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Lo
It’s December and more bitter than usual. There’s a bite to the air that usually isn’t present in Hollow Ridge, our small town in SoCal. There’s a flurry of snow outside, whirling with the wind, reminding us that life is swift, brutal, and cold. It rarely snows here, but it’s almost a sign of the misery we’re yet to endure. Like the world knows my world is about to end before I do.
My phone jingles, ringing in the dark of night and vibrating on top of my night stand, effectively waking me up. The buzzing is stronger than I remember, but it’s probably from lack of sleep rather than a sudden increase in the high-pitched tone.
When a loved one is in the hospital for long periods of time, you can’t seem to sleep properly, and when you do, it feels like you didn’t sleep for long. It’s the awareness of being a zombie yet not being able to control the lack of life.
Checking the nightstand for my clock, I realize I’ve only been asleep for three hours. I left the hospital earlier, after spending the last five days there with my mom and dad, wondering where my heroin-addict brother is while our mother deteriorates.
Jase and I visit her every day, not missing a moment. It’s times like these that we remember what’s important and what no longer matters.
Every second counts.
I’ve already missed so much time with the kids. Ace, my son, constantly asks where I am. Mom needs me now more than they do, but they’re too young to understand.
Mom begged me not to bring Ace and Jaz. Not that either will remember her current state when they get older. They have developing minds, and Jaz is barely two.
Ellie and Toby, my two best friends, take turns watching them instead. They’re lifesavers. They haven’t missed a beat when Jase and I visit Mom, making sure she’s never alone.
Mom seems to be doing better lately. She’s breathing on her own but sleeping a lot too. The doctors say it’s normal, that she needs her rest. They also say she’s made improvement—that her lungs are working on their own.
After sitting up, I walk to the front room, not wanting to wake up Jase and the kids.
“Sweetheart.” Dad’s hoarse and somber greeting buries itself deep within my body. His normal honeyed tone, the one he offers me each time we speak, is gone. It’s hollow—barren of that warmth I’ve grown up with.
Something’s wrong. I can hear it in the timbre of his voice, feel it ricocheting inside my chest. No no no no no. Not yet. She was doing better.
They say you can feel life-changing moments as they take place, a sense of impending doom. They’re right. My mind’s on autopilot, an out-of-body experience looking in on the scene in front of me. Things echo around me, but the blur of the words and unfocused sound of it all is lost to me. I’m experiencing a vehement amount of tunnel vision.
“Dad?”
My throat hurts to get out the word. It’s an ache we become accustomed to when your parent lies sick in a hospital bed. The scratchy feeling is thick in the air, smothering me. I’m suffocating. Drowning. An abysmal emotion eats at me, piece by goddamn piece.
“She’s gone, baby girl,” he confirms solemnly, not waiting for me to ask, not allowing me to accept it in my mind before laying it out on me.
On the other end of the phone, I hear his cries, but I can’t focus on them. I can’t even focus on how slow my breathing has become. I’m somehow holding in this very long breath that makes my entire body feel death rising. My only focus is the words uttered in my ear.
Gone.
She’s gone.
Dead.
Never going to hear her say my name again.
No more laughs, chastising, or smiles.
No more holding and spoiling my kids with constant love and affection.
Nothing.
I understand him, but I don’t. How does one breathe? How do I get my lungs to inflate and deflate on their own? How can I accept these words as truth when I’ve only just visited with her hours before?
My body collapses to the laminate in a heap of insensibility while squeezing the phone in my hand as my only tether, my only means of staying present. The coolness of the floor doesn’t quite register in my mind, though my skin prickles. I can feel everything yet nothing at all. An agonized sob bursts through my throat before I can capture it and stuff it deep within me. They’ll wake up. They’ll hear. I can no longer hold in the pain as the memories of my mom flash through my mind, forcing the wails to explode from my mouth. My screams echo throughout my home, my very beautiful home.
My body shakes all the way to my toes.
She’s gone.
My mom, best friend and confidant, is forever lost to me.
“Baby girl, please, you’re breaking my heart.” My father cries on the other end of the phone with me.
His sorrow only multiplies my own. His voice cracks with each word as he attempts to assure me like he did when I was little. It no longer connects with my mind. It’s like I can’t even hear him. It registers as a plea but echoes like a vast cave in the mountains. They were married for twenty-nine years. He should be the sad one. I should be soothing him. He lost the love of his life—not me. But there’s no stopping my pain, no easing my distress, no tampering my heartache.
I’ve never felt pain such as this.
Somehow, my phone lands on the floor, and I screech as if my heart is being carved out of my chest. And it is. It’s being taken to wherever my mom’s soul fled. I’m no longer in control. I don’t want to feel this unsurmountable torment. She wasn’t old enough to pass. She was supposed to live longer, even if that’s not a realistic idealism.
My cries reverberate through the house, waking my children and husband, but nothing stops my heart from being kidnapped. No one stops the pain or alleviates the barren feeling inside. How could they? It’s not like they experience the same devastation I’m facing or sense the absolute torrential downpour of loss like the drought we’ve had all year. They couldn’t know.
We all knew she’d die. I’ve always known, but it doesn’t stop the bereft void in my chest. It doesn’t lessen the blow of her passing.
It hurts to breathe, and I want it all to stop.
I don’t want this pain.
Make it go away.
Please, please stop.
I don’t want to feel!
Blackness comes sooner than later, and the last thought on my mind?
Why’d you have to go?