Glinting Spoons

Like the glinting spoons left to rust in the dark of my garage, she lays on her bed inanimate and unmoving. Her crisp sheets envelop her in a sea of white, her eyes are closed; body perfectly placed.

This is how she wants to die.

The last four months have been an emotional rollercoaster of turmoil and distress.

95-a life well-lived, yet the inevitability so difficult to accept.

As I reach to caress her crape wrinkled face and to tell her once again that  'It's not your time yet,'. I swipe a glance at my reflection in the bureau's mirror. It lays against the right wall of the bedroom. It stands adjacent to the door on the left wall. That is where I stand, outside this door. Looking at my reflection; I see:

Neglect in the form of a mane of black hair stretching upwards in all directions. 

And I see…

 Under eyes haunted with dark prints like upside-down crescent-shaped moons.

“Mommy, is grandma okay?”

 I turn towards the voice and reply perfunctorily. I reply like I have been for days now--weary and burdened; with the weight of my troubles resting on my already weak shoulders. It's been 18 hours and 121.668 days since my Mother took her love away. Words roll off my tongue. They hold no meaning to me:

“Grandma is just fine, Honey”

I wish.

“Is Granny going to play with me today?”

“No Honey—not just yet” I bend down to match her height of 4 feet and truffle her curly-black hair the way she loves.

Her face is small and dark brown and her golden eyes look at me—really look at me. She says:

“Mommy, why’d you say Grandma’s fine if she can’t play?” 

Tears threaten and then Crystalline, clear drops spill over and meet the brown carpet as they say hello and then goodbye to their short existence.

A moment or two of deathly disturbing quiet. This quiet has called my house home. It is not the sacred and memorable silence that I once shared with my Mother. I desperately flail and jump amongst the frightful and savage current of the wind, attempting to grasp these minuscule pieces of silence, nonetheless, they slip, like wet soap from my grasp. 

Just like my Mother.

When there is no speaking you can sense the quiet as it creeps into you and aims to destroy your peace, traversing into your mind like a virus. We stand in this quiet, as we have for four months now. I wish for silence, but I know my shooting star will never come. This quiet is deafening.

I never knew, until after she woke, that the quiet was sorrow.

“M-mommy—you're lying!”

“ No Honey, don’t say that. Grandma is fine—she's swell! Go and play in your room, dinner’s in two hours."

I practically drag her up the stairs and push her into her room. I place a kiss on her forehead.

 “Honey—don’t you worry okay?”

 I will.

 I trudge down the staircase and into the corridor downstairs, my eyes travel into the occupied room—what greets them is the lifeless corpse of my mother—who lays like the dead on the bed.

“Yes, Grandmas just fine."

I sigh these words out loud, saying them to no one in particular.

Honey doesn't believe me; neither do I.

Amidst this quiet that envelopes me conventionally, the demons inside my head swarm. Their air is ominous and dark. They haunt and hover over me while I sit lugubriously by my Mother’s side, where butterflies and peachy-ness once resided four months ago. I have a bowl of red meat, rice and bean sauce that the doctor recommended taking up space on my lap.

--

"Red meat is a good source of protein and rice helps with weight gain. Beans are a good source of fiber—she needs that".

We stood and talked in hushed tones outside my Mothers bedroom. He seemed so official, punctual, and unmoved by my turmoil.

"Good day" He said and I heard the click of the door as he left.

I leisurely slid down the wall, feeling the amounting friction against my back-awaiting the acquaintance of my behind to the floor.

--

The spoon reminds me of the set my Mother gave me four months ago. Those spoons were quiet; that’s the reason why I left them to rust in the garage.  

My gaze travels to the caliginous sky because I can’t bear the burden of looking directly at her. 

I fear that the impending doom will start to ripple like stones thrown into the water. One stone makes a splash, then another…

 All of these ripples are like seconds. They are gone and wasted like my Mother on her white bed of surrender.

She needs to eat, she’s emaciated. I need her to survive. She refuses. 

I plead, on my knees. She rejects, as she stares up and opened-eyed now, visioning the gaieties of heaven as it sits way into the atmosphere.

I cry, she refuses!

“ Mama, eat something. Eat something! Eat for me please. Mama, please!

              Please Mamma

                                    Please

                                              Please…”

She refuses. And I exclaim to the heavens,” Why me lord!

                             I’m broken.

          Torn.

                             Ripped.

                                                Gone…

I resemble a heap of green goo and liquid slime as it sits rejected and splattered in different parts on the floor of the brown carpet. I lay defeated, limbs spread and my revolting face planted against the material of the carpet. I feel and taste salty-wetness and I won’t admit what it may be as I try to convince myself that I don’t care.

                                            I don't care.

                                         I don’t care.

                                                         I don’t care.

                                                               I don’t care.

                                                      I don’t care.

