Waiting Around To Die

This piece came from the prompt given at Penrith Writers’ Group: Waiting.

Waiting Around To Die
© Veronika Sophia Robinson

Trapped in this windowless room
Someone snatches the air I breathe.
A prison of predictions:
“Your mother’s dying,” they tell me.

I long to hold her in my arms,
to say “it’s going to be okay”
But, maybe, what I really want is someone to promise me that.

The day mortality was first thrust into my life,
as a four year old,
I stood in the shadow of Omniscience
Trembling.

My cat, flat as a pancake on the bitumen,
Scraped off with my father’s spade,
As her motherless kittens mewled inside our home
without her.

I knew then and there that
my mother could never
ever
ever
ever
die.

I would not survive.

For more than half a century, I tread water
Waiting
Waiting
Waiting

For the day which will change my life forever.

Living
Half living
Half expecting
If not now, when?

And then I see it, the horizon drawing closer.

Insomnia insists,
like indelible ink stains,
on infiltrating mind, muscle and memory.

I wait for sleep to beckon. And I wait. And wait. Wait.
Sleep has gone a-wandering.
Walking in another direction without a backward glance.
I watch the Sun rise outside my window
knowing it will soon set upon my mother’s life.

I should feel grateful. We have time to say goodbye.
Video chats link a fading life,
repose in an Australian hospital bed,
to me in my living room.

Living?

I feel like I’m dying right alongside the woman who
Once buttoned my cardigans
Squeezed me fresh orange juice each morning
Plucked her mandolin at bedtime while waiting for me to fall asleep.

Now it is I who must wait for her to
Fall
Fall
Fall
…asleep.

Where do we go from here?

Motherhood is a mystery.
I waited for four beautiful babies to be born
Tender souls to be held
with lullabies, love and longing.
Instead, their bodies were expelled.
No more waiting. No celebration.

Sudden death spares you
Of the endless waiting room.

My father, like my first cat,
Obliterated on bitumen.

I didn’t wait for his death,
Afterall, dad was going to live to 100,
But the long-haul flight to Australia to say goodbye,
Is nothing but…
waiting,
waiting,
waiting.

Seven-hour layover in Paris airport
Watching the waxing Moon, and weeping, as we fly over Russia
―Oh my God does that land mass never end?―
Body search in Hong Kong
Finally, Australia.

“Welcome home,” they say, as I pass through Brisbane airport.
Welcomed back in my homeland
when I’ve been away for years.
For a moment, I feel held.

Maybe they’ve been waiting for me?

Sudden death spares you
Of the endless waiting room.

My best friend of eighteen years
Lingered in the depths of life-long depression,
dreary and dark
as molasses,
with the forecast of a futile future.

Not the Christmas Day I was expecting.
All it took was a dog lead. I pray it was swift.
That there was no waiting around.
Christmas will never be the same again.
I wait all year for my favourite festivities
that feel forced now.

From grief, I rise. Slowly. So slowly.
Can you ever recover from what feels like
being pummelled in a dozen rounds with Muhammad Ali?

My two daughters and granddaughter
Whisper, wait and welcome their dreams.
As do I.

And still, my mother is waiting around to die.

I live in the waiting room of memories; grief, past and present.

Anticipating death
robs you of tomorrow,
steals today,
starves you.

My mother is starving too; starving herself to death.

An orphan at 57
is still an orphan.
A motherless child.

Where was mother waiting
during the last few days of morphine-induced, legally sanctioned death?

Motionless
Barely a whisper of breath
Yet, a heartbeat so strong and steady and solid till the end.
The end.

And then, suddenly, she’s kicked out of the waiting room:
Her eyes open wide!
The deepest breath of her life…in, in, in
And then, whooooooooosh, as she sails out of here
11.11am
New Moon in Pisces
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Silence.

My phone rings. Here, it’s the middle of the night.
“She’s gone, sis.”

How can there still be tears? Where and why do they wait in such numbers?

The waiting is over. Or is it?
Perhaps it’s never over.
Maybe all we do is wait.


And now, after my year-long hibernation in grief’s sticky tendrils,
I lie in bed, near midnight, listening to the sound of the clock
ticking
ticking
ticking
my life away.

How many summers do I have left?
This one? Five? Maybe even twenty?

Death has changed me. Again.
An incubator of trauma and transformation.

My inner spark―
waterlogged beyond recognition like fingertips after falling asleep during a long bath―
asks:

“Who am I now?”

I am still someone, and yet I’m no one,
but this I do know:
I’m just…
Waiting around to die.