Delilah Pickhart - D4 - FIN

“Hey there Delilah, whats it like in district four?  I wanted to tell you that I think you’re doing a great job with what you have.  You were always the strong one of the family after all.  Even after six kids, you still are kicking, making a difference in people’s lives.”

That was the first letter I had found from my husband before he died last year.   It’s been hard without him, mostly because working was getting hard for me.  I enjoyed what I did, but sometimes I felt like I was getting too old.  Thats wasn't an excuse though, as I was younger than most of the medics I worked with.  I am the head of one of the infirmaries in four.  I mostly deal with kids after their training, healing wounds and patching up cuts and gashes when it was necessary.  People call me the mother they wish they had, because I always took care of the people that saw me as if they were my own children.  People appreciated it because it was a welcome difference from the usual parents I met here in four.  They were as cutthroat as the careers you would see in the games.  Hell, some of them abused their children on the regular, but they claimed it was because they wanted to make them stronger.  They would always try to explain it away saying that maybe they worked way to hard at the academy.  I just looked at them with a small, discouraged smile, looking at the child and putting my hand on their shoulder, hoping that was the correct story. 

“You do so much for all of us honey.  You are strong, fearless, courageous, and ferocious when you want to be.  Do you remember the time when you whipped my ass in a training session?  I fell in love with you that day.”

I used to be like some of these children.  I trained hard for quite a while actually, and I even prayed that my name would be called because that meant I got to escape from the hell that I lived every day.  Well, that was until I met my late husband.  But that’s a story for later.  A chance to be called and reaped into the games was what anyone wanted in four, simply because that meant there was a chance to become something more than what they were.  I wanted to be reaped because I hated myself.  I wanted to die.  I didn’t believe I would make it far.  However, on my eighteenth birthday, my name wasn’t called, and I broke down in tears.  I was feeling a lot of emotions that day, but the main one was terror.  It meant I was subjected to this life until I die.  Instead of being whisked away from one hell to another, I had to stay here in my own damnation.

“I love you, and I will love you even after I die.  I don’t care what people say about you.  You have made me a better man.  A more passionate man.  Someone that I could proud of.”

My husband was a great man.  He worked hard, training future careers for the games.  However, that wasn’t what got him killed.  Actually, I remember the day he collapsed on the floor in front of me.  I rushed him to the hospital, but they told me that the problem would just keep occurring as long as he was alive. They told me he didn’t have long, and that I should probably try to make him as comfortable as I could.  I was crushed, but that’s when I saw my husband in a different life.  He used to be the man who had something to prove to me.  When we were younger, I would always be paired up with him to spar.  Of course, it turned into a rivalry and then a secret crush.  I didn’t want to act on it though, because I knew that one of us would be reaped because that was just how fate worked.  However, both of us were spared in the reaping, and in the height of my emotions, we started a relationship.  However, we rushed into it, which I don’t think was the best idea.  I always felt like he thought he had something to prove to me, simply because he thought I was better than him. In those last days, he told me that he wanted to spend it on the water, and I obliged.  It was the happiest I had ever seen him after all.

“Now please take care of the kids Delilah, they are going to need their strong and courageous mother.  However, don’t take any shit from them.  Show them whose boss.”

We had six kids together, which seemed like a lot, but we were in love, and well, we couldn’t help ourselves.  Before I had kids, I didn’t want them.  It was enough that I went into medical training right after I finished career training.  I got to see enough kids to last me a life time there, but something changed.  Maybe it was the fact that I wanted more people to protect that shared my blood.  Maybe I just loved the idea of people suffering like me.  Maybe I just hated myself and my family.  I didn’t know, but I do have to admit, I was lucky to have six beautifully strong boys.  Six children that could help me in any way they could.  They were all about a year apart, and all of them had varying personalities.  I wasn’t going to lie, I was hard on the ones that were like my husband.  They reminded me of something that I loss.  Someone that was precious to me.  More than any gold the capitol could offer me.  The ones that were more like me, I urged to take up medical training like me, but actually, they were the ones who trained the hardest as careers.  The ones that I wanted to be careers were the more nurturing ones.  It was funny how that worked out to be honest.

“You are going to live till your old and gray Delilah.  I wish nothing but a wonderful life for you, and I hope you find love again.  I hope you find happiness and death.  I will always wait for you on the other side.”

When he died, I stayed in my bed for weeks.  I couldn’t move, talk, or be bothered with anything but sleeping and crying.  It took me a long time to get over him, but with the help of my oldest, who pushed me out of bed when I needed to get out and do something, I got over it.  However, one thing that always bothered me was how much I missed him and his optimism.  He was someone that I could look to, to find courage and hope.  When he died, I lost that, just like I lost my will to go on when I didn’t get reaped for the games on my eighteenth birthday.  I tried many things in order to see what made me happy, but then I realized that my work was what made me happy.  I loved to take care of people and make sure that they were loved.  Sure, I was hard on my children, but that was because I cared about them.  I wanted them to make the best of the possibly short time they had here in Panem.  It was something that I knew was bittersweet and honestly, I think it would have been easier to drown myself in a pool of acid then go on and live a life that I did not honestly love.  But then I remembered how much he loved the ocean, and just how at home he felt in the water.  So that’s when I decided that maybe that was my way of remembering him.  Going out every morning and swim.  Somedays my children would join me, and other days I went alone.  It just depended one how I felt after all.

“Remember, I will love you forever, and when you find these letters, promise me that you will cherish them as much as I cherished you.  You are my strong, beautiful, and caring wife, who I would have done anything for.”

I was going through the closet of our home one day, trying to figure out which piece of clothing looked better on me.  There was an old jewelry box that was on the nightstand that I hadn’t touched in years.  Well, not since my husband died.  It housed one necklace, and small, very small, pendant with a little bit of sapphire in it.  It was his favorite color, and my birthstone.  I hadn’t opened it or wore it in years though because it was too hard to look at it without being sad.  However, today was a different day, and I felt like maybe it was time to step away from my usual sad and depressive self and try it on again.  When I opened the box, I noticed a small stack of envelops under the necklace and I quickly grabbed them and looked at them peculiarly.  They all said, “Open them when found.” And so I did.  I basically ripped them open.  There were seven of them in total, and I couldn’t believe what each one said.  Each one was a little love letter that he wrote before he passed away, dating back a week before he died.  I dropped to the ground and quietly read to myself, thinking about how much I missed him.  It had been years since I thought about him like that.  I missed him everyday, but I had to keep moving on for my family.  I picked up the letters, organized them one by one, and read them aloud.  I couldn’t believe how much he loved me, and how much I still felt loved by him, even to this day.  The last letter was what got me the most however.  That’s when I pushed them aside, crawled back into bed, and cried myself to sleep.

“You know exactly what to do with these.  I will always love you Delilah.  Love Marcello.”

The next day, I picked myself, dusted myself off, and took the letters to the sea, where I threw them in, knowing that is where he would have wanted me to put them.  They were safe in the sea.