I wonder if she’s there? Can she hear me?
I brush her hair out her eyes. Hands trembling—is it hers or mine? Her muscles lay slackened but stiff against the thin bed sheet. I watch her shalwar expand and contract with cautious eyes, tense at the tiniest movement.
I sit with my three sisters in her bedroom, two of us on the chairs turned towards her hospice bed, the other on my dad’s single bed parallel to hers. He kept himself busy that morning.
We chose not to move her to a hospice. We wanted her close, even though the house we were in was no better. It was a three-bed 1950s refurbished house with five of us—now six—living there. So much of me is still bitterly disappointed by all of it. We should have been in Kuwait, in our real home. But we hadn’t been home for eight years.
The small TV on the windowsill is on, but we’re not watching. We’re waiting. It’s been two weeks since you last ate and we could feel it coming. Death’s door—the final door is coming.
We got the diagnosis when I was on the cusp of sixteen. I look down at my Mama. She doesn’t look like a dementia patient. Her organs are hollowed in itself, the skin on her face stretched thin on bone, bloodless and pallid. Thin knees and arms, wrapped in layers of socks and leggings. The worst thing is being asked if you’re my grandmother by the nurses—I feel anguish correcting them.
I want to remember this day. I want to acknowledge who you used to be. But what is coming now, three years later? I thought this moment would be etched in stone for the rest of my life, but… I can’t remember it all. I can’t remember what you were wearing, was it even a shalwar? It’s all fractured and hollow in my mind. You know better than anyone, what a funny thing memory is.
I try not to look at your thigh, where the morphine drip is stuck in. When my eyes pass over it my legs get like jelly. I feel like fainting. I try to watch the TV.
Waiting at the deathbed is nothing like you see it in the movies. There is no final goodbye or a peaceful smile as they sink into oblivion. Well, maybe there is for some people. If I knew of any then I’d know that God plays favourites. But for the rest of us, the reality is that waiting at the deathbed is waiting. It’s mundane and boring, and the longer it goes on the more you feel like you’ve ingested poison.
We take turns at your bedside. One dad, three sisters, one brother. We all handle it in our own way except in one similar fashion—we don’t talk. I mean we talk, but we avoid the important things. We avoid looking at each other in the eye. We talk about the weather, Friends playing on TV, my silly coffee shop job. We want you to hear us laughing and joking until the final minute. Your mind is splintered across time but the sound of laughter will at least bring you comfort, we hope.
The hours stretch past, the sky grows dim and pallid—reminding me terribly of your skin.
I wonder, back then did we know this going to be your final sunrise?
Many times, we think you’ve quietly gone when we weren’t looking—we watch with bated breath as your eyes blink or your fingers jerk. I’m sick with fear that I will miss it.
I remember we called your family the day before, and they planned to fly out. Wildly, I remember wishing teleportation existed so we didn’t have to keep you in suspense. Your hands are limp, clawed inward from inertia. We hold it. Pointlessly. If we wished hard enough, could we hold your soul and prevent it from escaping before they got here? Your eyes wandered across the ceiling—I felt sick at the thought you might be looking for them. Is feeding a false hope a kindness or a cruelty?
The sun sinks deep below the horizon. The final door is swelling close.
My eyes scan you, hungrily taking in your face. Do you know it’s coming? There are so many things left unsaid, but the words are choked in me, I’m scared if I speak—I will scream.
Your chest heaves, slowing.
‘She’s getting close now.’
‘Someone, get your brother.’
We all try to coax him out one by one, anxious fear in our chests being away from you for any second. We shout, we cry, we beg—but he doesn’t relent. We’re running out of time.
Mama—did you have regrets? Did you wish for your life to be different? I want you to know that we tried our best to take care of you. Without you, we found it so hard to stand together.
I will you to look and recognise who I am one last time. Will you really die not knowing who I am?
‘Her breath is slowing down.’
You struggle to breathe. It unleashes a well of pain. My eyes are runny and blurred. I’m sorry I shouted at you, I’m sorry I cringed whenever you wanted to hug me. I’m sorry we gave you a hard time, fighting and scratching at each other like cornered snakes.
The final door opens, the air turning thick with ‘I love you’ and cries.
Your eyes blink slowly. Your head rolls, calmly.
My blood is screaming. Why wasn’t I hugging you every second of every day before this moment? It takes everything in me from grabbing you tight, gripping you to our reality.
A sigh. The sweet smell of peonies. Your peaceful face stares up in the silence. The door has closed behind your soul.
Goodbye Mama.
Maybe, I will see you again.
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