Journaling was Recommended

I’m sitting at your bedside, watching you breathe what may be your final breaths.

You lie there looking so frail, your body reduced to a skeletal frame. It is a terribly sad sight. You sleep now. Your eyes haven’t opened for more than a week.

Dad is out for a little respite, taking a drive and getting out of the house he has been confined to for the last year and a half while taking care of you.

I don’t feel well myself. I’m still recovering from recent surgeries, and how I wish you were of sound mind so I could sit here and tell you everything that has been happening to me. I wish I could talk to you about what has been ailing me. Although, knowing you, I imagine my cancer diagnosis would have been incredibly difficult for you to handle. Your emotional reaction probably would have far outweighed any concern I was capable of showing for myself.

Beside you, I placed a stuffed dog holding a heart that says, I love you, Mom. I’m almost certain I gave it to you many, many years ago.

Your left arm rests against your chest. I watch as each breath calmly raises and lowers it.

Your medical bed is positioned in my old bedroom—the room that was mine when I lived here. I remember all the times you came into this room when I was sick with fevers or migraines. You took care of me.

I wish I could return the favor.

But unfortunately, there is no hope now. No cure. Nothing I can do to make this better.

Your mind has been slowly eaten away by this awful disease, and I have always been so sad that it found you at such an early age. The progression was gradual, almost deceptively so. The early onset began back in 2019, and somehow the years disappeared as the disease took more and more of you away from us.

Somehow, I feel like I let you down.

Maybe I should have been the one taking care of you.

But let’s face it, Dad is much better at it than I ever would have been. I wouldn’t have known what to do. Maybe with enough research and training I could have learned how to care for you. Maybe I could have figured it out.

But now it’s too late.

And I’m afraid.

A hand-crocheted pink blanket covers you. Aunt Irene says she made it for you recently. I rest my lymphedema arm against the frame of your bed. The railing is raised to keep you from rolling off, although now there is hardly any movement.

Occasionally your legs bend at a ninety-degree angle. Sometimes you move your left arm toward your face as though you’re trying to brush away a stray hair near your nose.

I wipe the hairs away for you.

I touch your hands. They are hot, the veins raised beneath your skin.

And I sit here watching you breathe.

I’ve been here for more than five hours now. I took one short break to eat some leftovers from the food your siblings brought over yesterday.

Everyone was here, Mom.

Uncle Frank. Aunt Patty. Aunt Irene. Uncle Robert. Uncle David and his new wife. Dad. Me. Mike. Grandpa.

For just a few seconds, it seemed like you knew we were all here.

You were able to suck a few drops of water from the sponge Dad has been using to moisten your lips. But now you’re forgetting how to swallow. The excess water runs from the side of your mouth, and Dad and I look at each other, saddened by this newest sign of your decline.

I tried not to cry.

I bowed my head instead, and one by one, my tears fell onto the side of your bed.

Now I sit beside you, facing you but occasionally looking out the bedroom window toward the north.

The yard is a mess.

Of course it is.

Nobody takes care of it the way it once was cared for.

Through the window, I catch a glimpse of the clothesline where you used to hang our laundry to dry. I remember those days before we had a dryer. The endless loads of laundry. You took care of my clothes, Dad’s clothes, Alex’s clothes. Everyone’s.

I remember trying to help you once. I hung several garments on the line, and when you came outside, you scolded me because I hadn’t done it correctly.

Or, more accurately, I hadn’t done it your way.

I remember not knowing how to feel. I had only been trying to help, but you were angry.

It’s strange that I still remember something so insignificant.

But I do.

Maybe that’s what a life together becomes in the end—not just the birthdays, holidays, accomplishments and photographs, but clotheslines and arguments and migraines and little stuffed dogs. Things that seemed insignificant while they were happening suddenly become pieces of a life you desperately want to hold onto.

We still haven’t heard from Alex.

I sent him a text asking him to come down and see you. He has barely communicated since Dad brought you home from the care facility. I try not to think about him anymore.

The three of us shared so many memories together when Dad was away working. I remember the loneliness you felt when he was gone and how eagerly you waited for him to come home.

And now there is something strangely poetic and terribly sad about the fact that he has spent the last year and a half right here beside you.

You are sound asleep now.

Your eyes haven’t opened in more than a week. Another development. Another system slowly shutting down.

I hope somewhere inside of you, you can sense that I’m here.

I’m so sorry I have to leave tomorrow.

I have a heart diagnostic test that needs to be done before I begin my new treatment on Friday. Another chemotherapy drug. Fourteen cycles. Soon I’ll start counting them down, one by one, waiting for the day I can finally say I’m finished.

That is my burden to bear in this world.

But tonight, sitting here beside you, mine somehow doesn’t seem as cruel as the one handed to you.

I’m so sorry, Mom.

I’m sorry you have had to endure this.

I don’t understand any of it right now.

Disease. Illness. Death. Life.

None of it makes sense to me.

But I’m grateful I was able to see you again.

I will forever cherish these hours sitting beside you. I will cherish the good memories we made together, and strangely enough, I’ll cherish the bad ones too. They all belong to us. They are all pieces of the life we shared.

I hope I made you proud, at least in some way.

More than anything, I hope I brought more joy into your life than hurt.

And yeah, Mom, I’m sorry I never had kids. It just wasn’t something I wanted for myself. At least we have Amelia to carry on the family blood.

What I miss most are our evening conversations.

Those ordinary talks I probably never appreciated enough when we were having them.

There is nobody to call now who understands me quite the way you did.

There is nobody who will ever be you.

So tonight, I’ll stay here beside you for as long as I can.

I’ll look out the window at the old clothesline. I’ll remember being sick in this very room and you coming in to take care of me. I’ll wipe the hairs away from your face. I’ll touch your warm hand. I’ll listen to the quiet sounds of this house.

And I’ll watch your chest rise.

And fall.

Rise.

And fall.

I’m here, Mom.

I hope somehow you know that.

And I’ll sit here beside you and watch you take your final breaths