Why?

I walked down the hall again like I did everyday. This was my life now. It was always the same. The glaring lights, the shiny floors, and the smell of that disgusting antiseptic cleaner greeting me. I hated it. I especially hated the fluorescent lights. Those annoying flickering bulbs just wouldn’t give up and burn out, they would just hum and tick incessantly, mocking me as I’d walk under them as if to say, back again hmm?.

The smell though, it was fucking awful! It smelled as if some invisible crew constantly wiped down everything with an industrial-sized bottle of Purell when you weren’t looking to keep it smelling that way ALL the time. It got into your nose and coated your throat. You could almost feel it, fuzzy on your tongue, giving you the urge to spit. It choked me. I’d bite back the need to vomit and walk faster to her room.

There was no need to remember the room number now. I was on autopilot the second I stepped foot into the hospital. Sometimes I couldn’t even remember getting from the lobby to her door. It was like my feet were automatically programmed to find her.

I hesitate just outside composing myself. It’s time to put my smile on and show her I’m okay. I will not cry. I must not cry, I tell myself, as if crying will make her die faster. I can’t show her my fears. I can’t tell her that every time I walk down that hallway I wonder if it’s the last time. Today is not that day.

Her door is open like always and I see her before she sees me. She’s watching sports again. She’s taken to watching them because she says sports aren’t sad. She never really watched sports before she got sick, with the exception of an occasional Superbowl party here and there. Now, she could probably tell you who won the Sox game the night before AND their chances at making the World Series.

She had her face turned to the TV. She was so small now. Her little turban, that hid her bald head made her look even smaller. I was glad for it though. That little scrap of cloth hid the fact that her hair was gone, nothing but a memory now. She was thin too. She didn’t eat very much anymore. I wouldn’t find out until later that it hurt her to eat, as in physical pain just to try and swallow something down.

This person laying in the bed wasn’t my mom, but at the same time she was. Whispers of the laugh lines she once sported were still apparent on her thin face. Her eyes still sparkled when she had the strength to laugh, although sadness was mixed in constantly now. She was still a fighter too, hanging on against the odds. Yet I couldn’t look past the hospital gown sometimes and the frail emaciated arms sticking out of it, riddled with bruises and tubing. I took in a breath and stepped forward letting my presence be known.

“Hi mom!” I said, smile firmly in place. She turned her head to me and lit up like always.

“Hi sweetie,” she looked at me, taking me in like she always did, searching for something in my demeanor that only she would be able to find. “How was school? Is dad in the bathroom?” she asked having given up her scrutiny for now.

“School’s fine mom, don’t worry.” I said. As if school fucking mattered at all to me at this point. Being a freshmen in highschool was a cakewalk compared to the reality that you could lose your mom. All I had to do was get through the damn finals and pass, and then I could just focus on her and coming here.

“Dad will be in in a minute. I think he’s paying for parking for the week so he told me to come on up.” I told her.

My dad and I co-existed for my mother at the moment. Every effort was spent on her. As soon as I got home from school, we headed for the hospital. Mom had been in for awhile now and I can only remember one day that I hadn’t gone with him since she had been admitted. As we sat waiting for my father, my mind wandered back to that day:

I had gone with my friends after school to hang out. Since it was a half day of school, I figured I had plenty of time until I had to go see my mom. Before I knew it ,time had gotten away from me and we weren’t near a phone. This was a time before cell phones were such an extention of our lives, so I couldn’t just whip my cell out and call or txt home real quick. A part of me didn’t even want to find a phone.

I knew it was wrong not to call and that dad would worry, but I just wanted to pretend to be normal for one day. I just wanted to ignore the pain of feeling useless and be happy for two seconds. Sitting in that hospital room every single day waiting was taking it’s toll on me and slowly starting to drive me insane. When I finally found a phone to check in, I wasn’t surprised when it was my sister who answered and said she’d come pick me up. Dad had already gone to visit mom without me.

“How angry is dad?” I asked her more calmly then I felt when she got there.

“He’s not, actually. Mom said you needed today.” She told me.

Well that made me feel like shit, and not seeing mom made me feel even worse, because she defended me. My friends weren’t more important than her and I’m certain she knew that. She knew me better than I knew myself sometimes.

I fought back the tears when I saw my dad. He didn’t even look my way he just sat down and sighed. I braced myself for an angry lecture, but it never came.

“Just don’t do it again. I was worried and you missed seeing your mother,” he said looking at me finally.

I nodded, swallowing back the bile that was quickly rising after my foolish stunt. As if he needed to worry more these days. He looked awful. He hadn’t had a drink in awhile and it showed. He was edgier when he wasn’t drinking, but I was grateful that he wasn’t drunk all the time now. That would have made everything even harder and I think he realized that. He didn’t drink again until after.

