Trigger warning: there is death.

The day was the same as any other. The spring sun shone through the sliding glass window in our three-bedroom apartment. I had stayed up all night, and it had been decided that I wouldn’t go to school in the morning. It was a Friday, and I was excited for a three-day weekend. My sister perched on the bathroom sink. She was always much smaller than me, even with an eight year age gap. She would tweeze her eyebrows, pick at problematic pimples, and apply fancy moisturizers. As much as I hated my older sister at 12-years-old, I still idolized her entirely.

Mom was back from the hospital. She had been back for a few weeks maybe. It was around nine in the morning, and she had a home visit scheduled. I sat in the living room as the nurses came in and checked her vitals. She seemed uncomfortable, but not excruciatingly so. They told her she seemed fine and left.

Even before she got sick, my mom always needed care. We would make her iced tea filled to the top with ice just the way she liked it. We would refill her shot glass; she usually asked for a double. We would grab her random snacks or heat up left overs. As her illness progressed she began to need more attention, and so we would take turns staying in the room with her. After the nurses left, I became bored of “As the World Turns,” a soap opera she and I used to watch faithfully together. I turned the corner to the bathroom and asked my sister if it was “her turn yet.” She said it was fine; I could go into another room. In the days leading up to this, we had lost connection to the internet so I went into my mom’s bedroom to work on homework. Dale had already left for work as it was an early day for him.

Around 30 minutes had passed when my sister rushed into the room. She began to gather the things that mom frequently requested when she would go to the hospital. Her non-slip socks, a blanket, her nicotine inhalers. My sister told me that mom wasn’t doing so great and that she would take her to the hospital. A few minutes later she returned and said that she had called the ambulance; it took them close to twenty minutes to get there. My sister told me to stay in the bedroom.

As the paramedics arrived, I could hear my mom gasping for air in the other room. It was a loud, hearty breath. The kind someone makes after they’ve been stuck underwater for a minute too long. The paramedics worked on her in the living room. I could hear them chatting and giving orders. Then they took her with them.

My sister came back into the room and said we would leave to go to the hospital in a few minutes. When we got there we were directed to a small conference room. We sat and waited until someone finally came in to update us.

“I’m sorry to be the one to inform you, but your mother has passed.”

We didn’t cry. Neither of us did. Mom didn’t like crying, she always made that clear. The woman who had told us the news pestered my sister about not crying and I snapped back at her saying that she wasn’t an emotional person. We were made to wait some more so that my sister could sign paperwork.

I excused myself to the bathroom and found that there was a line. As I sat outside of the bathroom doors, the stale hospital air exhausted me. Something about fluorescent lighting makes everyone look sickly. I began to sob, but restrained its force with all of my effort. I wasn’t the kind of person to cry in public. As a woman passed, she told me everything would be ok. When the bathroom finally opened I locked the door and stared in the mirror as I allowed myself sorrow. After a few minutes I returned to the dimly lit conference room.

As we left the hospital that night, my sister and I breathed a sigh of relief. We were free.

To Be Continued…