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Kategori: Novell

The Grief

'Jenny...', I woke up slowly and looked into my sister's tired eyes.
The white walls surrounded me. The smell of the hospital made me want to stop breathing.
This was reality.
I sat up and scratched my eyes. They felt soar.
My sisters' red hair, wild and curly, the shadow of it against the walls gave me the feeling of me being in another world. This was not reality.
The soft light of two candle lights burning in the dark room.
We were taking shifts. There were no nurses at this time at night at the hospital with enough time to sit beside our mother.
It was my turn to wake up and sit beside the person that wasn't able to talk or move.
The person that opened her eyes every now and then without any sign of reaction.
Eyes without life and sparkle so unlike the eyes I had looked into for fifteen years.
'It's your turn to go to sleep now, Maria', I said as I walked across the room and sat down at the chair beside our mother's bed.
Maria layed down at the hospital bed. It was a narrow bed. The blanket made me freeze. It was some strange material that couldn't warm anyone or anything.
She turned around in the bed and I looked down at my mother lying in the bed. She was bold now, not one straw of hair left on her head.
She was breathing peacefully. Her head was swollen. Her body was so small and tiny all of a sudden and the head was too big.
I couldn't help myself but touched her hand. It was cold and not warm as it always had been. I saw that it was my mother lying there but there were no signs apart from the face that made me believe that it was her.
Almost five hours to go. I took away my hand from the cold. I tried to think of something to do. I walked across the room and took my walkman out of my bag. I felt strangely warm now. My cheeks were red and the heat was almost unbearable.
I sat down again on the chair beside the bed and put the headphones in my ears. I pressed the play button. The music of U2 and 'Running to stand still' filled me up.
A sudden cry was on its way. I turned the volume down as fast as I could.
The doctor had told us not to cry in front of her, if she woke up and saw that it could affect her in a negative way. All we had to try and give her was hope. Encourage her to believe that there was still hope. She couldn't speak but there was a possibility of her understanding what we said and did. 'Don't cry Jenny'. I bite my lip and tried to keep calm. I listened to the music. It was both torture and joy to listen to it. 'You gotta cry without weeping, talk without speaking, scream without raising your voice'. I thought 'How does one do that?'. The tears were behind my eyes, the cry in my throat, the scream hidden in my chest.
I looked at my mother involuntarily. I stared at her. 'Look at me. Please, wake up and look at me, mother'. She opened her eyes and stared at me.
I stared back. I saw a sparkle there. It was life in those eyes. I turned off my walkman and took off my headphones. I grabbed her hand, I squeezed it the way she always had done with mine.

We were sitting in the car, going to France, I was in the backseat, she was in front of me. She reached our her hand to me to the backseat where I was seated. I took it and she squeezed my hand and her fingers were at the same time touching mine. 'Jenny', she said, 'Jenny'.

I woke up from the vision of us and I realized all of a sudden that she was touching my hand with her fingers. She didn't squeeze it back but she touched my hand with her fingers. She was there! Tears came into my eyes and I just couldn't stop myself from talking. 'Mother', I said, 'oh, mother'. I took a deep breath and the tears were all over my face. I didn't care anymore about the doctor's words, telling us not to cry in front of her. I started to talk and the words just came. It was almost someone else talking. But it was my voice.
'Do you remember mum, when we were in Rome and you said that it was the best vacation our family had ever had together? It was your birthday, you were turning fifty. Do you remember that? Because I do. And I am so happy that you enjoyed it.' My tears were all over my face. I started to sob.
'Because if there is one person in this world deserving to have a great vacation on her fiftieth birthday it's you, mother. You deserve it'. I squeezed her hand hard and I looked at her through my tears. I didn't wait for any reaction, I was just crying.
All of a sudden I saw her lips move and her eyes changed, they were wide open.
I immediately stopped my crying and it was as though I woke up and every sense was active in my body. 'What did you say - mum - what? What?!'
I stared at her, I was waiting for her lips to move again. Move, please, move. Say something.
'Jenny, Jenny' - a whisper and I leaned closer to her, my ear almost against her mouth.
'Little Jenny, oh, Jenny'. I couldn't stop the tears from falling. She had spoken my name. She had been silent for two days and I had heard her speak my name.
And I thought: 'Don't die. Even if you can't do anything more than speak my name, just don't die. Stay.'


The moment passed hastefully, almost like I had dreamt it all. Maybe it was my brain creating it. I wasn't sure anymore.
My mother was sleeping again. Her eyes were shut. Her hand was cold again and layed still in mine.
The moment of connection was over. I was again left to silence. But the silence were filled with tension tonight. I could touch it. I could see it like invisible clouds in the air surrounding me. I wasn't scared although I felt like I was probably going insane. I couldn't separate reality from imagination anymore. But I wasn't scared.
My eyes were swollen and they hurt. Maria was still asleep on the narrow bed. My sister. I stood up and walked to the bed, I looked down at her. She slept deeply but her lips was a stretched line of tension. Her eyes were not at ease. She was almost blinking in her sleep. But her breath was heavy and she was not going to wake up. I looked at her and my eyes started to cry again. I reached out to my sister, I started to touch her hair. It was soft under my fingers. My lips were forming words without me being able to control it; 'I love you, Maria. You will always be my sister and I will be yours. We will always stand by each other. I know we will. You are my sister.'
The tears that fell over my cheeks were no longer silent tears, I started to sob again.
I couldn't take away my hand from her hair, the hand that just recently had been touched by my mother's fingers.
I sat down on my knees beside the bed, one hand in her hair and the other taking her hand into mine. I started to squeeze it. She started to move but I knew that she was too exhausted to wake up.
For the first time I felt it in my heart that our mother was dying. She was dying. She wasn't just ill, taking some strong medicine. She was dying. We were going to be alone.
I was more scared than ever.


The door slammed and I knew. I sat up in my bed the minute I heard the sound of the door. It was over.


I was sitting in our car. It was silent and I couldn't speak whatsoever. I couldn't think. I didn't know who or what I was anymore.

Two candle lights were still burning in the room. I could see the shadow of me, my sister and my granny. I could also see the bed and the profile of a face.
I forced myself to look at the bed to see whose profile it was although I knew.
She rested peacefully. Too peacefully. She was not to open her eyes again.
Somehow the grief took me by surprise and the last thing I remember is my granny whispering through her tears 'You will live, Jenny, I will see to it'.

Maria, where are you? Where did you go? You should be here now.
You will comfort me as you always do. I am scared.
She is near me now, her soft movements makes me calm and I can weep close to her breast. Her voice tells me to weep. 'Weep Jenny, you'll die if you don't. Weep.'

My father screamed. He expressed every fear there was to be scared of.
If there was ever a sound that one could connect with grief it was my father's scream that night.
We were not going to be alright.

Skriven av: Jenny Hopfgarten

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