They told me I had weeks. Maybe less.
There’s a quiet panic that sets in when you realize the conversations you’ve been putting off… won’t happen.
So I wrote a letter.
To Anika.
She was the only person I still had unfinished business with. Not my ex-husband, not my brother who sends polite Christmas texts, not the friends who slowly faded when I stopped being the “fun one.”
Just her.
My daughter.
I hadn’t seen her in five years. Not since the night I told her I didn’t support the decision she made. I said the wrong thing—harsh, too fast, without listening. She left my apartment with tears in her eyes and didn’t answer a single call after that.
I thought she’d cool off.
Then months passed. Then years. I sent birthday cards, a graduation gift, messages through mutual friends. Nothing came back.
But from this bed, with the oxygen machine humming and the morphine making my handwriting shaky, I finally told her the truth. About the regret. About how proud I was, even if I never said it. About how I still sleep in the hoodie she left behind. About the box I’ve kept of all her drawings from second grade.
I gave the envelope to Nurse Jules. Told her to give it only to Anika if she ever came by—or at least leave it at the desk, just in case.
Yesterday, I asked Jules if there’d been any visitors. She looked down. Said gently, “No, sweetheart. And the letter’s still here. She never picked it up.”
But this morning, the letter was gone.
And when I asked Jules again, she wouldn’t meet my eyes.
So now I’m lying here wondering…
Did Anika come when I was asleep?
Or did someone else take it?
The thought consumed me for hours. The hospice ward was quiet, as always—TV murmuring in the corner, a tray of untouched soup beside me. I didn’t have the energy to sit up, but my mind wouldn’t stop spinning.
If it wasn’t Anika… who?
I asked Jules again after lunch. “You sure she didn’t come?”
She hesitated. “We didn’t have any visitors check in under her name.”
I looked at her face, searching for a flicker of something. Guilt? A lie? But she was impossible to read. She just adjusted my blankets and gave me that sad smile that people wear when they’ve already said their goodbyes in their heart.
That night, I didn’t sleep much. The machines beeped softly beside me, the morphine dulled the pain but not the ache in my chest. Memories came back, old ones I hadn’t let myself replay in years.
Anika’s eighth birthday—she wore a tiara to the zoo and told strangers she was “royalty.” The time she built a bookshelf for her room entirely out of shoeboxes. Her first heartbreak, when she curled into my lap like she was little again and cried over a boy who never called back.
She had such a fire in her. Brave, sensitive, and too smart for her own good.
I had been proud. I had just been… scared, too. When she told me she was quitting her engineering program to move to another city and pursue tattoo artistry full-time, I reacted with fear. Fear that she’d throw away stability. Fear that she’d end up lost. Fear that she wouldn’t be safe. And instead of saying I’m worried, I said I’m disappointed.
What a dumb word. Disappointed. It built a wall so fast that neither of us could climb it.
The next morning, something strange happened.
There was a small sketch taped to the inside of my bedside table. A doodle—of a hummingbird, tiny and soft, like the ones Anika used to draw on the margins of her notebooks.
I called Jules.
She looked genuinely surprised when I showed her.
“I didn’t put that there,” she said. “Maybe housekeeping?”
But I knew better. Anika had always drawn hummingbirds. Said they reminded her that beauty was small and fast and everywhere if you paid attention.
That was her. That was her.
I asked if anyone could check the visitor logs again. Jules promised she would.
A few hours later, I had another visitor—Marvin, the night janitor. He came every evening to mop the hallways and talk to patients who couldn’t sleep. He was one of the few who never looked at me like I was already halfway gone.
He sat in the chair beside my bed and said, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I think my daughter came by,” I whispered.
He leaned in. “I ain’t one for gossip, but… there was someone here two nights ago. Young woman. Sat in the garden for a long time. Looked upset.”
“Did she come in?”
“She didn’t sign in. Just left some flowers near the back fence. I saw her walking away.”
My heart thudded weakly. “What did she look like?”
He paused, trying to recall. “Short hair. Wore a green hoodie. Blue backpack. Small nose ring.”
That was her.
That was her.
She’d been here. She just hadn’t come in. Maybe she wasn’t ready. Maybe she thought I wouldn’t want to see her. Or maybe… maybe she had come in, and asked someone not to tell me.
I wanted to scream. Or cry. But I didn’t have the strength for either.
The next day, I asked Jules to check the security footage, though I knew she couldn’t just pull it up on a whim. “If there’s a way,” I said softly, “I just want to know if she was here. Just to know.”
Jules touched my hand. “I’ll see what I can do.”
That night, as the sun bled orange through the window, Jules returned.
She sat down, quiet for a moment. Then she said, “I can’t tell you how I know this. But she came.”
My breath caught.
“She came when you were asleep. Sat with you for over an hour. Cried a little. Talked to you. Then she took the letter. She asked me not to tell you.”
I felt a tear slide down my cheek.
“She read it before she left,” Jules added. “Every word. Twice.”
That was all I needed to hear.
Over the next week, my body began shutting down more. Less time awake. Less pain, too. I stopped asking for updates. I knew what mattered.
Then, on a Wednesday afternoon, I woke up to something soft being tucked into my hand.
A different nurse was on duty, but she nodded and said, “This came for you. No return address.”
It was an envelope.
Inside was a photo.
Anika and I—ten years ago, at a lake. She was piggybacking on my back, water droplets in her hair. We were both laughing.
On the back of the photo, in her handwriting:
“I forgive you. And I never stopped loving you. I hope you find peace. Thank you for finally seeing me. I see you too.”
I held that photo against my chest for the longest time.
I didn’t die that week. In fact, I lived another month. Long enough for my brother to visit, for old friends to send voice notes, for a letter to come in the mail with sketches—tiny hummingbirds, lotus flowers, and a sunflower with my name etched into the stem.
Anika was doing okay. She didn’t come back to the hospice, and I didn’t expect her to. But she answered. In her way. And that was enough.
The day before I passed, I asked Jules to do one last thing for me.
In my drawer was a journal. Inside were letters—one for Anika’s future wedding day, one for if she ever had kids, one just for hard days when she needed to hear her mother’s voice again.
“Give them to her when it’s time,” I told Jules.
She nodded, tears in her eyes.
I passed quietly, without pain.
But not without peace.
Sometimes, the love we fear is lost forever only needs the right moment to return.
Sometimes, the hardest doors can still open—if we knock softly enough.
So, if you’ve been waiting to say something… don’t wait. Say it. Write it. Show up. You never know what healing might find its way back to you.
If this story touched you, share it with someone you love. You never know who might need it today. ❤️
