Just Breath

When I saw my dad walk in the door, I didn't think anything was wrong. I didn't think anything had changed and that my life still made sense. He told me he would call when she passed and he hadn't made that call yet. So seeing him in person, standing right in front of me with eyes that had suddenly aged ten years, I thought nothing was wrong.



When I saw my older sisters walk in the door, I knew. Their red rimmed eyes and gray faces told me what I never wished would come true. The way they both avoided looking at me, the way their bodies seemed deflated and suddenly too heavy for them to walk. I knew.



I looked up at my dad as he stepped up to the chair I was sitting in. The same chair that had been her bed when she could no longer climb the stairs to the comfort of her bedroom. The same chair she had to sleep in sitting straight up because even lying down caused her too much pain. The same chair she cried in every night as I sat upstairs and listened, but could not move to comfort her.



He was closer now and was leaning down to me, opening his arms to hug me close. I wanted to push him away. I wanted to scream at him not to open his mouth. I wanted him far away from me and to never tell me what he had too. If he didn't say it, I felt it meant it wasn't true. But I was frozen in the shock of the news no one had to tell me. I couldn't even move my arms to fit around his body as he pulled me in. I couldn't even blink and I think my heart could no longer beat.



"Your mother died at 8:00" And just like that, my world shattered. I don't remember what my first thought was. I don't even remember what I felt as he pulled back from me. I don't remember watching him and Amy walk up the stairs to tell Andrew, who had just a few days before, celebrated his 15th birthday, that he would get no more birthdays with her. She wouldn't be at his orchestra concert in a few weeks. She would never see him graduate like she had the rest of us. He had been cheated out the most time with her, but I don't remember thinking any of that.



Theresa looked at me, her eyes already full of tears and terror. She wanted to run, I could see her itching to it. She wanted to be as separate from this as she could. She couldn't deal with this, she would never be able to deal with this. And while this night would forever change our friendship, she choose this night to stay by my side before she would run away tomorrow.



"Are you OK?" She asked me, but I don't remember my answer. I stood slowly out of the chair I would never sit in again, and stumbled to the bottom of the stairs.



"I have to tell Liz." I simply told her, my voice feeling as if it was being forced out of me. I took the stairs slow and stopped for a moment after gaining a step. While my movements were slow, inside everything was moving so fast that it hurt and left me numb. I wanted to climb inside of myself and hold on to my beating heart, but I stayed focused on the task I had sent myself on.



I stood in the doorway and watched Liz and Amber as they sat hunched over on the computer. Our earlier project so far gone from my mind now that, even now, I can't remember what we had been doing, but I know it had been a good distraction to this point.



I don't know how long I stood there watching them. I know Theresa stood behind me and waited for me to make a move. I opened my mouth to call out to them, but I think my heart knew I could only speak for so much longer and I needed to save that for when I had to tell them.



It was Amber who saw me first. She was laughing at something that I wished I could be apart of and she turned to me in the doorway. Her smile was gone in an instant and she touched Liz's arm because she knew she couldn't be the one to speak to me first. The death of her own mother was still forever fresh in her mind. Though it had been nearly 6 years, she felt like she was reliving it with me. But she stood by me, never faltering, never wavering in her strength that she gave to me.



Liz finally turned to me and she gathered her own strength, the strength I'd always admired. The strength that would someday be the reason our friendship crumbled away. But it was what I needed now. She moved forward to me and waited for me to say it.



"My mom died." I whispered. And then the words were out in the air. They weren't whispered into my ear anymore. They were there, right in front of me and it became real. She was dead. She had been dead for over an hour and I had no idea. To this day, I still don't know why, but that thought, her dead and I playing on the computer disturbed me deeply.



Liz's eyes changed in that moment. There was a look that I had begun to see when people looked at me. I was someone they didn't want to be. I was someone that was living with cancer attacking my family. They all looked at me with one thought that they would never voice, "thank God it's not me"



Amber inched closer to me, a feeling to protect me from the words I said moving her into action. It was her arms I felt go around me. It was her breath in my ear that was uneven and fast. It was still my words though, my admission of what had happened, that brought me to my knees.



I fell against her, a scream coming out of me that brought an overwhelming sense of suffocation. I felt as if all air was being expelled from my body at a rate that was too fast for it take. My scream keeps going despite that I had no air left to sustain it. My mind started to feel fuzzy and my lungs started to burn. Somewhere in me, something was screaming to take a breath, but I couldn't. I couldn't do it without my mom. How could I face this without her?



I didn't know how to be this person. My whole life I was the girl with the perfect family. The happy family who ate dinner together every night. I was the one who got weird looks from my friends when I told them how much fun my family and I had just sitting around talking. I was the one who called her mom everyday at work once I got home from school to tell her how it had been. I was the one who never left a room without being told by my mom that she loved me. I was the one who got lost in her moms hugs and everything bad slipped away when she told me it was all going to be OK. I didn't know this strange, screaming person on the floor and I didn't know how to take the next step, take the next breath without her.



"Breath Lauren," Liz's strong, calm whisper made it through the haze and confusion. My eyes found her just over Amber's shoulder. They no longer had the look I had just seen. They were strong and there. They were a look to tell me that she would help. She would breath for me if she could but she knew I needed to be the one to do it. "Breath with Amber."



With that command Amber slowed her own labored breathing down to a calm, steady pace. She pulled me closer until our heartbeats are almost beating right on top of each other. I waited, felt the easy up and down of her chest and silenced my screams. I closed my eyes and thought about my mom.



I thought back to a few days before on Andrew's birthday. That last time I saw her. How she had gathered all the strength she had left in her to come out of her sleep, to sit up, to smile and laugh, all to give my brother a good birthday. I thought back to as we sat alone in her room with "Little Green" by Joni Mitchell playing, tears streaming down her face, her smile never wavering, as I went on and on telling her about what life had been like the two weeks she's been asleep. I thought back to when she opened her arms to me as we said goodbye. How her arms had suddenly found the strength they had lost over the past four months. How she held me tight and her hug was suddenly how it used to be. How the world disappeared, the hospice, the cancer, the future, all that was there was my mothers love and I thought we could live forever in it. I thought back to her last words to me, whispered in my ear, the tears still streaming down her face, her smile wider and brighter than ever. "My sweet Lauren."



"My sweet Mommy" I had answered, just as softly, but not so tearfully because she was the only one of us to know this would be our finale moment together. I thought back to when I pulled back, I didn't see the end in her eyes, I only saw love. I thought back to how I had walked out of the room at that moment, and I never looked back.



"Breath Lauren," Liz was still telling me. "Breath with Amber." And with my mother's eyes still in my mind, I took a breath.