Hands Open

“Keep your hands open.”

The words look lonely and small, written unsteadily on that first page of her mother’s last notebook.

Amelia’s mother had loved those little black books, buying them year after year, filling them with quotes and phrases she liked. Sometimes her mother even stopped mid-conversation to capture a pearl of wisdom in ink.

“I remember words better when I write them down, baby,” she would say with an eye-crinkling smile, slotting the pen behind her ear, pulling the notebook’s elastic fastener closed with an energetic SNAP.

Her mother’s handwriting had once been bold and strong, each letter carved as if it were a notch on the wall of the world.

But the last time she’d written anything, the letters were spiderweb-thin, hands made unsteady by the medicine in her body. The doctors hadn’t thought “shaking hands” an important side-effect to mention. They hadn’t known how much Amelia’s mother loved to capture thoughts in handwriting, or how much she’d loved clear penmanship. They couldn’t have known.

But Amelia still feels angry at them, staring at her mother’s uncharacteristically uneven letters.

“Keep your hands open,” the ink whispers.

When she’d written those last words, Amelia’s mother could barely hold the pen, but she’d painstakingly pushed letter after letter into the page, determined as ever.

Then, she’d closed the notebook, eyes on Amelia’s face, and said, “No one dies happy with their fists closed, baby. These words are for you... keep your hands open.”

Blinking away the memory, Amelia places her mother’s last book of quotes on the dining table next to the others.

It looks too shiny and new compared to the rest, lying open, its black cover and crisp pages gleaming in the sunlight. Buying it in the hospital gift shop had felt like a false promise… she’d known her mother wouldn’t live long enough to fill its pages, but the woman had insisted, typically stubborn.

“I’m just breaking it in for you, baby,” her mother had said with a tired sigh, squinting against the hospital lights. She’d flipped through the new notebook’s empty pages, stark and white, “The rest of these are for you to fill.”

Amelia had wanted to cry then, had felt the tears building like some great, tense bubble, deep inside, trapped behind an invisible wall. She’d wanted to break down, to sob... but she couldn’t.

She’d only nodded numbly, moving to dim the lights.

Even now, standing in front of the empty dining table, before the open notebook, her mother gone, Amelia’s grief feels like it’s clutched in a fist. She dreams about it sometimes… a great hand, closed tightly around her heart.

Amelia wakes up from those dreams feeling more tired than she did before falling asleep, her exhaustion like a grey fog over each day... as if the days since the funeral hadn’t been grey enough.

For the first three months after spreading her mother’s ashes, Amelia’s days were filled with dust and paper and ink as she sorted through the chaos left in the wake an ended life.

The home, the finances, the mail… all of it needed to be organized, canceled, ordered and categorized. There were printouts of old emails, piles of unpaid medical bills and Get-Well-Soon cards, charitable donations, newspaper clippings, tickets and old receipts for nonsensical purchases...

And while, like her mother, Amelia usually preferred paper over pixels… she’d begun to wonder if the inherited preference was more curse than blessing.

For a few nights in a row now, she’d dreamt not of that hand around her heart, but of an endless sea of paper, and the inexplicable urge to find some matches...

But Amelia is close, now. So close. Most of her mother’s old papers sit neatly piled into boxes, some ready for disposal, some destined to gather dust in a new home’s closet.

All that remains is one large pile… and her mother’s beloved collection of notebooks.

Amelia can’t bring herself to pile those into another cardboard box just yet. She can’t bring herself to shut away the neat spines, faded and soft from years of use, unlikely to be touched again. She can’t bring herself to even close her mother’s last book. It’s spine still crackles with newness, and it’s pages remain crisp, blank and inviting. The first page gleams up at her, unbroken but for that single, wavering line of ink.

“Keep your hands open.”

Amelia sighs again, her lungs tightening with emotion. Still no tears.

Instead, the words make her angry.

They make no sense… They hadn’t ever made sense, even when her mother had written them. “Keeping your hands open” made it impossible to hold on… to anyone, or anything.

But… her mother had held on. She’d held onto their house through two financial crises. When her husband left, she’d held onto Amelia during the wild and tearstained teenage years. She’d held onto multiple teaching jobs. She’d held onto words, writing until her fingers could no longer hold a pen.

Her mother even held onto life, clinging to Amelia’s hand, white-knuckled through every labored breath.

“Keep your hands open.”

No. Amelia shakes her head. Her mother’s last written words are merely the confused affirmation an exhausted, dying woman. Just... nice words. Words that might have looked good printed on a t-shirt, or on a fridge magnet. Or in curly, wood-carved calligraphy... like the “Live, Laugh, Love” signs that seemed to hang in all their neighbors’ livingrooms, the ones her mother loved to hate.

With another shuddering breath, Amelia finally tears her eyes away from the notebook to glare instead at that last, massive pile of paper.

“Let’s get started,” she mutters, plucking an envelope from the pile and tearing it open to read.

“Dear Naomi, We will never forget your generosity during Herbert’s recovery, and wish only that we could offer more in return. To help with the hospital fees, please find enclosed a cheque for eight hundred dollars...”