I snapped out of my memories when he walked into the room. He was smiling (he was good at masking it too) “How you feeling hon?” He asked, knowing the probable answer.

“Today has been....okay,” she answered.

We all knew she was always in pain now. Some days were just more manageable than others. She lay there day after day waiting, for a miracle I suppose.

Then one day her doctor came in and suddenly she had a choice to make. She could try this new experimental drug that had a less than 10% chance of being effective. It was a last ditch effort to eradicate the cancer that was consuming her body. When the doctor left, my mom turned to me. I knew things were really bad if she was asking the fifteen year old what to do, but I let her ask anyway.

“What do you think?” she asked me, her eyes not giving anything away about what she wanted to hear.

I knew what answer I’d give. I’d been thinking it since the doctor left. “I think less than ten percent, is better than no chance at all,” and that was all I said as I smiled at her. She smiled at me and nodded.

But we both knew deep down that this was it. This was the last effort to hope for. She let the doctor know her choice … our choice. They started her on the drug immediately and we quickly found out that she was not a part of the lucky percentage.

She was dying; all that was left was to accept it. I had prepared for this. Hell, I had prayed daily for her to die once I knew she wasn’t going to get any better. She was in so much pain and I prayed to put an end to that pain. But to accept it? Never. I couldn’t accept it then and I can’t now either. I will never understand it.

The night before she died we were all there late. Visiting hours don’t apply to families who are waiting for their loved ones to let go. Everyone in the room tried to find something to do. Some of us made quiet idle small talk, while some of us tried to busy ourselves with little tasks, like tidying up the room or going to get coffee. None of us could stand the thought of literally waiting around for her to die.

All night she said her goodbyes to each of us, and we braced ourselves as we watched the last of her strength start to leave her body. She kissed my siblings as they sobbed helplessly, and whispered words of encouragement and hope to them. I stood back silently until she called me to her. She whispered to me so low that only I could hear her words.

“You are the strongest little girl I know and I know that you are going to be okay and I’m not worried about you at all,” she pulled back, smiled, and gazed up at me with that same knowing look.

She tried to hold on for my sister, who was out of town at the time, but though her heart and spirit were willing, her body had other ideas and was giving out fast. She began to cry and asked us if it was bad that she couldn’t hold on. We told her that it wasn’t bad at all and our sister wouldn’t want her to be in pain anymore on her account.

Her breathing became shallower. Each breath came on slower and slower. A couple of times I watched in horror as her chest would rise and fall and then not rise for a few seconds like some twisted form of torture. Her body went on like that for what seemed like forever. It’s an awful thing to watch someone’s body start to give out and die. I watched her take another breath, knowing that any moment now could be her last one and just when I thought that maybe she was going to hold on a little longer, she did the one thing I’d been dreading all along. She took one last small breath and just like that, in the early hours of the morning, in one moment,... she was gone forever.

The nurse who had become a part of our lives during our stay had come in to shut off the machines. My brother pleaded for her to wait. It was a useless effort, but I think he thought that maybe she’d start breathing again if we just let the machines help her. I knew she was gone though and I think deep down he knew it too.

That awful constant alarm signaling the stop of her heart blared loudly in the thick silence of the room. Then there was nothing but the quiet sobbing of my sister. She had held up well, until she heard that sound and then she just couldn’t contain her sadness anymore. She went into the bathroom to cry, unable to spend one more second in the room. My brothers cried silently where they stood. Great pillars of strength reduced to tears by this small slip of a woman, who gave up so much to help raise them.

I thought of my sister who was away, and in a small way I was glad she wasn’t here to witness all this sadness. I knew she was miserable wherever she was, but I wouldn’t ever wish this feeling onto anyone. I almost wished I was where she was and she was here in my place.

I gazed out the window half expecting to see something incredible. Nothing. There was no disaster to mark her absence, no great break in the clouds to let the sun pour through, showing she’d made it somewhere better. There was just a hole that opened up and I was sinking into it faster and faster.

I didn’t speak unless absolutely necessary. What was there to say anyway? She was gone. Gone. Such a small word to describe something so devastating. Gone meant no more of her smiles. It meant no more of her hugs and worst of all, no more of her sweet laughter. Gone didn’t even begin to cover the gaping hole that became my heart. I didn’t cry either. I couldn’t cry. Ironically, now that it was expected of me, I couldn’t produce a single tear.

A few days later we had a wake for my mother. Suddenly it seemed like everyone who had ever met her came to pay their respects. I bitterly wondered to myself where they were when she was in the hospital. She could have used their friendship then. I bit back my hateful thoughts, and waited my turn to shake clammy hands, receive awkward hugs, and accept words of condolence from an array of family and friends.

