Repeat After Me

Chapter 60

They said my grandmother was in a coma. The room was the definition of depressing. A nurse rang mum and said that it was time. It was 2am when my mother and I arrived at the hospice. It was dire and horrible and pain skinned me, but there was a small blessing in all of this; my mother wanted me to be here with her at the end.

We sat by my grandmother's hospital bed watching silently. The nurse said my grandmother's heart rate was twice as fast as normal. I wouldn't have known by looking at her, she was completely still. I couldn't even see her chest rising and falling. Her eyes too were perfectly restful.

It'd been three hours, sunlight was beginning to bruise the curtains. We'd raced to get there, but even though 'it's time', death doesn't play by anyone's schedule. It was too strange to speak. In some ways it was stranger than it was sad. Sitting by someone's deathbed is otherworldly; smells are turned inside out, sounds become amplified, a wheezing breath becomes loaded with meaning. Her hands were placed neatly by her sides, palms down. It was silly of me, but I thought about a day at the beach when my brother and I buried each other in the sand. He created coconut shells on my chest and scales on my mermaid tale. The sand was warm and cosy as I lay there still, hands by my side, palms faced down. These were frivolous thoughts, but there was so little else to think about sitting around waiting for a person to die.

Mum leant in to her. 'Did you hear that?' she asked.

'What?'

'Her breath. It rattled. Listen.'

We held our breaths. It was true, my grandmother's breathing had changed.

My mother grabbed my hand and held it tight. We watched as my grandmother's mouth opened a little, like a baby bird wanting to be fed. We heard distant echoes of life rattle through the chamber of my grandmother's body. We thought it was the last breath, but a moment later there was another breath. Death is as confusing as life is confusing. Then there was another last breath, and another, and just when we expected there would be another breath, there was none.

My mother squeezed my hand and soon she was embracing me. A breath was blowing in our relationship. I am here at the end. I am here with my mother. I am here.