Amelia blinks, crumpling the empty envelope, a nameless, familiar anxiety churning in her gut.

The letter contains another of the many donations sent after the desperate final months of her mother’s treatment. All the donated money is useless to Naomi now, passing instead to her daughter.

But in the months following Naomi’s death, Amelia has simply kept all the posthumous donations in a grey, plastic folder in her purse.

Every time Amelia sees it, every time her hand brushes against it when she reaches for her keys or wallet... her stomach twists into confusing knots, thoughts spinning with pangs of shame, of uncertainty.

The money is not exactly a problem. She knows she should be grateful. Joyful, even. In a way, Amelia is grateful and joyful.

But... it’s a painful kind of gratitude, an aching kind of joy... a responsibility that, for now, feels too heavy to carry.

Breathing shakily, Amelia sets the cheque aside, opening the next envelope.

“What road will you take to success? Invest NOW in your vehicle’s insurance polic-”

Amelia rolls her eyes and rips the advertisement, tossing the pieces over her shoulder. She reaches for the next letter.

“Dear Ms. Dekker, My name is Jacob Levy. I was in your class 11 years ago. I had bad grades, which you may remember, but because of your help after class, I was able to achieve my first B+ in Social Studies. I am now an attorney, and I owe much of my position to your kindness, back then. You believed in me, giving me patience when others did not. I am so sorry to hear that you are sick, and would love to help however I can. Please accept this donation of five thousand dollars....”

Amelia drops the envelope, a hand flying to cover her mouth.

Five thousand dollars?

One of her mother’s old students? He… this… student… lawyer… person… He had to have made a mistake...

But as Amelia reaches for the envelope, hands shaking, the tightening knot in her stomach flares into memory, into recognition.

Many of her mother’s past students had reached out during the sickness… all of them pouring out their gratitude for moments of Ms. Dekker’s time. Her belief, her inspiration, her kindness… Her mother was beloved, especially by those who’d needed that little bit of extra help.

Now, it seemed, they wanted to give back.

Amelia tucks the second check underneath the first, unable to keep the tremors from her fingers. Slowly, the legs squeaking on the now carpetless floor, Amelia pulls a chair to the table.

Something tells her that she’ll need it.

Hours pass.

By the time she finishes sorting through her mother’s last pile of mail and miscellaneous papers, Amelia has left her mother’s old house twice. Once, to buy a dinner sandwich from the corner deli. The second time, to buy a bottle of whiskey, if only to stop the shaking in her hands.

Now, it’s dark outside, and the orange glow of a nearby streetlamp floods Naomi’s old dining room, casting everything in a quiet light. Amelia takes another deep drink from the whiskey bottle and clears her throat.

She stares at the table, shock - or whiskey - burning a hole in her gut.

Spread before her, strewn between the torn envelopes, junk mail, and letters, are cheques, packets of cash, and pledge-notes amounting to somewhere around... twenty thousand dollars.

Amelia had removed the grey plastic envelope from her purse about an hour ago, adding the money inside to her final tally. And now, though she suspects the whiskey hadn’t exactly sharpened her counting skills, Amelia knows that the final sum of donations far exceeds her wildest dreams. The world feels tilted on its axis, the dim light from the streetlamp casting a dreamlike aura over the mess before her.

It’s a mess of treasure...

Of promise... of wealth…

Of grief and responsibility...

Of power and generosity...

Of hope...

The money is all of these things, heavy in her mind. Though the alcohol in her blood keeps her breathing deep and even, Amelia’s not sure she won't faint under its weight.

Then, there are the words.

“You believed in me when others did not...”

“We will never forget your generosity…”

“You gave me your time…”

“I will always remember what you said…”

“Please accept what we can give in return...”

“Your letters changed my life…”

“Thank you, Naomi, from the bottom of our hearts...”

Amelia closes her eyes, hands balled in her lap to keep her fingers from shaking. It’s all too much. She rests her forehead on the cool wood of the table, next to her mother’s last notebook.

“These words are for you…”

The memory surfaces again, and her mother’s voice, cracking and dry and so very weak, filters through like music. The hospital room’s light shone in her mother’s eyes, glinting on the faint, uneven, still-wet ink of Naomi’s last pearl of wisdom.

“Keep you hands open,” she’d said.

Her mother hadn’t been speaking nonsense, after all. Those words weren’t for T-shirts and fridge magnets and suburbanite kitchen walls…

No. They were her mother’s heart… the inked expression of her life’s simple posture.

Naomi kept her hands open not to receive, not to blindly accept... but to give. She’d given, and given… and given. Now, the world felt her absence, and could not help but try to fill the space with a givenness of its own.

Her daughter sees the ripples left in her mother’s wake, and knows the course she must set.

Slowly, Amelia sits up, breathing deeply. She blinks at the openness in her chest, and knows, somehow, there will be no dreams tonight. Her mother’s last notebook lies open before her, an invitation, and as Amelia opens her hands to write... her fingers now still, now steady, now open to give, and give, and give... her tears finally begin to fall.