And, at this very moment, Lizbeth stood at the door. Her eyes were swollen and red. It was obvious that she had cried a lot ever since she learned about my demise.
When my mother opened the door, Lizbeth could see the mix of surprise and impatience on my mother's face, which she quickly erased. And that sight almost set Lizbeth off.
After she was able to control her emotions, Lizbeth said coldly, "Auntie, I'm here to do one last thing that Andrea had asked me to do. These are the flowers she picked for you last Saturday, along with the knee massager she bought for you."
"Originally, she had work training today and couldn’t be here to celebrate Mother's Day with you, so she asked me to deliver these gifts on her behalf," Lizbeth continued, her voice trembling slightly with anguish.
My mother barely acknowledged her explanation. She did not see the gift properly and even responded with a dismissive sentence, "Oh, thanks. The house is a mess. I won't invite you in, Eh, just leave the flowers on the rack by the door."
Without any care, my mother started to close the door.
Lizbeth who was starting to get angrier by my mother's reaction, quickly blocked the door with her foot. Her voice rose, trembling with fury, "Auntie! Andrea is dead! Don't you have any feelings at all? Aren’t you sad at all? Do you even realize how much she loved you? Every word you said, she would take it to heart."
"Just recently, you casually mentioned that your knees hurt. She remembered that. And on her only day off, instead of resting, she dragged me along to find this knee massager for you. It cost her an entire month’s salary, but she didn’t even flinch! Do you know how frugal she was? She barely spent money on herself, not even for new clothes. How can you, as her mother, be so heartless, so blind to what she did for you?"
Tears welled up in Lizbeth's eyes as she spoke. Her voice broke with emotion. She poured out everything that she had bottled up in her heart for so long.
For a brief moment, my mother’s face softened, as if something inside her began to stir. However then, just as quickly as possible, her face hardened again, as if she pushed away any trace of guilt.