![\"Robin](\"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/OtherWorldPost-copy-767x1024.jpg\" "\\"In")
Right away, the old mother was drawn to the girl at the end of the table who sat clutching a stuffed animal, her mascaraed eyes staring straight ahead.<\/p>\nRight away, the old mother was drawn to the girl at the end of the table who sat clutching a stuffed animal, her mascaraed eyes staring straight ahead.<\/p>\n
How could the mother not be reminded of her own beautiful daughter? From the million images tessellating in her head, one arose of her daughter sitting up in a hospital bed, clinging to her stuffed puppy as doctors announced, \u201cYou\u2019re eighteen. So you\u2019re the adult in charge.\u201d And now, here was this unknown almost-adult girl seated across the table, hugging her stuffed animal and looking dazed. Why was this girl here?<\/p>\n
\u201c …When my mom died,\u201d the girl said, shortly after. Then something inside the mother burst. \u201cMy mom won\u2019t be here for my graduation, or when I get married, or when I have kids,\u201d the girl continued, and the old mother remembered for the billionth time that her own daughter would never get to graduate college, get married or have kids.<\/p>\n
She had watched her daughter suffer and wondered why she herself hadn\u2019t been the one to get cancer. Maybe in a different dimension of existence, in an alternate reality or some parallel universe, things were different. In another world her daughter might still be alive. But here, in this world, at the other end of the table was a daughter who lost her mother.<\/p>\n
Suddenly the girl sat down next to the mother. The girl\u2019s eyes were even more radiant up close, with a familiar hint of opalescent eye shadow and perfectly painted waterproof mascara. There was much the old woman would have liked to say to the girl but she couldn\u2019t find her words, couldn\u2019t begin, and now the girl was so close, smiling and crying at the same time. Tears ran down both their faces.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m gonna get a tattoo with my mom\u2019s name,\u201d the girl said.
\n\u201cI have a tattoo,\u201d the mother said, peeling off her sweater to show the girl her shoulder tattooed with her daughter\u2019s name. \u201cCan you read it?\u201d the mother asked. \u201cYes. That\u2019s right. It\u2019s Marika.\u201d The girl beamed.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd who\u2019s this?\u201d the mother asked, already knowing, pointing to the stuffed animal the girl clung to, thinking of the stuffed puppy she\u2019d given her own daughter at birth and now kept on the mantle in the middle of her house (and kissed goodnight most nights). The girl held out her fuzzy stuffed dog.
\n\u201cMy mother gave it to me,\u201d she said, turning it over to show the stitched-on tag that spelled LOVE ME.<\/p>\n
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Right away, the old mother was drawn to the girl at the end of the table who sat clutching a stuffed animal, her mascaraed eyes staring straight ahead. How could the mother not be reminded of her own beautiful daughter? From the million images tessellating in her head, one arose of her daughter sitting up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[702],"tags":[949,207,950,955,951,890,954,953,952],"class_list":["post-1310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-702","tag-alternative-reality","tag-daughter-died","tag-in-another-world","tag-love-me","tag-mother-daughter","tag-motherhood","tag-parallel-universe","tag-tattoo-in-memory","tag-tesselation-images"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}