Standing next to my mother’s hospital bed with her body attached to so many tubes and machines breaks my heart.
Mom is only fifty-two but looks more like a hundred. As if all the years of her life have been stolen away. Her skin is ghost pale, her face gaunt. She has an almost frown-like expression on her face that makes me think she could be in pain.
I just can’t believe this is her.
How can this even be happening?
Mom was always so healthy. But how would I know how healthy or not she was over the last three years?
I wasn’t here.
I’ve been gone for three and a half years.
This is the first time we’re meeting in all that time, and my mother is in a coma.
It serves me right. Didn’t I tell her to stay out of my life? So this is my punishment, along with everything else that happened to send me down the path of disaster.
I reach out and touch her hand. It’s cold. Deathly cold.
No. I mustn’t think like that.
No matter what happened between us, it can’t end like this. Especially when I planned to go back to her.
She might not have known it, but I did. Every day, for years, I wished that I could find my way back home. So now that I’m finally back, this can’t be it.
The doctors said the next forty-eight hours would be crucial and they’ve done everything they can for her.
Mom was found on the floor in her living room by her neighbor. No one knows how long she was there, but the doctors think it could have been a while.
They said if someone had gotten to her sooner, they might have been able to do more.
Despite that, I’m still praying with everything inside me that she wakes up.
When she does, I also pray that she’ll forgive me for leaving her the way I did.
I don’t even know if I will ever be able to forgive myself, but my heart longs for forgiveness from her.
The fact that she still has me as her next of kin gives me some hope. The
hospital called me just before midnight to let me know what happened. Thank God I had my old phone with me, or I wouldn’t have received the call.
I got on the first flight back from L.A. I was lucky to get on the one I did as the next was at five this morning.
I was even luckier that I had the money to afford a plane ticket.
I’d been saving for months from my dead-end waitressing job to find my way back home. I packed what little I owned in the backpack by my feet and headed out.
Now I’m here.
I’ve been here for the last five hours.
I never thought that this would be the way we’d see each other again.
I was a hot-headed twenty-two-year-old the last time she saw me. Now I’m twenty-six.
Back then I’d just graduated from Juilliard and been hired as a ballerina in my first job at a small dance company.
I had big dreams of being a star, so when Mom told me I should stick with the company and work my way up, I didn’t want to listen.