answer, but something in the stillness urged her forward.

In the days that followed, Tina felt as though she was moving through a quiet dialogue with the past. Every object sparked something: a laugh, a scolding, a rare tender moment. She had returned home to help her family, but she slowly realized she had also returned because something unfinished was waiting for her.

While sorting through her mother’s wardrobe one afternoon, she found a small dented metal box hidden beneath stacks of towels. Inside was an envelope addressed to her.

Her breath caught.

“For Tina, when she’s ready.”

Her mother’s handwriting looked shaky, written in a moment of frailty. Tina sat on the floor, hands trembling, staring at the sealed flap. When she finally opened it, the scent of old paper drifted out, accompanied by a warm sensation, like a hand resting softly on her shoulder.

My Tina,
If you are reading this, then the silence between us has grown too heavy. I know we spoke too often in broken sentences, half truths and half bitterness. I wanted you to be strong long before you were ready to be. I want to say I’m sorry, even if my voice never allowed it.
And thank you for coming home.
Mom

Tina felt the room tilt around her. Everything she had needed, everything she had waited for, written down like a confession she never expected to receive.

That evening, she cooked her mother’s favorite meal, letting the familiar smell fill the house. When her father walked into the kitchen, he stopped abruptly.

“It smells like before,” he murmured.

“That’s the idea,” Tina said softly. “We’ve been avoiding too much.”

His eyes drifted to the letter lying on the counter. They glistened as the truth settled on him.

“She wrote that the week she got her diagnosis,” he said. “She kept saying she owed you more than she ever gave.”

For the first time since Tina had returned, she saw him break, not in exhaustion but in release. She told him everything: the resentment, the distance, the feeling of never being enough. And for the first time, he listened with the weight those words deserved.

“She loved you,” he whispered, voice cracking. “She just didn’t know how to show it without fear getting in the way.”

They ate quietly, but it was a new kind of silence, one that mended rather than deepened.

Later, alone in her room, Tina reread the letter. Her chest loosened, a slow untangling of threads she didn’t know were still knotted. As she traced her finger over her mother’s signature, the warmth returned to her shoulder. Not imagined. Not memory. Something else.

You can let me go now, the voice breathed, gentle and unburdened.

Tina closed her eyes. The ache didn’t disappear, but it changed shape. Softer. Lighter.

She opened the window, letting the cool breeze drift in. The air carried a faint scent of jasmine, her mother’s favorite. The house exhaled with her, no longer suffocating but settling.

Then, from the kitchen, a glass tipped over on the sink with a soft clink. No wind. No explanation.

Tina didn’t flinch. She smiled.

It wasn’t a sign of presence anymore.

It was a goodbye, finally peaceful.

And behind it, the quiet beginning of a healing she had never known she could find.

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Thank you very much for reading, it's time to invite my friends @sualeha, @drhira, @shiftitamanna to participate in this contest.

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@kouba01