I hold her fragile bony hand and watch as consciousness washes over her and then fades out, again and again and again. Each time she opens her powder blue glazed eyes I try to lock with them in case it’s the last time I can. The hospital couldn’t find a bed, and she can no longer climb the stairs to her own, so this tired over polished chesterfield becomes her final resting place.

Honestly, I couldn’t imagine a better place.

I’d sat on that exact spot and had her stroke my hair more times than there’s stars in the sky. I’d grown there, excitedly bounced there on my chubby toddler legs while she made yorkshire puddings in the kitchen. Returned there with a teenaged belly full of wine and let it catch my falling body when I couldn’t climb the stairs either. I’d laughed and cried on it over things I can’t even remember now, and relished uncountable mid winter naps by the fireplace, snow falling on the patio doors, all supported by it’s strong frame, the smell of cracked leather lulling me to sleep.

Once a deep burgundy, decades of love have gradually turned it bright cherry. It’s cushions sagged and creased in all the right places. Each button remembers, a grand soft sigh escapes with every visitor. Tired but unwavering, oozing more character than most the humans who’ve burdened it. Now entrusted with the most precious task of it’s existence, to carry her away from me.

I thought silence would fall, but it doesn’t of course, the tubes make slow gurgling noises, dripping sustenance into her green protruding veins, the oxygen tank intermittently switching between generosity and complete denial. I watch her lungs fill and release, and in between, I worry they might not rise again.

Her cold fingers slip from mine when a tremor flashes across her sleeping face, her eyelids dance involuntarily.

I kiss her forehead and whisper something about being calm, being safe, being ok, then I close my eyes and allow a single tear to escape because I know I can not promise any of that.

The words seem to work and she relaxes back into the dent she’s made since she stretched out here twelve days ago.

She half opens one eye, looks past me and groggily utters “take all those things in there to the red cross shop will you? don’t forget those fur’s either!”

The morphine is chasing her thoughts, she’s asking me to distribute her belongings to the old folk who shop at the charity store, she knows she won’t need that fox scarf again.

Her mind has accepted this disease before I have. I want to prop her up, she could lean against my shoulder, we can pretend to watch tv together again. I decide it’s not time, she’s just weak, I shall boil her an egg, serve it with soldiers, that’s fixed her before.

When I enter the kitchen it is thick with the smell of cigarettes smoked by grieving family members long since gone. I imagine seeing her at the kitchen sink smoking and looking out the window with her apron on waiting for the water to boil.

I swallow uncomfortably and arrange the small meal which will never nourish anyone.

Before I return to her, I glance out the window and see myself as a child, picking dandelions, in my mind she calls out to me “You’ll pee yourself if you keep picking those!” I wonder for a moment how many superstitious momentos I will pass to my children, when these walls can no longer remind me.

I carry my offering into the lounge, she hasn’t moved, I’m still expecting her to move.

I sit on the floor beside her. Her breathing is slow and measured. She is not controlling the measure. Her skin is changing to gray, her platinum wispy hair slightly sticking to her forehead. I wipe her face with a warm damp flannel, she doesn’t smell the same but I don’t know how to fix it.

She finally struggles to open her eyes, they are glass, pupils dilated, a dark ring encircles her otherwise wolf like iris.

“I made you an egg”

She blinks a lazy drug induced blink.

“Are you comfortable?”

Her eyelids look heavy, she’s willing them to cooperate. She stares at me, through me. Our eyes lock, I hear all the words she can’t say and I understand. We don’t speak for what seems like a season. When she finally lets her gaze drop, she swallows a small painful swallow and asks me for the cream.

The nurse left cream for bed sores, I run away to retrieve it. When I return, restful slumber has wrapped her up. I dab cream on all the places she showed me days ago. As I gently rub it in I notice there is little of her left, her bones are holding the shape but everything that made her strong, and squeezable, has somehow seeped into the folds of this old weary chesterfield.

She is so small I can fit on the same cushion, I lay quietly, I’m eased with every breath that fills her blackened lungs.

I time my breathing to match.

Sleep catches up with me around Two in the morning. I let it take me for a while.

I’m awakened by a strange noise I’ve not heard before, a deep crackling, rumbling.

I realise it’s coming from her chest. I let myself slide off the edge of the sofa and place my palm on her back. It quietens and fades away, I relax. Then I notice no movement. I shakily put my hand on her chest,

nothing.

She is warm, I remove her oxygen mask and try to feel her breath on the side of my face, but there is none.

I don’t move for as long as my body will allow me to hover there. I take a breath when I’m forced to. I can not hold in all the salty water, it forces itself from my tightly fighting eyes. It ignores my resistance.

I fall on the floor next to her and I stay there until the nurse arrives. My vision is flooded when I’m pulled away, I don’t see her again. I don’t hear the chesterfield sigh when her body is lifted from it. But I know it does.

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