Stay With Me [Joshler]

Stay With Me

The light was barely even there anymore. It only remained as a misty stream of pale grey which flickered limply through the tightly shuttered windows. Emptiness and a dense misery filled the room but avoided the space taken up by the at home hospital bed. The one we rented from the medical wing and set up in out dining room so that mum can be at home with us. Because dad couldn't stand not having her with us, I remember him explaining that it was so she didn't have to live off mushy hospital meals and processed air, so she could stay at home with us and tell me to go to bed and brush my teeth. The bed was a weak and rickety piece of equipment and looked as if it could collapse at any moment. Upon it lay a body shrouded in peace. My father's face looked drawn and pained as he sat beside the bed, my mother's limp hand grasped in his. The sweet doctor lady spoke to him in gentle, cautious voice. She started shaking her head sadly.

I was sitting on the drooping brown fabric lounge which smelt like mothballs when the nurse softly declared my mother to be dead. She apologized to my father in a professional manner and spared me a pitiful glance before announcing that she'll give us a moment and leaving the room.

Standing, I approached the foot of the bed slowly and examined how mum lay there so... so blatantly dead. Her once glowing skin was a cold, dull grey against the yellow blanket draped over her breathless body. Her pretty, flowing brown hair which was always light and soft like silk was plastered greasily to her hollowed out face. Her face which had an endless supply of bright smiles and twinkling eyes was twisted into a permanent expression of sickly sorrow. The memory of her wind chime laugh echoed through the silent room. It puzzles me still how someone so lively, so happy, so cheery, so damn bright could ever die. It just seemed impossible, even with her months of treatment and scary decline in health, for someone like her to die. She had so much life that I'd denied that it would be possible for all of it to be taken away from her. She'd smiled all the way to the end. She would refuse to stop smiling for me, refused to show the pain and sorrow that was eating her soul from the inside. My mind twisted with the fact that he body was empty, that she wasn't there anymore, that she was gone, that she'd been taken from us.

The living world was covered in a thick film of despair. Like heavy dust, it's choking and lands around the room darkly. Everything had begun to dull since mum got sick, it was just small things to begin with but slowly she began to fade and the world faded with her. Smiles which were once careless became weak and sometimes her eyes wouldn't know you. Sometimes she wouldn't even see you at all, she'd just stare blankly through you as if you weren't there. A flash back of before dances around my imagination, a memory of getting side tracked by mum's goofy games amidst practicing catch with dad. The bright sun is beaming on down at out little tight knit family through the thin branches of the autumnal trees, watching us as we roll around together on the soft green grass of out hedged front garden passing out smiles and spontaneous tickle fights as if they had no limit. My parents once gave the softest, meaningful and most perfect hugs and kisses as if they would never run out, as if they had all the time in the world. Together they would take turns in picking me up off my feet and spinning me around as if I were flying, weightless and free, like a rocket ship flying far away from any earthly troubles. Before the memory could even get me thinking about smiling sadly, I was crashing back down to reality. Falling through the layers and layers of what used to be and of what could have been before smashing back into the cold, hard cement of what had been left.

My sadness had exceeded tears as I remained standing there in guttered disbelief. The mood was like that of a shocking revelation; tense, quiet and deeply morbid, heavy with sorrow and a gut twisting suspense of what was going to happen next. How would life continue without her? How would the world keep turning? Josh comes up behind me, taking me around the shoulder and holding me against his side. I turn to him and bury my face into his shoulder, a small collection of burning tears falling quietly from my eyes, which remain unfocused, unable to truly see what's going on, just a blurry, faraway, out of body view of what was going on. Josh holds me tightly, hand running over my hair comfortingly, he doesn't say anything, he doesn't have to and I'm thankful for that. I'm thankful we can understand each other without words. Because there simply are no words for moments like these.