Fierce Tears

I don't know how, but, mother, you are alive again.

I have mourned you for two years. I have wept and cursed at what happened to you. I have raged at the callous systems and careless politicians who created a living hell and then imprisoned you there, where your body curled and withered, a prison within a prison, condemned to a suffocating descent towards a choking death, terrified and alone.

We were prevented from being with you by a wall of glass. We could not comfort you, nor distract you from your unspeakable fate. But we could observe every vile torment.

And now, somehow, you are in front of me.

I am slumped in a big wooden chair with wipe-clean upholstery. Its discomfort is familiar to me. Apparently I was sleeping, but I don't feel drowsy. In front of me are the railings on your bed from the care home.

I sit up sharply. A newspaper slides from my lap.

I stare around the room at photographs of us, books you devoured, compact discs you never tired of, pillows you yourself had quilted and sewn... I remember them all.

How can this be? And when can this be?

I crane over the headlines on the floor: Federal Reserve emergency rate cut; racist attacks linked to Coronavirus conspiracies...

The masthead tells me what I want to know: March 4th, 2020.

I hear you dozing in your bed, your breathing congested. I stand from the chair and come round to your side. Pale sun lights your face. Your blue eyes blink and shimmer as you wake and see me standing next to you. I sense your surprise, and your pleasure, at seeing me here.

But this is nothing compared to the maelstrom inside me.

You were dead. We cremated you.

I take your hand, bony and stiff. I wrap my fingers between yours because your own are incapable. You struggle to form a smile.

The degenerative condition which brought you here has taken your voice, and almost your expressiveness. I can see the symptoms are severe, but they are not yet life-threatening.

These were the months of plateau, where the disease crept its insidious way through your joints and your muscles and your brain. We had been told what was to come. There was nothing anyone could do to slow it or prevent the condition's inevitable conclusion.

But that was... three? Four years ago? But yet it is also now. All that time and suffering has been unwound.

Did I dream that living nightmare?

No. Your last months are tableaux chiselled in my memory. I remember the cold as we sat under umbrellas in the rain outside your window, while you were isolated inside. Your window became the screen upon which we watched an obscene drama play out.

We saw physiotherapists contort your joints which only made you scream. We watched your hunched body, hacking and choking as you fought for breath. We protested the nurses who signaled that they could not give you more painkillers.

My last memory of you was the last time I looked through that window. I saw you exhausted by the fight, the tube in your nose, your crusted eyes staring at nothing, your body wracked by unnatural torsions, and my cold reflection, unaware that I would never see you alive again.

But now I can see the future. I know the future. These memories are now foretellings.

I drop your hand and back away.

Why must you endure this suffering again? Why am I cursed to stand by and watch once more?

I fall into the chair, my hands on my face, trying uselessly to stifle the sobs that shake my body, failing to contain the tears which flow between my fingers.

I hear you trying to speak, through the condition's muzzling. Your words are just murmurs, but I understand: seeing me like this disturbs you.

Because you've never seen me cry. I never showed my vulnerability before. It took your dying and my grieving to unlock that part of me. Because if I had not learned how to let go, I would have shattered.

Your gnarled fingers reach toward me. I stand and take your hand once more. My red eyes meet your blues.

Then I understand why I am here. The date. This slim opportunity before we are again separated by cold, hard glass.

"Mum," I begin, timing my words between the heaving of my chest. "I've seen what is coming..."

You look at me strangely.

"It will be terrible, awful..."

You turn away. You don't want to hear this, I know. You never wanted to talk about this, you never wanted to bring those images into the light. Because I know they kept you awake at night. Primal existential terrors which even handfuls of pills could not suppress.

"I cannot let that happen. Not again."

I take the pillow from behind your head. You look at me and you know what I intend.

And I can see you do not want this.

But if you had seen what I have seen, you would beg me for it.

I press the pillow down on your face. Your withered hands cannot prevent me. Your weak murmurs are easily stifled. Your legs are too curled and crooked to twist yourself around.

You died once, terribly. You can die again, quickly.

But I feel your fight, I feel your rage. I know at this moment you rage against me, but I also know – both already now and in a future I will not allow to repeat – your rage was toothless in the face of your condition.

I keep pressing down against your weak writhing. My tears drip on the pillowcase. As you weaken and your life fades, I am filled with certainty that this is why I was returned here. This is what I was always meant to do.

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

– Dylan Thomas

Written for Alexander McEvoy's Hear ye! Hear ye! Unofficial Challenge

Write a story about someone sent back in time to before the start of the pandemic lockdown, March 11th 2020.

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