MonkeyPants

Waiting.

The hospital room faces East. I know we are there for the deathwatch, and there’s nothing I can do about it. The sheer futility of the situation exhausts me. I am beyond tears.

We do not speak. Every once in a while, one of us gets up to sponge some mint-flavoured water into my mother’s mouth.

I can’t remember the last thing she said to me. I wish I could. Was it trivial, was it important, was it a mother’s love, which I so often brushed aside as inconvenient, old-fashioned or inappropriate? No idea.

I can’t remember the last thing she said to me, but I know I can remember the last thing I say to her: I love you. I make sure of it.

I say it every time I have to leave. When I go for lunch, when I go to tutor, when I go home at night. I don’t know if she can hear me, but I hope she can.

There is no control, no justice, no reason. All there is, is love.