Timur could not tell how long he stayed on his knees before that old door, the paper pressed between his fingers and his spirit shattered. A warm spring breeze carried the scent of damp earth and wildflowers, yet he felt only a vast emptiness. Time had slipped away, and so had his mother.
Sabina, unusually gentle for someone his age, said nothing. She lingered in silence nearby, letting the quiet speak for her. At last she offered him a cup of water.
Do you want to go inside? she asked.
Timur looked up. The house seemed smaller than his memory, though it remained just as modest: weatherworn timber, handstitched curtains, a floor that creaked with each step. Every corner breathed his childhood.
In the kitchen, the pendulum clock ticked lazily. On the table sat a basket of stale bread and a napkin embroidered with flowers, one of those patient creations his mother used to make. Beside them, a yellowed photograph showed him at six, perched on Ranias lap, both laughing.
Grandmother talked about you all the time, Sabina said while brewing tea. She always said that if you ever came back, she didnt want you to feel guilty. She knew where your home was.
Timur stayed silent, his wounded eyes scanning everything for traces of his mother: the furniture, the teas aroma, the cloths pinned to the wall, the way light filtered through the window.
She kept your letters in a cookie tin, Sabina added, showing him the container. Inside were Timurs old, timecreased letters, still readable, even the brief ones that simply read, Im fine. She had saved every one.
And her grave? he finally asked, his voice low.
Its on the hill, beside the apple tree she planted herself. She used to climb up there every afternoon, even in winter.
That afternoon Timur walked to the hill, carrying wildflowers he had gathered along the way. The tombstone was plain, unadorned, bearing only a name: Rania Aslanyan, mother of Timur and Saida.
He knelt, placed the blossoms carefully, then, without a word, slipped a small cashmere scarf the one he had brought from his jacket and laid it on the stone. He lingered until the sun disappeared.
When he returned, Sabina waited with a notebook.
Its hers, she said. She wrote things at nightsometimes poems, sometimes just thoughts.
One page held a note dated a year before her death:
I dont know if youll come back, my son, but if you ever do, know that I never stopped loving you. If this house still stands, it will always be yours. If this family lives on, its also because of you. Though you were absent, you were always part of us.
Timur spent the night in the old bedroom of his youth, and for the first time in sixteen years he slept without fearing the past.
The next morning he left early, went to town, spoke with the mayor and the villagers. He arranged for the house to be restored, donated books to the local school, and funded a small park beside the apple tree in his mothers memory.
He didnt stay to live there, but he returned each month. Every spring, on the anniversary of receiving that letter, he brought fresh flowers and sat at the tomb, reading aloud passages from Ranias notebook.
He had learned that a mothers love never diesit simply waits.
