In the months leading up to my mother’s death, she would tell her doctors that she would go to a place she called Paradise to escape the pain. Many would have attributed this to the ramblings of a woman in distress; a woman who was simply imagining her long walks on the beach, flanked on one side by dancing palms, the majestic ocean on the other. Descriptions of smelling, and tasting the ocean’s salt, as well as feeling the sands of the beach beneath her feet, would have been seen as nothing more than delusions, created by a mind being eaten alive by cancer.
But I knew something the doctors didn’t. I possessed knowledge of this place, this land, this island she called Paradise. It wasn’t real—at least, not in the sense that one could physically go there—but for her, it was the closest thing she had to escaping the woes of the world, and the cruel realities that take place within it.
It has been three months since her death, and I am finally ready to make my way to Paradise.
I have waited until my father has left to run his errand. For the house to be empty. A part of me understands that he is still angry over her fixation with this place, this land that brought her so much comfort, but another knows that this was the only thing that brought my mother peace.
A push of a button is all it takes for the console to hum to life, for the glass screen upon its surface to display the collection of games my mother used to play. Her favorite, Fantasy Island, is the first that appears.
I hesitate to click the button that will load the game onto the device.
Why are you so scared? I ask myself. Why are you so afraid of facing the thing that brought her comfort?
A part of me knows that this is, in many ways, the grand finale—the post-credits scene of my mother’s life, cut decades short by malignant cancer. Once I load her game of Fantasy Island,I will be unable to take back my ignorance of why this place brought her so much comfort, as well as the mystery that comes as a result of it.
For several long, quiet moments, I listen to the sound of the world around me—of the cars passing outside my bedroom window, of the old clock ticking on my nightstand. It feels so cold on this autumn day, and yet, inside, a fire burns ever bright inside me, compelling me to do the one thing that I know my mother would have wanted me to do.
I click the button to load Fantasy Island, and wait for Paradise to materialize on the screen.
It takes a few moments for the game to load. For the mechanisms within the gaming console to hum to life. It was covered in dust by the time I pulled it from its place on my mother’s bookshelf, and I feared it might not even turn on. But as the music plays, and my mother’s avatar appears on screen, she turns to face the screen, and a chat bubble appears over her avatar, saying, Welcome back!
I nearly crumble.
I cannot afford to waste time, however. I have mere minutes to explore this place that brought her comfort, before my father comes home. Because of this, I take a moment to allow myself respite, then lower my eyes to the screen once more.
Then, I begin to walk.
Her town is well crafted. Buildings have been meticulously placed alongside a cobblestone pathway, along which villagers in her Fantasy Islandworld live with her avatar. Flowers of reds and blues and yellows and more dot the landscape. The mini-map in the corner reveals a world that was well tended in the months prior to my mother’s death—a world that was created not just with care, but empathy.
“Hello, Monica,” a villager says.
I pause for a moment, tempted to interact with the non-player character, but don’t. Doing so feels too personal, too intimate an action when I am essentially a ghost in my mother’s virtual world. For that reason, I simply continue to move her avatar across her island, across this place she called Paradise.
I aim to go to the one place she said was her favorite: the beach.
A beautiful bridge separates the river dividing the inner island from the edge where the beach stands. Along it, I see animated birds flying, hear the whisper of the tide as it rolls onto the beach.
Her avatar transitions from stone to sand—and for a single moment, I swear I can taste the ocean on my tongue.
Then, not long after, I advance across the beach. The palm trees bow on one side and the ocean laps at the sands on the other. Onward I march, a stranger in an even stranger land, memories populating this place for as far as the eye can see. An old shipwreck lies in the distance. A few virtual crabs skitter across the landscape. A shadow forms over my character as a cloud passes overhead.
I think, This is it. This is what my mother loved. The one thing that brought her comfort in her final days.
I bring her avatar to a halt at the edge of the ocean, where I knew she would have wanted to be, were she still here. Moments pass in silence as I reflect upon the landscape of my mother’s creation, of the world into which she escaped to avoid the repercussions of life. For several seconds, I believe I could stay here forever.
Then, I see something winking as it passes from the waves onto the beach.
A message in a bottle.
She said that, sometimes, she would cast them out into the virtual ocean—oftentimes just for fun, sometimes to leave herself messages. The bottles would always come back, she’d said, because everything you put into it eventually returns to you.
I edge my mother’s avatar toward the ocean and pick up the bottle.
Immediately, a message opens.
But the message isn’t addressed to my mother. It’s addressed to me.
Dear Stephanie,
If you are reading this, I am long gone, taken by the cruelty of life, and cancer, and everything that happens because of it. I want to apologize for not being there for you longer. It was my hope that I would last longer, to see you grow into the beautiful young woman I know you are going to be, to see you graduate high school with honors, just like you said you would. But, I suppose our stories aren’t always our own to tell.
I do not have many characters to offer, and I want to tell you that, even though death has taken me from you, I have left in my place a world into which you can escape at any time you wish to remember me—a place that allowed me joy during my brightest times, and solace during my darkest. I have left you a place called Paradise.
Please, remember me as I was, not as I happened to be at the end.
I will love you, always.
Mom
For several fragile moments, I reread the message from the bottle, which my mother cast into the ocean, only to return to me, just like all things do. Not long after, I close my eyes, and take a deep breath.
Then, I hug the place my mother lost, and that I have gained, to my chest.