The Last Birthday

My eyes opened as if I were a creaking android waking up from its charging port. I could almost hear the squeaking of the gears in my body. Or perhaps that was the aching of my bones. As my eyes fluttered open I could see my only child, Aria, watching me with a pink box on her lap and a neon print wrapped present by her side.

"Mom!" She said happily standing up to see me better. "I told you I wouldn't forget!" She bashfully placed the pink box on my bed. "Go on, open it!"

My wrinkled mouth stretched into a weary smile as my shaking hands lifted the lid open.

Inside was a pink cake with the number 100 on it in bright purple frosting. The circular edges were donned with red roses and blue daisies. My breath caught in my throat.

"It's just like you said mom. Like the picture." Her eyes grew teary as if she knew this was the last time we would be together. Although we knew it was true, she smiled as she pressed a wrinkled, brown paper into my hands.

"Oh Aria." I breathed as tears of joy ran through my face, their cool dampness dripped onto the paper.

The picture was of me on my first birthday. I was sitting on my mother's lap and had a fistful of cake in my hand and all over my face but looked utterly ecstatic. My mother's long brown hair was spattered with splotches of creamy pink frosting, but she was laughing. I looked at the cake in my lap and the one in the picture. They were one and the same.

I breathed out laboriously, and as my eyes fluttered as I whispered: "Thank you."

And then my eyes closed for one final time.