                                                                     I. don’t. care.

------

“Mommy?”

            “ Mommy”

                                “MOMMY!”

I stir from my fitful slumber and my fingers reach to caress the imprints the carpet left on my brown skin. My eyes progressively travel upwards to meet the silhouette of Honey against the dimness of the house and the sign of dawn.

Honey--who is my suffering and uncertain child.

“Mommy, It’s dinner time”

She says it uncertainly, the way she has for four months now. She says it as she looks down at her feet, too uncomfortable to even look at me.

I know she blames herself.

It’s not her fault.

                   It’s not mine either.

“Honey, I’m sorry, I didn’t prepare dinner yet. I only have the leftovers from yesterday that I was…”

“Mommy, you were trying to feed grandma, right? Mommy I gave her food yesterday sh-she ate a lot. D-did you know that? I did it when you were gone--she even said a word.”

We both know that that's a hallucination. It could have been the wind that Honey heard or my voice that she must have mistaken for my mothers...

We know, but we hope.

 “ Mommy, is Grandma okay?” ” Don’t lie to me-- I know you l-lied to m-me”

Her voice trembles and each word is softer and more unintelligible.

This time I don’t lie to her. My arms are wide open; she comes into them. We let the salty liquid stream down while my Mother lays deep in a slumber that I can only imagine eternal.

Before I go, I force five spoon-fulls into my Mothers mouth. She acquiesces.

We eat dinner amidst the quiet as we remember how lively and loquacious my Mother used to be.

It started when she refused to get out of bed one morning and progressed into her not eating, not talking, not playing with Honey.

Her last words to me were, ‘Joselinea, It’s my time to go’.

The joys of living were non-existent from that day forward. Without my Mother to perform the actions that all Mothers are supposed to do, I am nothing. I am one grain of sand amongst the copious grains on the shore.

                           Nothing.

Dinner is over. I prepare for bed. I stand alone with the sink water running from the drain. I watch it as I think of how fun this chore used to be with my Mother by my side. That same wetness trails down my cheek. I watch as it blends with the water from the drain.

“I love you, Mama,” I say as I pass her door and go into mine.

I say a silent prayer for my Mother to get better. I hold hope tightly in my grasp knowing it just might be answered.

----

My eyes have to adjust to the surprising candescence of the room. I see a silhouette that is strikingly similar to my mothers sitting on the window seat.

I close my eyes, knowing that my hold on the rope of sanity was inevitably going to get looser.

I can’t help feeling fear for Honey. She'll have to grow up with a mentally and emotionally- unstable mother, but I’ll do my best. I would never leave her--I’ve already been left on my own.

I need Honey.

I open them once again. I ready myself for the darkness that’s more of a friend than a foe as of now.

I don’t see dark.

I see a striking yellow luminosity that burns and comforts my soul.

The curtains are open.

And...and is that?

Is that?

Is that who I think it is?

Is that my Mother?

----

Her first words to me were: " You were right. It wasn't my time”

They come out hoarse and raspy from her lack of speech. We sit in the radiant kitchen. All the windows are open and rays of the sun fall and cast slash patterns on the grey tiles.

So she heard me?

 Too frightened that I’d tarnish this moment, I keep my internal comment in the back of my brain for later pondering.

“I can’t explain why..”

“Don’t” Honey interjected, “Grandma I don’t want to know.”

“Okay, but I had a dream last night and... I…”

She coughed violently; they sent shivers of fear down my veins. She was so thin.

 Cough, Cough.

“ I-I had...”

“Mamma how bout you don’t tell us now? You are not well enough to speak” 

 We lead her to her bedroom, which is now laden with sheets decorated with floral print and color. No longer dim and jejune, the bedroom looks sublime.

We carefully lay her to bed. 

She eats.

She plays with Honey.

She sleeps.

She even wakes in the morning.

The next day I rummage my way into the garage. I know what I am searching for.

I find it!

 My heart skips a beat. 

I carry the dusty, leather box into the sun-lit kitchen.

"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine."

My voice heightens with each note I sing and my feet taps with each tremor of joy it brings.

I wipe the leather with a kitchen towel.

"You make me happy when skies are grey—"

This voice is not mine, but Honey's as she joins in, appearing into the kitchen. Timid as ever.

My feet tap to the melodic tune of our intertwined voices.

I open the container and find glinting, silver metal.

There still silver!

My heart skips a beat.

"You'll never know dear, how much I love you—"

Honey and I look in confounding astonishment to find my weak Mother singing in her raspy voice. We rush to support her as she stumbles and steady her into a kitchen chair. We sit and we sing the last verse.

"Please don't take my sunshine away."

I am going to polish my silver spoons--something I should have done four months ago. No longer would they occupy my garage.

This time, I acknowledge the tangent tears of mirth that trail down my cheeks.