The Light, The Helper

"Breathe. Just breathe with me,"

On the bed, her chest rose and fell with a calm labor that echoed in the room. With every breath the room seemed to freeze entirely — the wind ceasing its cascade through the window, the birds stopping their overjoyed birdsong — only for this passage of time to continue with the flow of her breath as it exited her chest, and when it reentered, each time as slow and inconsistent that death lingered at the edge of the bed with his head lowered but body tense, ready to pounce.

There was nothing in the wheeze that made it similar to how it should be, and it terrified the kids as they watched their mother emulate sounds and produce smells that perhaps belonged in a hospital. The oldest sister had an eerie calm in her eyes. Perhaps this could be attributed to the fact that she was a nurse and this was her job. Her poise and confidence as she held her mothers thin arm was incomparable, until the feeling was passed from sibling to sibling, and even death conceded his hunt for a moment in time.

The youngest brother stood at the edge of the bed, one arm folded across his stomach and another hand over his mouth as he watched. "What's the breath count?"

"Eight per minute," the oldest sister said, pulling out the blood pressure cuff. Nobody knew what that meant. The oldest sister didn't explain.

"Grandma," the daughter of the youngest brother, said. "Hey, Grandma."

The mother turned her head slightly, so everyone cheered - "Hey, mama!" and making it so that just as quickly as fear appeared, it took a trip to the backyard, to sit in the hot sun for a couple of minutes or hours or days, possibly even long enough to dissolve and become something of the past.

The oldest daughter was there all day and night. Sometimes as she slept, she was awakened by her mothers scream, only to realize after some time disillusioned in the dark room that it was just a dream and her mother lay silent in the bed next to her. But there was a terrifying thought arising with each occurrence that perhaps the scream was a real thing that only the oldest daughter could hear, a trapped version of her mother as she watched her life pass by in the faces that she raised, and exist in the moment her determination took a hold to hold on.

"How do you do this, mama?" The oldest daughter asked as she turned her mother to bathe her. "Is she the strongest woman you've seen?" The oldest daughter asked the hospice nurse.

This wasn't a new thought. The oldest daughter knew it as she heard her Mothers story growing up. Knew it when she watched her Mother, a woman of barely five feet, help out some of the scariest people she'd ever seen. Even a year prior when her mother went missing for almost 24 hours, even as the oldest daughter cursed the dementia for making her lost again and again, because even after they found her she was still standing, still wandering, still there. 

And so this was the secret to her confidence. This was her mother. Her mama. The same one that raised generations, that had a life that both was her own and wasn't, the same one who picked up every coin she saw on the street. 

“Not today,” the oldest daughter would whisper every evening that passed, watching as her mother’s tiny chest rose and fell to echo the same sentiments. “Not today,” 

Every evening the others left with the same confidence of the oldest daughter, smiting death until the temperatures of that summer rose to the hundreds. Refusing to recognize something that is there, however, was never how the mother lived her life. Sometimes this was to both the oldest daughter and younger son's embarrassment. Other times it was something that saved their lives. Each time the eldest daughter awoke in the night, she could hear the restlessness in her mother as she kicked her feet and lifted her frail body all on her own, in a tune that resembled something to her grandeur presence that was made in such a way simply because of its blatant acknowledgement of everything. 

“What is it, mama?” The oldest daughter murmured, trying to understand what she refused. “Who do you see?”  

Some days her mother stared at the same spot, watching calculatedly and carefully. Other days she bared her teeth. One time she smiled and laughed. Sometimes she cried. 

On the days that the mother held only the energy to breath, the oldest daughter sat by her bedside and held her hand to count them. With each second that existed between the inhales and exhales, the cracks of the oldest daughter widened and widened, revealing a truth that turned her into the youngest in the room —

I don't want my mama to die.

But to say it was to admit what was sitting in the room with them. The oldest daughter knew that it was unreal until she brought it into existence. Maybe because she was a nurse. Maybe because she was only in denial to herself. How could it be that someone who was so wholly there could suddenly not be in the span of a heartbeat? No. She refused. 

Yet, when all the others left, swimming in the oldest daughter's conviction, it became harder to ignore the truth her mother began to warn her of, of the clouds forming by the edge of the city’s bowl with a nefarious scheme to end California’s never-ending summer. 

In the evenings, she held her mother close, pressing her head to her chest and brushing back the unruly gray hairs to whisper in her ear a compromise: “If you stay, I swear to you that I will collect all the loose coins in the world that you care about so much. I promise. Okay, mama? Okay?”

Sometimes it was promises of something more, like a huge house on the beach, or an endless park for her to explore whenever she pleased. 

But the dreams did not stop in the nights, and nor did her mothers restlessness that began to run incessantly at all parts of the day. 

And the storm did come. The oldest daughter awoke in the night to the clap of thunder, and oddly enough, so did the youngest son. They leaned over their mother and watched her as if acting as protection to the outbreak of nature inside that tiny bedroom. They did not speak, but their shoulders brushed together once, twice, until they pressed fully into a barricade, becoming one person, and just as it was when they were younger, it was the three of them against the entire world. 

“It’s okay.” The younger brother finally whispered in the dark. “I’m okay. We’re okay,” 

Mother breathed in, and out. Her hand was cold and lifting so they hugged her together, tucked her arms underneath the blanket, waited for her to fall back asleep. The oldest daughter refused to sleep the rest of that evening for fear that the rain would make it impossible to hear her mothers scream.

In the morning, all of the children came. The three children of the younger brother. The younger brother's wife. The cousin of the children, and the cousins' children. With every person was another story of the mothers that was presented, silently or in full swing, a testimony to her sacrifice and her strength. Alarmingly, the oldest daughter felt small, her confidence choked into a ball stuck in her throat. But just as alarmingly, she did not need it - the room was filled with a type of buzz that was created from sheer love, or something deeper than that. For the first time, the company was not just limited to that stagnant nine that had become a staple in the mothers last couple of days, but a rounded ten that appeared as quickly as an exhale, promising in its presence a meaningful peacefulness that could only be found in the embrace of a life so fully lived, so fully successful as proof in the faces and hearts that would carry it forever. 

When it became just three that evening, the oldest daughter lifted her mother in her arms and held her. Her mother was always the tallest person in the world. Tonight was no different, and she could feel that her mother was there with her even as the oldest daughter faced her biggest fear.

It was with her mothers strength that she began this new promise - “You can go if you want to, mama. Or you can stay if you want to, too."

Somewhere outside, lightning cracked. The oldest daughter was twelve. She was standing in the kitchen, apprehension in her belly as she stared down the hall at her mother who opened the front door. Buckets of rain fell from the sky, dropping against the concrete and the stones in hard, rhythmic slaps that chattered her teeth and rattled her bones. 

“Look, Zahira!” Her mother's laugh rang through the entire house, echoed through the whole neighborhood, and it wasn’t cold, it was warm. “Look how beautiful!” 

The oldest daughter finally locked eyes with death. He was not as frightening when acknowledged, she realized. 

Zahira rested her head on her mothers chest as she stared at him. “It is beautiful, isn’t it?”

Mama breathed in.