My mother loved stories.
She quoted some of her own fictional realities to herself in her hospital bed to avoid the fact she would never see anything outside of the dull walls of the place she’d been stuck in for the past year and a half.
She always smiled when she saw me. “Oh, my beautiful baby boy.” She’d say. “How I’ve missed your company.” And I would always smile and say, “Me too, ma.”
She didn’t say anything more. All she did was watch cartoons on the television, waiting for the nurse to come in with her medication.
When the nurse came in, mother would always call her ‘Lilith.’ She thought she was my little sister. She wasn’t. The nurse just smiled and handed her the pills. She never knew how to break the old woman’s heart. Lilith has been dead for 10 years. Mom had a brain tumor along with Alzheimer’s.
Mother traced the outlines of the city with her finger when it was too quiet for her to handle. She always said the silence was too noisy.
After 10 minutes of noisy silence, she asked for my father. Every time, I had to be the one to tell her he left us. She sighed and said, “No, he wouldn’t do that.” And every time I just looked at my feet, unable to repeat myself.
I used to want to know more about my dad. She would always say the same sentence. Nothing more, nothing less. “He loved music.” She said. And every time I pretended to be amazed. Though, that was always something I’d already heard. And it didn’t tell me much, except we were alike in a single aspect. I sighed when she slept.
Until her last day.
She turned to me and smiled.
“He came from the stars.” She said.
And died.