The last breath

In her last breath that she breathed out, I breathed her breath into mine. I felt the last of her life force, with a knowing I had to complete her final chapters that were stolen prematurely from her life.

I kept my hands under her head for endless days, knowing that if the last of her little hairs that managed to survive on that balding head were to touch that pillow, the bile and blood that filled her mouth was to choke her and lead her to an even sooner death. The acid from the bile was eating away at her skin on her chin and every time I wiped her, it would reveal more of her bone.

How many others had died in the same heartless way before her, or so I had thought, for at that time I was only a child and it was my first time someone had died in my weary little arms. She was all eyes, skin and bone. Her skin was ulcerating all over her body. Her bones also riddled with cancer, along with her liver, breast, lymph and brain. The horseshoe shaped staple guns that spread across one side of her skull is so archaic looking back, but it was the least frightening of sights. Her liver filling up like a balloon, needing to be drained. I thought pushing her around in a wheelchair was hard before she became bedridden. She was fighting for her every last word and trying to gasp for air. Her eyes wide open searching desperately for even just a wince of reprieve. I want to extrapolate my focus on the decay of her body because we focus so much on beauty that we forget to appreciate that our bodies are alive and well. We waste so many years on wanting to look better when all we need is our bodies to function.

Double decades have past and many deaths I have surpassed, none even a battering of an eyelash as close to what I witnessed with her, not because she was my mum but because of the way she suffered.

Now her clocks of time were wearing mine.

Death has the most amazing way of making you see life for how you were meant to, ironically too late to appreciate.

Until you see death you will never see life with real eyes. Everything that was so important in life is so irrelevant in death.

Everything she believed before she was sick in her most perfectly beautiful and healthy body, her most perfect and brilliant mind, and her most perfect and selfless heart, all fell from the skies like the last water droplet to ever touch the earth.

All those summer swims on every sunny, summer day on one of the most beautiful beaches on earth, we walked together hand in hand, almost every afternoon. Never appreciating it while we had it, so perfectly we fit together in that fleeting moment.

My mum had a fear of growing old, her beautiful body no longer was given the chance to age, just as she literally requested, it was taken away as quickly as the changing tides.

The ocean had quickly become a desert in our minds.

Her body incapable of moving, her mind consumed by fear as her body grew sicker, quicker than her mind could fathom.

Like sand moving through our fingers, the harder we tried to hold on for dear life, the sand escaped quicker and quicker, it was if it was talking to me in the most cruelest, harshest fashion.

No mercy, no mercy, no mercy... relentlessly repeating like a drum reverberating through my brain.

I still hear my mothers cries, “I want to be old, I want to be old”, but her soul had already been sold.

The kindest heart she had, so much more love to give, and so much more love I needed. I clung onto her for dear life. Like a baby bird that had to become an instant fledgling, ready to fly the coop so I could help her lift her weary head instead.

She squeezed every last drop of her blood, sweat and tears for me, in so much pain, the only thing that was stronger was her will to live, not for herself, but for me. More worried about how I would live on without her, the worry superseded her pain.

Her life was like a lemon falling from the tree, falling from the lower branches so she would not die from the fall but so life could grant her enough time, but not to enjoy, but to endure the witnessing of her body decay.

A young body, not growing old, but dying before she got to age. I saw her question her whole life on that very last breath, she squeezed every last sour lemon drop as if it was going to somehow sweetly save her. Her bitter end still left her smiling softly.

Only in those last few minutes she whispered to just casually drop her head, hiding her desperation in case I didn’t do it. There was no easy way out, to prolong the pain, or to lose another second I could have had with her. What I would do for a minute with her today. How many minutes we waste away worrying about things that don’t matter at the end of the day.

She fought like no woman I’ve ever met to this very day. Sometimes I look at myself not even half of what I saw in her and again what I see in my grandma.

She said the pain she was in she wouldn’t wish on her own enemy. But she never hated anybody. Perhaps she hated herself in the end for saying she didn’t want to get old.

What she did was live life to the fullest and she didn’t want to live a life on half voltage. She was a powerful woman in all her force. She lived half the life expectancy but double the intensity of lives lived.

As I reach the age she got sick, I wonder where all the time went. I cried oceans but nothing brought her back. I’d lost my mother. “She was all I had”, I howled at times.

“Don’t ever get old” my grand mother still proclaims like the church bells ringing on a sunday, “when you’re old, I’ll look after you” she winces sarcastically wearing a biting wide smile, and her squinty, shining eyes. Not a day goes by she doesn’t cry, but she still says god has been good to her.

I’d lost my mum so young but still had her mother, my nanny, for much longer than most. There were times I wished I was where my mum had gone even if it meant a risk at nothing, the pain is too deep at times. I often still cry for my grandma at the thought of having to bury her daughter. I wasn’t going to make my grandma bury her granddaughter. It could always be worse, and we still have each other.

Now I’m at the age my mother was when she got sick and I look at my body in awe and appreciation that I am able to walk, run and swim where my mother and I once did together. As long as my body is healthy, I am happy. Do I fear not making it past my mum’s age? I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little afraid, but I do have the woman that created my mother still in perfect health at the ripe old age of 98. So the apple can fall far from the tree. Every wrinkle I get I will earn for my mum, the wrinkles she never got to have. I will now appreciate something sour and now live it sweetly, that’s something almost every other woman bitterly fears.

I do still tell people in a sequel to my grand mother’s quote and say with a roar, “My grand mother quite possibly might out live us all”, as I cackle and walk away.