When I was just a little girl I asked my mother what will I be? Will I be pretty will I be rich, here’s what she said to me.
Que se-ra, se-ra whatever will be, will be. The future’s not ours to see, Que se-ra, se-ra what will be, will be.
I had a mother who sang this song to me every night before I let my eyes close to enter into my world of dreams filled with sky-high mountains, beautiful fairies spreading pixy dust all over the paths trodden by them and with purple- yellowish- pinkish clouds which drew magnificent picture shows throughout the sky. I had a mother who always told me while stroking my head, “this too shall pass, what ever will be will be” every time my never ending salty drops moistened my eye balls and wetted my cheeks mercilessly. Not to mention that it is one distant past of my life and her life has now been transformed into a state of deafening stillness and maddening numbness which constantly makes me feverish, hopeless and lifeless. Here I stand looking at her name engraved in a granite slate which is here to prove me that some woman had lived under this name and that it is not my crazy imagination of being lost in a dream.
The white flowers on my hand smell like death and I loathe myself for bringing this pale, mournful bouquet of sadness instead of her favourites- Sunflowers. She was the sunflower that bloomed in the garden of my life who turned her soft petals rough and sun-proof, voluntarily, to linger on till her descendants decided to wake up from the state of being dependant buds.
A gusty shower begins to fall down as if to create the atmosphere in a Dickensian novel. Being a slave of my lunatic imagination, I lift my head up in the hope of seeing her misty figure through the rain drops pouring down from the cloudy sky. Thousand happy memories of a lifetime ago remind me of the sweet laughter which is now the angelic coda in my ear. Just like a scented candle wasted away, only the traces of wax on the candlestick are there to remind me of the nostalgic scent of her breath, long terminated.
Before this turns out to be an endless, ordinary lamentation of a dead-heart in front of the eyes of the reader, I should conclude my thoughts.
Life, when it turns out to be a dream, it is not easy to dream about the future or of life. Before I wake up from this nightmare, thus, I write,
To the graceful sunflower bloomed in my garden of life,
Amidst the bright sunshine
You stood up everyday
Facing the scorching sun
boldly, steadily.
You hardened your soft, yellow petals
With no hesitation
To win this very hard battle
against a burning sun.
To beautify my garden
You bloomed every morning
Fearless of the hot sun rays
Making all my days
so happy and bright.
In the desperate hope of seeing her again, I go back to sleep, her voice in my ears still singing, what ever will be, will be.
Co- editor: Rtr. Parami Ranasinghe
