Tik tok says the clock. All I can hear is the rhythmic ticking of the clock above my door. I keep glancing at it, hoping that the hands would somehow stop from moving or just slow down even for half a second.
The room is unusually colder. Did the nurse lower the room temperature again? I clasp and rub my hands together, searching for some warmth that used to be there. I could not feel it so I slowly shift one hand under my pillow. Ah! The other side of the pillow always feels better
I close my weary eyes for a while, tired from counting the hours remaining. I subconsciously mutter some words, terms that I have memorized by saying it everyday. My hand finds the rosary I kept under my pillow for three months that I have been here in the hospital. I keep mumbling the words, fighting the urge to shout them because I know I don’t have the strength to do so. I close my eyes so tightly that it stings, and in no time, tears start falling from my aged face. I try to wipe them away with my free hand and realize that this is one those days that my hand can not feel my face and my face can not feel my hand. With time, my body gone numb and I don’t get why my heart did not. I feel dead all over but my heart is full of life and memories.
I open my eyes and realize that it’s 10 minutes before six o’clock. The sun is setting and it is getting darker by the minute. I look at the window and squint my eyes even in dusk, trying to remember the smell of the fresh grass outside with my eyes alone. I remember those times when I could still feel warmth, when I could still shout, when I could still smell the grass. I remember it so clearly in my head that my mind starts to drift away from the white and cold place where I am lying to the time and place where I was happy and living.
My trance is disturbed by the happy voices I hear outside my room, footsteps getting louder as they approach my door. I look outside, it is dim and ominous alright. I never got scared of darkness like this before. I glance at the clock. Is it time yet? I anxiously shift my gaze to the door, to the direction of the sounds full of life, anticipating the faces that will prove existence. Just when the door opens and I can finally see them, my tired eyes fall slowly and my heart stops, no matter how hard I fight them not to.
The last thing I hear is the cheerful and innocent voice of my grandson followed by a long and seemingly endless beep from the machine beside me. After that, there is nothing but me and a light that did not separate me from life but did so from darkness.
