I walked out of the triple doors that I have walked out of a million times leaving work. I had my pile of bags slung over my shoulder, one containing my work clothes, the other containing my school supplies, and the last one being my lunch box. I set foot onto the damp pavement glazed with a fresh rain, listening to my sneakers squish and squeak in the water. I looked up and I saw that my cousin had come to get me, not my mother. This is when I knew something was wrong; my heart sank to my stomach and I felt my face burn with nerves.
I got into the vehicle throwing all my things onto the back, tan, leather seats. I sat in the back seat because my cousin's daughter was in the front seat. The silence was deafening but my mind scattered. I began thinking of all the possibilities of why they could possibly need to pick me up when my mother could not. I thought of crazy things like my mother was called into work, or maybe they just wanted to hang out before things all went downhill. Deep into my deepest thoughts, I believe that I always knew what was coming.
We were told that my Meme had cancer two years before this incident. She had gone into remission once before and right when we had this glimmer of hope, the cancer came back. This time it was much worse than before. My mom told me in July that the cancer was terminal and we were not sure how much time she had left.
Three months after that moment in July I found myself sitting in the back, tan, leather, seats. I thought of all those days before the cancer came. I thought of her radiant smile, her contagious laugh, her face that was filled with positive energy, and her comforting eyes. Once the cancer came she lost the energy in her presence and her eyes just seemed to fill with exhaustion, not comfort. Her laugh and her smile always seemed to stay in tact but that was because nothing, not even cancer, could damage that.
We pulled up to the house and all I remember thinking was how dreary and heavy the thick creamy gray sky felt to look at. The front porch swing no longer looked like the one we used to laugh on, it looked like it had been abandoned and its rusted chains squeaked as the soft gusts of wind blew it back and forth.
I walked into the house and I saw my Peppee. He got up from the couch and gave me hug, he then gave an encouraging nod towards the stairs. My Aunt Michelle was sitting at the end of stairs. She gave me a comforting half smile and a brush of the arm. I began to walk up the steps but each step felt harder climb. Nothing filled my thoughts except the fact that I was walking up these steps to say goodbye for the last time to my Meme. The last hug I would ever get, the last words I would ever hear from her mouth.
As I approached the door all I could hear was the loud hushing of the machine that pumped medication into her body. I can still hear the soft sniffles of my brother on the other side of the door trying to piece together what his last words should be to her. The closer I got the more I thought of my last memory of her being the sound of that nasty machine drowning out her attempt of speaking through her cracked lips, using nothing but short and brief words to get across her last message because she did not have enough energy to say much more.
Instead of walking into the room I ran into my cousins bedroom and hid in the back dark corner of the room and cried. I did not want to say goodbye and I certainly did not want that to be my last memory of her. As I sobbed into the comfort of my sleeve I heard a struggling voice faintly say "Leah?". This was my chance. This was my chance to get up, pull myself together, be strong, and say something comforting to the whole family. Instead I dug myself deeper into the corner and began to sob harder, but still tried my very best to make it quieter.
My Meme died the next day. I never said goodbye. I had my chance but I did not take it. Instead of her faint words being pressed into my memory I will forever hear that crushing sound of the machine slowly taking her breath away the same way a deflating air mattress slowly loses its air.