I’ve always hated the words: sorry for your loss. It’s just something you say when you don’t know what to say. The only thing worse than hearing this phrase over and over, was the phrase: oh my God! you look so much like your mother. I got that phrase a lot, along with many assurances that my mother was so proud of me. Apparently she was immensely proud of me, according to the fifty five or so people who let me know that little fact.

Strangers would grab my hand and sob at me saying my mother’s name and telling me some story they remembered from before I was born that they suddenly felt needed remembering at that moment. I had to get away from it all. I went outside to get some air. I couldn’t take one more person giving me that look of sympathy mixed with pity.

I thought about my family inside. My brothers and sisters were keeping busy welcoming people and showing them where they could sit. My father was bearing it better than I ever thought he could although much like the rest of us, he was in a sort of daze. Even my mother’s side of the family was holding up okay.

My mother’s side of the family all live in Canada. Her mother and all her siblings but one, made the trip for the wake and funeral. I imagine it couldn’t have been easy for them to travel to the States under such miserable circumstances. They had driven a long way to make it here in time, just to be bombarded with sadness and the well wishes of strangers.

My aunt had it the hardest of all. She looked identical to my mother, only a bit thinner. People would go to shake her hand and freeze as if they were seeing the ghost of my mother right there in front of them. Then they would come out of their stupor long enough to say sorry for your loss, and continue down the line whispering to whoever they were with how much they couldn’t believe the resemblance. She had to leave the room a few times to compose herself. Being told how much you look like your sister, who’s barely twelve feet from you, dead in an open coffin, is not easy for anyone to handle.

I came back in to sit down. All night everyone assumed I was trying to keep it together. I made a good show of appearing calm and unaffected, yet it was all I could do not to outwardly claw at the walls to try to escape the feelings of dread that had settled over me. I wanted to disappear. I wanted to die too. I wanted to trade places with my mom, but I couldn’t.

The service was finally over. I went to sit next to my brother. He was hurting so much when they finally closed her casket. He couldn’t bear for them to close it and when they did he lost it, as if closing it meant that she was really gone now. He put his head in his hands with his elbows on his knees and he broke down entirely, the sadness rolling off of him.

I couldn’t take it. This was my brother. My strong, wonderful brother who could handle anything. But he was so much like mom too, sensitive and quiet. The tears came before I could stop them. I held him around his shoulders and he leaned into me as we cried together. What the hell kind of world had it become where the kid sister was the stronger one?

I held him until it was time to leave. We all didn’t say much. Our friends expressed how glad they were that I had finally showed some grief. They were worried that I was repressing it, since that’s not healthy. I nodded and gave them a small smile, not willing to admit that my breakdown had more to do with seeing my brother fall apart, then a representation of my true feelings.

The day of her funeral came. It was all a dull blur to me. It was as if there was a haze surrounding the entire day. Someone sang a familiar song, but it left a bitter taste in my mouth. It wasn’t good enough. She deserved an orchestra and a full choir to sing in her honor. So I sat there and listened to the prayers and the kind and gentle words spoken by my brother-in-law.

She had asked to be cremated, so at the close of the funeral it ended more like a concert, minus all the applause, with people crowding down the aisles filing out of the church. The fact that she wasn’t being buried then bothered me. There was no immediate closure, so it felt … unfinished.

When the service was over, everyone was crying. My best friends were crying, my family was crying, even strangers that didn’t really even know her were sad and crying from the magnitude of grief surrounding them. Not me. I was angry. A little black flame was burning inside me and was steadily growing stronger. Why? Why had this happened? How could this be my new reality? I was pissed. I was livid to the point of spitting in disgust. I held it in though. I stored the anger and venom deep inside me not knowing when it would come out.

We all went home that night to my house and my uncles brought out their guitars and as they began to play, we all began to sing. We sang old country songs that we all knew by heart and had sung a thousand times before. We sung some of my mom’s favorite songs too. We even sang silly songs about chickens laying eggs and the feisty rooster that helped them along. It was an evening full of the joy that comes from sharing a strong bond. We were family, and one of our own was missing now and we sang for her from the depths of our hearts, willing our words to reach her in the way that only pure music can. We sang well past midnight, the music flowing and humming all around us. As long as we didn’t stop, the pain of the past few days was kept at bay. It was a beautiful thing to behold, all of our voices true and clear ringing out into the darkness of my backyard. We were all a part of something magical that night, something I wouldn’t soon forget.

Reality came back with a vengeance. Weeks passed since my family had gone back home and mom was still dead. I had gone to her closet a thousand times to smell the faint scent of her left on all her clothes. I would bring them to my nose and bury my face in them overwhelmed at the thought that I’d never see her wear them again. I could never again tease her for her little yellow outfit with her yellow matching sneakers. She was really gone.

