I remember...
Uploaded by Sunflower on Oct 26, 2001
I remember the day she died as if it had happened yesterday. She died when I was thirteen. That was seven...no eight years ago. It was summer and hot outside. She used to go out on days like that. She used to take her car, go to the public pool and swim her twenty lines. She was fast. I never had a chance to keep up with her even though I wasn't bad either. She loved swimming. But that day she was lying in a hospital-bed in my sister's bedroom. My sister had to move to the basement because of her, but my sister didn't mind because she loved her as much as I did. We all loved her; both of my sisters, my brother, my dad and John her boyfriend. But I think the one who loved her the most was my mom. The five or six weeks, maybe less, I can't remember, she stayed in our house it was my mom who took care of her. There was a nurse, of course, who came every second day to help her, but most of the time it was my mom who helped her eat, who gave her the medicine, who was just sitting there holding her hand or reading her from the Bible. It was my mom who gave her a little bell she could use during the day when she needed help. It was my mom who installed a buzzer at her bed which sound she could hear upstairs in my parents' bedroom at night. And it was my mom who was there with her, holding her hand when she breathed out for the last time.
I remember the morning of her death when I went down into her room to say good morning to her. I'm back there, a teenager, bending down to give her a kiss on the cheek. She felt hot but her cheek was cold. She didn't say a word, she just looked at me, sadly, as if she wanted to say, "I love you, but I have to go." Writing this memory down brings back the pain I felt when I left the room that morning, looking back one more time, standing in the doorway with tears running down my cheeks. I was thirteen back then and I didn't know a lot about dieing. But even though I didn't want to know it, I...