Directly in front of me

The clock chimed at five o’clock and the room became silent. The squeaking sneakers of a nurse walking down the hallway could be heard from outside the room; the gentle breeze whistling against the window made its way to their ears. But to Charlie, frozen in a moment that had waited more than fifty years to come, there existed nothing but silence, dead silence.

He began to sense movement in the room, his sister’s bobbing of her head, her body beginning to shake, his brother covering his eyes with his hands, his niece standing there, her mouth open, gawking at the sight from the bed, and his father, his face like stone, staring into space. But Charlie, his own eyes transfixed on the yellowing face of his mother, was reluctant to shift his eyes, to look at them.

Charlie thought someone should close her mouth. And her eyes. But they weren’t hers, were they? The body looked familiar, but there was nothing inside it that was actually her, the essence of his mother. The mother who’d rocked him in her arms when he hurt himself on the stone driveway that one time, so many years ago – the mother who’d punished him with that ruler when he ran away to Billy’s to smoke pot at twelve – the mother who’d etched out tears when he’d married Sara, and then had held him in her arms, absorbing his sobs after Sara deserted him. That mother was no longer inside that body.

Charlie had always wondered what it’d feel like when they went, and now he knew. And then the tears came, salty tears that melted Charlie. He could taste the saline in his mouth, he could hear the gasps in his throat, and he could smell the pungent saltiness in his nose. His niece came over to him and hugged him close. Somehow they’d get through this.