Nothing could have marked her absence more blatantly than the ugly disarray of the house. It became a pigsty and a mockery to how neat my mother had kept things. The sink was full of dishes, there was a gross pink ring in the toilet, and the laundry was getting way out of hand for just two people living there. My father didn’t clean and I never cleaned up unless my mom yelled at me and that wasn’t going to happen. So it remained that way for awhile as a constant reminder of what we’d lost.

My dad and I barely spoke. My mom was the one who told him about how I was doing in school, what grade I was in, and things like that. Without mom there as a bridge of communication between us, we had nothing to talk about. We just went about our day walking on eggshells, avoiding talking about anything that mattered and only speaking to each other about mundane things like the weather and options for dinner. Then one day he snapped over a load of laundry.

“You have to help me out here!” he shouted angrily.

“I don’t know what to do!” I cried back. The hot angry tears were close but never fell.

“Just help me with the dishes and the cleaning. We can’t just keep doing nothing! Just talk to me would ya!” he said, his anger leaving as quickly as it had surfaced.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and I was.

We didn’t say anything more that night, but things got marginally better and we started talking a little more to each other. It wasn’t a perfect existence, but at least the tension of her death had finally broken between us. I still hadn’t cried, but that was about to change.

One day the dam burst. Like a physical being, my anger boiled over out of it’s pot and spewed out of my mouth in the middle of my living room. Dad wasn’t home. I was thankful for that, because I wasn’t sure I could have stopped the torrent of hatred even if he was there.

“Why?” I asked the room angrily.

The room didn’t reply, though I half expected it to with how strongly I had demanded an answer.

“Why?” there it was again, the one question I had no answer to.

“Why?!” I asked a little louder this time.

“WHY??!!!” I screamed. The question was palpable this time. It hung there in the emptiness of the room like a bright blinking neon sign.

“WHY HER?!!” The screaming continued and so did the questions.

“WHY did you take her? Why her? Why not me?! Shit, why not my dad?” I felt ashamed having said it, but didn’t take it back and continued on.

“He doesn’t even know anything about me! You left me with him?” I said the word him as if it tasted like something awful.
Suddenly I realized who I was screaming at, and it did nothing to quell the fire. If anything, it burned stronger. I had talked to God before, but not like this. I would usually pray for or ask for things from Him. It was your typical silly meaningless dribble. But not today. Today God and I were at war and I just might win. I was that mad!
"How could you?!” I questioned.

“HOW DARE YOU!!” I screamed again. “What could you possibly fucking need her for? I need her dammit!!! How could you understand? You don’t know a damn thing!!!! I hate you!”
The words left my mouth icily as I glared at the ceiling, willing God to understand.
“I HATE YOU!!!! Do you hear me? I don’t need a fucking thing from you!!! Never again....” I trailed off.

Now I started to ramble. All the thoughts that had been swirling around my mind for weeks were surfacing and I voiced them aloud. “Everything happens for a reason.....”I babbled to myself. “God has a plan....” I muttered and then snorted. I laughed loudly at that thought. It was a cold mirthless laugh.

“What a fucking joke! You have no plan!!! How do I even know you’re real, huh?! What fucking God does this to a person?”

“WHY?!!” I was screaming again.

“Why?" My voice was getting hoarse, but it didn’t matter.

“What did I do wrong? Tell me! TELL ME!!!! Why did you punish her?

“You couldn’t have hurt me for whatever I did?” I had thought about it long and hard and I was convinced that she died because of something I did, or perhaps something I didn’t do.

“Damn you!” It was getting harder to focus now.

“You COWARD!!!! She didn’t deserve it!” Everything started to get blurry.

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!” I shrieked in frustration and fell to my knees the weight of everything pressing me down.
Over and over I quietly asked, “why?” The fury was gone and now I just whispered the question kneeling there defeated, unseeing, and alone. My eyes were full to the brim. The tears had finally come. I cried and cried. They streamed out like a flood, wave after wave down my face. This was not a simple little cry, but a great sobbing mess of emotion! It was raw and gut-wrenching and I couldn’t begin to contain it as it tore out of me. I gasped at the intensity of my despair, not being able to gulp in enough air to breathe. The weight of the pain was so awful I could barely stand it.
Broken. That’s what I was. She had died and I had died right along with her, only I was left behind without her. The tears flowed until I couldn’t cry anymore. There was nothing left in me to let out. God and I never spoke again. I had nothing more to give of myself. I didn’t believe anymore. I didn’t even know if my heart would ever work properly again. I had somehow killed my mother by not being good enough. What the hell was I gonna do now?
{/left}