Still

Only fragments remain of the day my mother died. All I have are small pieces of memory that are jagged and hazy. I remember the slow, desperate beeping of the monitor by her hospital bed, each heartbeat just a blip on a screen. I remember the greyness of her skin, enhanced by the sheer whiteness of everything in the hospital. White walls, white floors, white bed sheets, grey skin.
I cannot remember if I was there for hours that day, or minutes, but I remember being still. I did not move, but let the beeping and the whiteness hypnotize me, lull me into a catatonic state that was somehow easier than being fully aware of reality. I had visited her many times before that day, and on none of them had I been so still. But somehow, I just knew that she would leave us that day. There is no way for me to explain how or why I knew, but I knew. There was a tightening of my chest, a shiver down my spine, and an ache in my heart that told me that day was her last day.
The beeping stopped. My stillness was broken, as was my heart. The last thing I remember was the whiteness, the insanity provoking whiteness of the hospital room, surrounding me, suffocating me.