Witnessed Deaths

[The Challenge: Write about the difference between the first death you remember and the more recent one.]

She had been lying in the same position for 8 months and every time I walked into the cold chemical smell of the room I remember the whiteness of everything around me. 

I entered the closed glass doors and I could see her lying there so fragile at the tender age of 22. A 22 year old female that was once filled with life and a giggle that matched any new borns, a 22 year old that was now spread out straight, on her back, in a hospital bed with a breathing pipe pushed into her lungs - the only source of life.
I turned to the solid ceramic basin and washed the germs off my hands, I know this action isn't going to help because she is already half way to heavens door but I play along to the routine helping everyone to feel like they each have a place in this act. 

We sit around her and no sound can match the beeps of the heart monitor or the suddenly loud sound of the morphine drip that leaks into her system one drop at a time. My mom takes her hand and caresses the hand that once use to squeeze back. My dad strokes the hair that once use to shine with life. I play with her broken pinky toe that allows me some amusement in this time of silence. 

It's the next morning and though I lie in bed half awake I'm astounded by the earth shattering ring of the telephone. My mother answers and I'm already up and getting dressed - I know what is coming. 

We rush to the hospital and though everyone moves at the fastest speed they can at a time this intense, I find it too slow and run. I run with all my might towards the white door that I know will let me through so I can see her. I just need to be there - just for that last breath.

The doors open and before I can ask anything the nurse looks into my eyes and shakes her head, she knows what I'm about to ask and feeling defeated I walk towards the bed. 

She is covered from head to toe in a white blanket and she no longer breathes - not even with the help of the machine. I walk towards the end of the bed, towards the foot I know holds the broken toe and I slide my hand under the blanket to find this toe and I play with it. My parents come rushing into the room and they acknowledge what they always knew would happen. The defeat shows on both their faces. My dad moves towards the head of the bed and makes to move the blanket but I stop him. I know that she suffocated in her sleep and I know that if he pulls that blanket down he will not remember the daughter he saw yesterday but he will be scarred by a swollen purple face for eternity. My mom takes my sisters hand in hers and she strokes it. There is nothing left to say. The nurses leave the room and they close the curtains to the room - allowing us a piece of haven within a dark place. I hear nothing. Not the tears, not the machines from the next bed - for a moment, it's as if I were deaf and I welcome it. 
Many moments later we leave the room, we leave my sister behind and as a family collect in the lounge area and my parents cry. The nurses approach us as if they were family and I do not cry. I do not show any weakness because I convince myself that we knew it was coming. I convince myself that I need to be there. 

It was before this morning that we all knew we had said good bye to a daughter and a sister. It was before this morning that we had found our strength.

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I got a call at work and subconsciously I knew it was coming. My mother telling me to rush to the hospital mostly because she was scared and she needed support. 

I arrived at the hospital and the first words out my grandmothers mouth was "Take me to the canteen for tea." I looked around at my mother who said absolutely not and disobeying her I went to the nurses who responded with a solid 'No.'

I was gutted and went back into the room, I told my grandmother that tea would be brought to her and she lost her will. The tea arrived but she was no longer interested yet I fed her like my life depended on it. 

She settled and I resumed my place at the foot of the bed, sitting side by side with my mother making feeble jokes and talking about anything other than the strained breathing from my grandmother. 

The doctor arrived and we were shown out. 

When he reappeared he stepped out of the room speaking a foreign dialect and yet my heart responded in drenched emotions of disbelief. My mother grabbed my hand and in we stepped. We stood over my grandmother knowing that this was her last moment. We couldn't stop talking - we took it in turns to say good bye, we took it in turns to let her know that it was going to be ok, we took it in turns to let her know that we loved her. 

My mother took her one hand and I took the other while playing with her hair.

The soul that once shone with abandon burst out of her body and when she breathed her last breath her entire physical appearance sunk in and she became nothing but a shell. Cold. Unfilled. Dark and completely lifeless. 

The gran that had sparked inside of that shell had been removed and instead she was replaced by a body of skin and bones. Placed before us as if we wouldn't notice. 

How wrong the universe was. 

How cruel to leave us scarred with that image. 

How wrong the universe was.

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