"Drown your sorrows." 
It was the last thing my mother said to me. I never understood why she said this to me, but it was her worldly advice toward everything. Drown your sorrows... Drown your sorrows...
It echoed in my head like a ragged metronome. Click. Click. Click. It wouldn't end. It droned on and on and those three words couldn't find it in them to leave my exhausted mind in peace. What did my mother mean?Why wouldn't it go away?
Click. Click. Still it stayed. Drown your sorrows. 
I thought about that irritating message. Why did she whisper such words into my ear. Her last breath. Why waste it on a riddle as such? I didn't know, but I was going to find out.
Once more the clicking banged on in my imagination, driving me to the point of insanity. I needed my mother, so I went to her.
The cemetery was never a pleasant sight at night, and it wouldn't be so gracious as to be a bit more... Comfortable.. For me right then. The night was weird and creepy with the wind whistling past my ear, howling at me, telling me of the question aching in my eyes. Drown your sorrows. But how?
I crept my way past the eery stones of people long withered away. I lifted my face to the sky, feeling the tears beginning to make its way to the fresh  soil, and sniffed the new rain smell. It cleared my mind a bit.  
I wandered over to one solemn, aging stone and kneeled with agony to it. As I bent down I could feel the pain again as if it was new in my mind. I played the scene over and over of how my mother had gone. 
"I love you." The words dripped out of my cracked lips like the blood in her veins were her own once more.
The breeze told me she was somewhere near by for it had an odd, sort of stale scent to it. I think she heard my statement to her.
"Talk to me." I urged with the air swirling around me. My hair whipped in the wind, batting against my rosy cheek. "Drown your sorrows." A branch smacked me in the arm, drawing me closer to the grave stone of my mother. 
I stared, my eyes boring a hole into the tomb. Under my mother's name was inscribed "Thy Swan a Crow" What could this have to do with my mother and Drown your Sorrows? I just didn't understand the predicament. It regarded me, and at the moment I was concerned about why and how. 
Click. Click. Click. The metronome sounded in my brain once more reminding me of my curious wonders. 
"Mom?" my words disrupted the peaceful, yet deadly silence surrounding me and the graves. 
She answered me, tapping my shoulder once more. What did she want? 
Peace... Peace was what she dreamed of. I knew it had to be peace. I heard a moan in the air and she knew I was right. I had to let her go.
I never shed a tear for my mother. Not one.. Could it be her wish for peace? Could it make the haunting of forever stop?
"Please, please, please" I thought. I directed my attention toward the "Thy Swan a Crow" at the front of her stone. 
"Mother... Mom... I miss you." I finally felt myself begin to let my emotions run free. They had been bottled up so tight in the pit of my stomach for so long and it was time for them to let loose. "I miss you so much and I wish you could be with me now. I love you mom. I do." I couldn't say much more. It was all too much for me; I had never been one to like crying and now that the pools were forming in the corner of my eyes, I had to let it all go. So I did. I sobbed at her stone, the words upon it blurry from my water filled eyes.
I tasted the salt of my tears, the scent was merely nothing. I wiped my weeps from my bitter face and spread them along my mother. It was then when I understood what she meant. I felt it through me, Drown your sorrows. Say goodbye, let go of the past, let those tears out and drown them so they can't see the light of day. Give them the chance to escape, but don't ever let them come crawling back to your beautiful eyes. 
I had to let my mother go. There was nothing left for me to say but a few heartsick words. 
I stood up from my kneeling knees and stepped away from the grave of my gone mother. She was dead to me and there was nothing I could do any longer. There was no point in dropping another tear to her advantage. She was lost. 
I sulked away on the trodden, damp earth, letting my feet drag behind my tired body. I turned one last time with eyes red and dry and gave one last smile before saying "Goodbye."