“Darlin’,” Ally said soothingly, her hand on my back, “we need a title, we need something for the text boards. It’s the last piece to talk about.”
Feelings I was no longer able to hold back surged forward, suffocating me. I gasped, my eyes squeezing shut as I tried to get my breath.
“Querido,” Ally whispered quietly and I pushed back my hair, opening my eyes.
“I can’t, Ally, I can’t talk about… her…” I said, my voice breaking on my last word.
Ally was suddenly before me, her hands gripping my wrist, forcing them from my face. “Baby,” she said quietly, “It’s time for you to face it. You need to talk about your mamma. It’s eating you alive.”
My heart swelled in my chest and I struggled to breathe, my lungs constricting. But I knew she was right. For five long years I’d blocked out my mamma from my head to keep my sanity. But it was killing me. I couldn’t stand it anymore. It was hurting me, not being able to remember the good things: her face, her smile, how much she loved me, without feeling like I was being tortured slowly in the process.
Drawing in a strained breath, I forced myself to look up at that statue. A tidal wave of grief and guilt rushed through my body, physically bringing me to my knees.
Suddenly, Ally knelt down on the floor beside me, arms wrapped around my back. Tears started pouring from my eyes as I pictured the last time I’d seen my mamma. She was lying on her bed, her speech almost non-existent and her frail body weak and still. She stared at me leaving to go to the Crimson Tide’s National Championship after party at Austin’s school. I’d given her her meds, and picked up her clothes in her room. The entire time she’d just watched me with tears in her huge eyes from her broken position on her bed.
She worried for me. She was always worried for me. But that night, there was something different in her stare. It was as if she knew it was the last time we’d be there together… like she knew I was about to fuck up so badly that it was gonna change everything for us all…
*****
As I hung Mamma’s clean nightgowns in her closet, I turned round to find her watching me, her face soaked with tears. My heart cracked at the sight of her so tiny and sad on that bed. She was always sad. Always lying down, unable to move, crying buckets of tears. As I stood there watching her breaking, I remembered what my mamma had looked like before. She’d been beautiful, so full of life, but the ALS robbed her of her every muscle and worst of all, her smile. All that remained unchanged were her huge brown eyes. The same brown eyes that could tell you all she was feeling with just one look. Those brown eyes that were gutting me as they stared at me right now.
I walked to where she lay, my heart racing in my chest, something inside of me making me sit on the edge of her bed and take her cold bony hand in mine.
As our gazes met, tears escaped the corner of my eyes just at the sight of hers. I couldn’t fucking take her crying, it broke my heart. It broke my heart knowing that those tears were out of worry… out of disappointment in me.
I lifted Mamma's hand to my lips and pressed a kiss on her thinning skin. “Sorry, Mamma,” I whispered as she stared up at me, her body unmoving, her tears coming thicker and thicker the more I spoke. “I know I’m not the son you wanted me to be. I’m sorry I’m such a huge fucking failure.”
Mamma closed her eyes, blinking away the sadness filling her gaze as I told her those words. My head fell to her hand and I whispered, “I just wanted to help you, Mamma. Even as a kid, with Papa beating you, I always wanted to protect you, to keep you safe… to save you from having such a shit life. But I know all I am to you now is a letdown. I ain’t the sports star like Aust. I ain’t like that young sweet kid in the next room that you just know is gonna be somebody someday…” I choked on a breath and met her eyes again, moving my finger to brush away the fresh warm tears from her cheek and the damp hair from her face. “But I love you all the same, Mamma. I love you so much that I don’t know how to deal with all this shit you’re going through, this fucking disease. I just can’t stand what’s happening to you. I can’t stand not being able to do shit about it. I’ve always protected us all, but I can’t protect you from this… and I can’t fucking handle it.” I squeezed my mamma’s hand tighter and paused so I could breathe. “And I ain’t sure what the hell I’ll do when you leave me… when you leave us all…” A sob ripped from my chest as I thought of what it’d be like to live in a world where she didn’t exist and it fucking broke me.
Mamma’s breathing increased, and as I looked at her face, even though her muscles couldn’t move, I saw the grief in her expression… I saw the gutting truth that she didn’t want to leave us either… that it was eating her that she had no other choice but to slowly fade away.