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“I didn’t know you believed in an afterlife,” I say.
She shrugs. “If that’s what you call it. But it’s something more than that. The people you love mold and change you like a sculptor shapes clay. One day, the sculptor’s hands will permanently go away, but that doesn’t mean their influence is no longer there. You’ll be covered in their fingerprints, all their little quirks and idiosyncrasies, and you’ll know that it’s there because it’s a gift from the people who loved you.”
“Will I ever stop missing her?” I ask.
“No,” Isa replies, her eyes distant. She knows better than anyone what it means to lose someone you love. “But the pain will shrink. And you’ll find love again. None that will ever replace the holes carved by the ones you lost, but new love in new forms that will make the pain feel even smaller in comparison.”
I sniffle, wiping the tears from my cheeks. When I look down at Mama, she’s staring right at me, her eyes clearer and more focused than they have been in days.
She’s looking at me like she recognizes me. Her lips move like she wants to say something, and we lean in, our ears practically to her mouth. “You’ll be okay,” she rasps weakly. “Love you both.”
“Love you, too,” we echo.
I press a kiss on her forehead. “Thank you so much for being my mom. You were the best anyone could ever ask for.”
She smiles. For a moment, I hope that she’s turning a corner and getting better, but that hope is quickly dashed. Those final lucid words seem to sap the last of her strength.
Her eyelids droop closed, and when she breathes out, she doesn’t inhale. She’ll never inhale again. With a war going on outside and a planet surrounded by pain and misery, Mama dies at peace, a smile still on her cracked lips.
It takes me a moment to realize that the wailing I hear is coming from me. It’s something guttural and primal, and though my belly gets in the way, I curl over Mama in a sort of embrace as I sob.
It’s not fair. It’s just not fair! She was so close to meeting her future grandchild, but now she never will. Mama deserved so much better than this shitty nightmare of a life.
I feel a hand rubbing my back, and through my own sobs, I can hear Isa crying as well. Her cries, though, are softer. Stifled, perhaps. Or, perhaps, she’s run out of tears after all the death she’s seen.
A part of me keeps expecting Mama to stir. I imagine she’ll sit up, smile, say that she’s fine, and ask if her holostreams are on. But that’s never going to happen again. She’s gone.
Isa makes the funeral arrangements. We can’t afford anything worthy of her, but we have her cremated and hold our own service.
It’s just us and a few other people who live nearby and remember my mother as she was before her illness. We hold the funeral at night.
Back when she was healthy, she loved the stars. When I was a kid, she would take me and Dad camping in some remote area of Armstrong just so we could gaze at the night sky without any light pollution. She would point out constellations, and we would make up the stories behind them.
After the initial bombings and the city deciding to equip everyone with blackout curtains, Isa and I would sometimes wheel her to the garden to look at the stars. She was devastated when she was no longer strong enough to go.
I think she’d want us to say goodbye under those stars.
But I can’t bring myself to scatter the ashes in that winter-ravaged garden. Maybe after the war, I’ll find that old camping spot and take her there to rest. For now, the urn sits on the nightstand beside her bed.
The next morning, I sit at the kitchen table picking at our rations while Isa says goodbye to a neighbor who had dropped by with some flowers and spare food. My lower back and legs have been aching on and off for hours, making it difficult to sleep. The joys of pregnancy.
“How are you holding up?” Isa asks.
“Been better,” I reply and look up to meet Isa’s tear-stained face. “You?”
“I feel like shit,” she answers honestly. “This really sucks.”
“You’re telling me,” I reply, and then a cramp hits me, this one stronger than the others that came before. I let out a groan and feel a dampness between my legs. Did I just piss myself?
Wait.
Oh. Oh, no.
My heart rate spikes. “Isa, I think my water just broke.”
Her eyes widen. “It what?”
Tears blur my vision as my chest tightens in panic. No, no, I can’t lose anyone else. I can’t.
