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The Handkerchief of Hope

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This is the entry I wrote for Writing Battle; my first ever writing competition.
Posted January 17th, 2026, at 9:35pm.

This is for you, Mom. Proof that I kept, and continue to keep, my promise. <3

I sit cross-legged in my computer chair, fortunate enough to have survived the super Saiyan flu of 2026, though my body still has complaints. 

Time Travel. Champion. Handkerchief. 

How poetic, I thought. No redraws necessary. 

Instantly I go to the days of knights and fair maidens. The gallant good sir, off to fight fierce dragons, leaving his lady to await his return. I could see it… Young love, pining away at a window, struggling with fear, worry, doubt; the “what ifs” that grow like thorn-covered vines. Vicious and unforgiving as they scale the castle walls of the mind. 

Oh, and how her mother, the queen possibly, endures alongside her daughter in the unknown. Maybe the queen shares a story of her own handkerchief given in hope of a safe return. The moral being that waiting requires an unsung strength. How sometimes survival is unnoticed, uncelebrated, but heroic nonetheless…

Yet, that was not the end… It evolved, in all places, during my therapy session, not dissimilar to a Pokémon. 

I could bring the story forward. To here. Now. The present day. 

What if… instead of a fair maiden, there is a young girl, her boyfriend enlisted and deployed. What if it was about the crushing uncertainty of never knowing if there will be a “next time,” and it is this fictional girl’s mother harking back to tales of do-gooders. Her soft, steady voice explaining how maidens gave their “favor,” their love, held within a piece of cloth. How it isn’t about the object providing protection, but rather how the object holds meaning, becoming a tangible thing nurturing an abstract concept. Purpose. 

Mmmm. Yes… More solid on the time travel bit… Nice. But also… a tender thread of thought within my own mind quietly asks to be seen. Viktor Frankl and Man’s Search for Meaning. How even in the most horrific, unsurvivable conditions, life can in fact, continue. Persist. Endure.

All one needs is a reason, a purpose, to do so. 

And so… here we are… The thing to which the thread of thought led…

There… has never been room for -my- story. It isn’t nice enough, clean enough, Instagram selfie enough, to be part of most conversations… 

I have blogged… for years… I have “BBs”, blogging buddies. A few of us have exchanged addresses. I went so far as to cross-stitch gifts for some of them. Artwork in fabric made of random colored thread, my love and care made physical. A network of support, watching my story unfold as I wrote it, post by post; day by day. 

It was fun. Connective. Fulfilling. And so I continued to post, unflinchingly authentic in my lived experience. Unapologetic for my existence. 

Then, on April 4th, 2016, my world ended…

My mother died. 

At the age of 27, I found myself standing outside her hospital room, a room we were supposed to be discharged from. We were supposed to go home. I was supposed to be her caretaker… It was going to be different and scary but as long as she was alive we would figure it out… together…  

But that wasn’t my path anymore…

There was no path. There was only holding her hand one last time, now devoid of life, and promising that even though I didn’t know how, that I would keep going. For her. Somehow… Some way… 

I called Dad. Even divorced, he deserved to know. I held myself together as I looked out at the mountains surrounding Las Vegas, and said words I never thought I would ever say as the setting sun shone on devastating truth…

“Mom died.”  

I imagine that moment is what soul shattering feels like.

This… horrific feeling of nothingness… consuming my entire being, eviscerating my heart, as those words left my lips for the first time; speaking an unbearable reality into being. 

Not grief. Not anger. Not rage… 

Just… the absence of everything. Of meaning. Of purpose. Of reason to endure…

And that was my life for what felt like countless eons. 

Then… one random day, months later… a letter arrived…

Words, handwritten on stationery like ye olden days of mīn own lifetime, harking back to when cards meant something…

And with it, a handkerchief…

Mama Spike, one of my BBs, had read my post about Mom’s death…

She wrote in elegant script that she grieved with and for me. How she knew a handkerchief could not fix the agonizing wound in my chest, but it could catch my tears if I let it. It could hold my grief and sorrow. It could be there with me in the moments where I felt alone and lost and screamed in anguish. 

