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Kieran clears his throat as a hospice nurse comes in, stepping back away from the bed. His eyes are red, his features taut as he struggles to remain stoic—trying to protect me from seeing his pain, I suppose, but it’s there in the way he curls his fists and swipes under his nose, increasing the pressure of the emotion caught in my throat.
He disappears from the room after a few beats, leaving just my father and me and the nurse; eventually, my father squeezes my shoulder and leaves, too. I don’t look at him, afraid that if I do I won’t be able to contain the visceral sadness welling up inside me, threatening to spew like a volcanic eruption.
And it’s not that I care if they see me bleed out, because even the sun hides behind clouds from time to time.
I just want my grief to be confined between my mother and me.
Selfishly, I don’t want to share it right now.
When the door closes and I’m left completely alone, I crumble, burying my face in her lap and letting the tears burning my throat spill, soaking the blankets beneath me. Sobs rack my body, shaking me with their raw intensity, and I cry for all the things I don’t get to have her here for, all the things I’ll never be able to tell her.
I mourn my best friend, cursing a universe that’d take the purest soul out of its rotation but leave the evil here to dwell.
My heart splinters into a million little pieces in that bedroom, broken and bloodied and aching like never before. I lose track of time as I lay there, but eventually I sit up and collect myself, sniffling, and press a kiss to her forehead, the emptiness in my chest throbbing as I walk to the door, leaving her there.
The hospice nurse is sitting in the hall when I come out, and she takes my place, preparing my mother’s body to be transported to the funeral home.
Heading downstairs, I leave the lights off, the moonlight filtering in through the windows the only guiding presence as I make my way to the greenhouse.
Kieran and my father are already sitting out there, having pulled up lawn chairs in front of the first row of plants. My brother holds up a Styrofoam cup, pointing to the pink chair between them.
I walk over and take the cup silently, plopping down in my designated spot.
“She loved chocolate shakes,” Kieran murmurs after a moment, breaking the spell of quiet that’d settled around us, shattering the darkness.
My father reaches over with his free hand, squeezing my knee, and I tip my head back, admiring the stars through the glass roof as I suck on my straw, swishing the dessert around my teeth.
Tears prick my eyes again, blurring the sky until it becomes a kaleidoscope of color and souls, strangely comforting in their ambiguity.
Closing my eyes, I blink the tears away, focusing on the way my breathing comes and goes from my lungs without fail, without conscious thought, noting the things I can control and releasing the ones I can’t.
