death is painful to watch. slowly one labored breath after another. eyes closed chest rising and falling slower each time. IV drugs make it easier they say. It'll take the pain away. Where's mine I wonder silently. My pain is still here. There is a couch so I sit and watch her. She does't move except for continued rise and fall of her chest. I watch her chest rise. I watch her chest fall. It doesn't sound rattely. I thought it would. I love the person lying there on that table in the pretty colored room. Who chose this color, I hate it. I hate the bedding this room of "comfort". I hate the couch. I hate the walls. I love that person like she is still going to be around a part of my life everyday the way she has been the last five years. Like she had been each and every single day of my existance. Looking back it was just a blink of an eye. A single grain of sand falling downward towards the rest of the memories at the bottom of the glass. Memories that include me that I will never have the chance to ask about. I should have listened better. I should have written everything down. Carried a pen, a paper, something! The nurses come in and check her pulse. You should call the rest of the family they tell me. Call them what I wonder. Lots of words race through my mind. Selfish for leaving me here alone? Lost because they didn't know what else to do but leave? Heartbroken because they too are mourning? I just open my phone and call one person. I say to her, "Can you bring him up here and call the rest?" My phone closes and I walk into the hallway. The cold in the room is stifling. Death is heavy and all around. I lean against the wall and for the first time in five years I allow something to hold me up. It lets me slip to the floor. I wait. Eternal seconds go by. Tic Tic Tic You need to get up the wall says. You cannot let him see you weak. He needs your strength. He needs everything you have. He needs you. I will give me to him too. He still needs a mom. I'm going to be his mom. The door to the room looms over me like a gun at my execution. I take a deep breathe filling my lungs with the air she needs. My feet move me to her side. The rest are here now. We surround her bed and watch and wait. One breathe in...seconds go by and one breathe comes out. Two breathes in...time seems to stop...two breathes come out. Come on my brain tells me that it needs to happen before the plane leaves and he is on his way to Afganistan