It is a physical, tangible thing that I can place into someone else’s hands, like a memory from the movie Inside Out, and say “This is one reason I didn’t commit suicide.”

So, dear reader, my fellow human, I regret that I have no tales of brave knights and fair maidens within this text. No triumphant hero returning from a harrowing deed to their one true love. 

Instead I have the story of me; a 37-year-old motherless daughter, approaching the decade mark of the death that destroyed me, and yet, somehow, I am still undeniably alive. 

If this is my own story to a “worthless”, priceless, piece of fabric…

I wonder…

How many champions have fallen because they were never able to hold the love of someone who cared for them? 

I… could stay silent, scared to share for fear of being “too much”…

Or… like a Noble Monarch Butterfly… I could set my story free to change the weather of the world in whatever unknown ways it might…

Like Hercules at the Crossroads I stand before Vice and Virtue. Comfort and Truth. 

I draw a deep, steadying breath…

“This is for you, Mom. For every essay you ever proofread. For every time you said ‘I believe in you.’”

…

“YOLO, bitches…” 

And thus, I cast my own handkerchief into the Web, having faith. Purpose.

Daily Post 165: Moment by Moment

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Today was alright. It’s rainy and dreary. I went into work to help with change over. My FA is back from her week-long meeting in DC. I’m glad to have her back. I think it did benefit the team for her to be out of the facility. We learned to trust each other. We learned how to function without her. At the same time, she learned that she can trust in us, too; that the clinic won’t burn to the ground without her here.

Currently, I’m in a bit of a low mood, though, and I know I am. One of our new patients passed away on Saturday. I didn’t know her well, but it still sucks. It still makes my body and heart ache with shared sorrow. She had a family. She had a life outside of the clinic and her absence is going to be felt by many people, just like mom’s was and continues to be.

It leaves me feeling… something which there aren’t words to express. Shared sorrow is the best I can do and like so many times before in my writing, it doesn’t feel like enough. Those words do not express the depth or complexity which are emotions. Maybe nothing ever truly can. Emotions are felt, not explained.

The rest of everything that has happened in my life feels trivial compared to the realness of life and death. Almost like it’s disrespectful to write about how my life continued to go on while her’s ended and yet I couldn’t have stopped my life anymore than the doctors could have kept hers going.

I went to Walmart and got two new skirts and a pair of shorts. I’m in smaller sizes than the last time I bought clothes. I went to the gym and had a good workout.

Sunday I went to my first “family gathering” with Ox. I met his aunts and cousins. For the most part, I spent the three hours sitting on the front porch enjoying the sunlight and breeze while cross stitching which sparked all sorts of comments from the family members. I felt extremely accepted. There was good food and good conversation. It wasn’t the horrific social event I had envisioned in my mind. I wasn’t shamed out of the home for having purple hair or tattoos.

I also had my first run-in with a tornado warning while Ox and I were out shopping after the family get-together. There’s a big difference between practicing a drill and real-life camping out in a Walmart layaway listening to nature rage around you. I made a post on Facebook to let everyone I was fine and that I made it home safe.

Saturday I spent the whole day sick and in bed. I slept about 16 hours and was better for taking it super slow and easy. Ox was amazingly fantastic in caring for me and allowing me to sleep the day and sickness away.

Lil’ Ox and I got to color a bit together Friday night once I got home from work. It’s the first time in a while that we’ve done something together. Ornery Ox even talked to me for a little bit Sunday during the family time. It was nice. I know I haven’t been extremely involved or present with the kids for a while. This weekend was a small step towards correcting that.

The past two weeks have been sort of rough, work-wise. I’ve been working five days. I can only imagine what they would have been like if I were still trying to take the Human Anatomy class. This coming week is most likely going to be more of the same, but next week should be a little lighter.

At the moment I don’t really think there’s much else to say. My heart isn’t in it right now; in writing, I guess. I don’t necessarily hurt, but I ache. One day at a time. One moment at a time. One task at a time. I’m sort of back to that I think.

Friday is my next day off. I think if I can make it to there then I’ll be alright. I know I’ll be ok. I know I’m not not ok right now. I’m just sad and that too is ok. Sometimes life is sad.