you get the purple glass and the amethyst ring that says "i love you"

"this is where my mother died" comes out muffled through a clean, nautically striped comforter.
laura just looks at me.

i'm trying to feel a motion that isn't my own, the last time she really held me, maybe, any movement that could remind me of before she went to sleep for all those days.

her breathing'd slowed, i remember sherry on the bed asking if i could feel the pulse in her left arm, but it was just my own.

"it's hard to find it, there" she'd said. but i could see the blood slipping through the veins in her tiny neck. her sunken chest rising and falling at irregular intervals.

"you can hug her" i'd told matt rose, "she won't wake up, though," and i touched her head which never felt so much like a skull before. this was the hardest part.

*         *           *

"how do you know for sure she's dead?"

because her breathing is just soft, you know, look. go put your hand on her ribs, you'll feel it. So my sister does, "there's nothing."

*          *          *

when he holds me like this, i cry. i want to shake her. i want to call out all the words i know for her that might pull her out of this empty stare, that might put her arms around me again saying "it's okay, it's okay" stumbling through the morphine.

"Ma? Ma. Mom? Mom. MOM." and i am a little girl again in the middle of the night and i am afraid of dying, afraid that she won't wake up, and that i will die, too.
"Mommy, do you love me?"
"i do." she is scratchy and weak.
"will you tell me?"
"come here," she says, asking with her hands to be pulled up, and she hugs me, "i love you."
"i'm scared!" i say, my face overwhelmed with a flush of blood and tears, "i know," she says.
"i don't want you to go away!"

his stomach in my back doesn't feel like the swollen belly that once held me. he doesn't breathe so slow, or heartbeat so slow, there isn't the familiarty of a Mother, and i don't hold his hand and pass out into a teary sleep.

i roll over onto my stomach and smother my face in the pillow.
"what's wrong?" he asks, tenderly and perhaps woundedly. 
"my mama's dying" i sob.

when i am almost asleep, i feel his kisses on my neck and shoulders, and then he makes love to me quietly and slowly before i pass out again.

my little sister's ring wakes us, and again, and again, so i know, but we won't move.
"they need to get up!" dad stomps around angrily, but we are still and still naked.
our other sister walks in and sits down next to me.

*           *            *

"the room is different." i sit up "the bed used to be turned this way."
and MattE and Laura look at me the way a husband or sister might look.

"the service was really nice," i said recalling Francis' and Matt Rose's readings, the incense and those jingle bells, so many people came. 

"the urn looked really nice." i said.

*           *             *

mother is on the couch, and it is the last time we are alone when she is still lucid. i am laying on the adjacent love seat and looking at her while she watches T.V., and i think of her glass collection, and the miniature cast iron stove with little pots and pans. i don't ask her if she remembers holding me the day before when her morphine was too strong, and i don't wonder if she will pass into a coma within the following days that turns her body skelletal, mouth dry and bloody, and eyes glassy like a dying bird's. despite her yellowed and sunken face, she seems fine. like she could live forever.

"I'm going to get a miniature pig," i tell her.
"oh yeah?"
"yeah, not yet. though. maybe when i'm in school. or after i get out of school. a little black one. i'm gonna name her Mildred."

she just smiles, and we watch T.V. for a little, interrupting with things that appear trivial and secretly important.

"can i have the stove?"
"of course you can."

Reviews

[Jayne Disdaine]

This is beautifully depicted and made me teary. There is noone as close and comforting as mum. It is heartbreaking to watch someone with that connection become less until they are gone and just a shell remains. So sorry for your loss.