short: new mom

You used to sing to your mother every night. Your mother: she was only forty-three when she was stricken by some rare form of brain cancer; and your mother: she was only forty-five when her spirit surrendered to the cancer. Her body remained, however. Blood still circulated. Her chest rose. Her chest fell. But her spirit had been exorcised from her body by that ravaging disease and the life-sustaining drugs. The gravity that forces waves from the ocean was indifferent to your mother. She was as lost as a ghost voided of attachment. "Just gone," your father used to say.

But you sang to her anyway.

As she lay there under sheets starched white, you would sing a lullaby improvised and her body… her slowly vanishing body was powered by machines and tubes and her solemnly still face always abided to the words and melodies that your 23-year-old lungs emitted.

So you sang of empires in the sky…

So you sang of angles and love…

So you sang of a memory that shall never die…

So you sang of death and life, spring blossoms and the winter solstice…

You sang as the sky swelled with the sun and sang as the stars forfeited a cratered moon. You were convinced the lullabies penetrated the haze that surrounded her. You saw something in her eyes. An indiscernible word found itself on her lips when you sang of death's sacred kingdom. And despite the final judgment cancer had given her, you found yourself occasionally disregarding the undeniable and believing she might pull through this.

"Just gone," your father used to say.

And so you sang. You closed your eyes and sang about your first fall from your My Little Pony bicycle. Your knee was scraped. Blood dribbled from your elbow. And tears dotted the pavement under your tiny body. Your mother was there with a kiss for your cheek and a bandage for your elbow. She consoled you, and you just wanted to go home.

And this is what you sang about until a monotone pitch rose from your mother's bedside. Just gone.

Two nurses tended to your mother. Of course, there was no saving her. Cancer had finally won. So you left the room and took the elevator to the hospital lobby. As you exited the elevator, a middle-aged man and little boy waited to board. On strings from the boy's hand floated brightly colored balloons – someone was a new mom.

It was a warm July night and the mosquitoes were biting and the kids were cruising with music blaring. You walked alone down the sidewalk with a head awash in memory and thought. Perhaps you were trying to recall the final words of the lullaby you were singing before she passed. Perhaps you were thinking about the last time you heard your mother laugh. Or maybe you were thinking about that old photograph on your dresser; the one of your mother in her wedding dress in 1985. She looked so young, so happy, so free of the burden she would ultimately bear many years later.

You don't remember what you were thinking during those despondent hours, but you remember stopping somewhere along the sidewalk and looking up at your mother's hospital room window. You stared. You waited. For something. For a signal. For some manifestation of deliverance. It never came, of course. (Faith disappoints eternally.) But you realized why your father had buried the memory of her long before she actually passed. It was easier that way; when she finally died, it wouldn't be so difficult to deal with. Wrestle with the demons while they are still alive and you've won most of the battle.

"Just gone," your father used to say.

xx