Snowflakes
My mother and I shared our first breath together in the middle of a snowstorm on December 1st 1981. She would tell me the story of my birth, over 25h of pain and misery. It was snowing outside and finally, as I entered the world, our eyes met as the snow fell outside. It was our first moment and our breath together.
On March 20th, 2013 at 1:15am, the snow storm outside had been roaring for hours. The guts of wind made the roads impossible to drive and the cold chilled our bones. My brother, my sister and I had been called back to the hospital. We had just left 30 minutes before, but the doctor urged us to return as she wouldn’t make it through the night. They said to hurry, there wasn’t much time. We drove through the snow, in silence. We didn’t have to talk, we were all petrified that we would miss her last moment and that she would die alone. I can’t remember if we parked the car, but I remember us running up the stairs to the 3rd floor like our lives were depending on it and in a way, they were. We entered her room. All monitors beeping, her heart weakening by the second until there was nothing but a flatline. My sister screamed and fell to the floor. She was not ready to be motherless although she was already in her 20s. My brother stood completely still. I don’t think he even blinked. The moment seemed to last minutes as time, in agony, stretched itself towards infinity. My sister’s scream had been replaced by this faint noise only the deepest pain can create. She was gasping for air as if the shock of our mother’s death had kicked all the air out of her lungs. My brother continued to stand still as if he waited for another reality to appear. And for a very brief moment in this eternity, I felt closer to my siblings than I ever did as if this indescriptible pain had joined us in time and space. I don’t remember looking at my mother’s inanimate body, but as if the strength of a thousand soldiers joined me, I stormed out of the room gasping for air because the person who had brought me here was gone forever. I ran outside as fast as I could. The storm had calmed down and right there, among the snowflakes, my mother and I shared our last breath together. Full circle.
