Annabel and the Sea
A short story I wrote for an Anthology assignment for English class. Its a sad piece of fiction about an elderly woman with Alzheimer's who dies. I hope it doesn't depress anyone.
If only she could remember. It was becoming so difficult to remember anything anymore. But the one thing she could not remember is what had happened to her child.
They told her that she was getting old. They told her she was having memory problems. She couldn't remember exactly what they said, but when she forgot who her daughter was, and then what had happened to her, she was starting to believe they were right.
Wilma was staring at her daughter's picture. It said her name in the frame, Annabel. Wilma had everything manufactured to say what it was, so she wouldn't forget. But she had already forgotten where her daughter was, and what had happened to her.
It was sunny outside. The day was beautiful, and the sea was as calm as could ever be. But Wilma didn't go outside. Not today. For some reason that she couldn't remember, she was afraid of the sea. She felt that is was a monster somehow. She found a document in her files that declared the sea a thief. Wilma couldn't remember where the document was, and felt that it could somehow tell her where Annabel was.
"They say that I'm forgetting. I am, and I can't remember my darling Annabel is. My little Annabel," Wilma cried. She cried and cried again, but for what reasons she could not remember.
The picture frame showed little Annabel Dawson at age 6, the last picture taken of her. Wilma couldn't find any pictures of little Annabel after age 6, and didn't understand or remember why. Wilma just couldn't remember where her Annabel was.
Wilma started to search for the document. She turned over waste baskets, file cabinets, book cases; and then she started to look in unlikely places: the kitchen cabinets, the dishwasher, her bed, even the ceiling. For her, the world was disappearing before her eyes; right and wrong and up and down were distorting. Then Wilma stumbled, crying out as she fell; and then, she saw it. It was not a document, as she remembered, but a book. Not just any book, but a journal.
It was her journal, from over 20 years ago. At last, this was an answer to her calling! She would finally get the answers she was looking for.
As Wilma looked through the journal, she found nothing. Nothing, that is, until the last page. The last page contained the same date as the last picture containing Annabel Dawson. As Wilma read, the horror of the truth started to sink in.
"Why, why is the sea such a rotten thief! How could such a tragedy occur? Why did it have to take her, take my darling Annabel? She was only of six! We were having such a great time, Jim and I, and our darling Annabel. Out boating, we were. We were all laughing, having a great time, when little Annabel fell over. We couldn't get back in time, and the monstrous sea, it took her. Our poor little Annabel, she ... she ..."
Wilma couldn't dare finish the last line. Not with her eyes. But in her mind she remembered. And in her mind, she knew that her poor Annabel had drowned. That was why there were no pictures, no memories, and no Annabel.
Wilma cried. She cried as only a mother could cry for her lost child. Wilma had only once cried so hard and long, and that was over twenty years ago, on that fateful, dreadful day.
As Wilma cried, the journal fell onto the floor, followed by Wilma as she collapsed. As she lay there in a heap, she hesitated. During her grief, she forgot. She forgot why she was there, where she was, who darling Annabel was, and Wilma even forgot who she herself was. As Wilma cried, she forgot why she was crying and then cried even more.
They found her the next day, still crying, still babbling about Annabel and Jim and the treacherous sea. But when they asked her for her name, she gave no reply, but only cried. For what she cried for, she could not remember anymore. All that Wilma Dawson remembered anymore was that she must cry, for everything. They found her that night, color and breath having left her body long ago. They found her with nothing but tears on her face. Nothing but tears.
~bhscorch
"Annabel and the Sea" by bhscorch is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.