Each Last Moment

You never remember your lasts. Perhaps you tell yourself that you will. Surely you will remember your last conversation with a person, last shared meal, last joke, or song you shared or book you read together. But will you? I thought I would. How could I not?

My mother is dying. She knows this. I know it. The doctors know it. Days turn into weeks and into a month and counting, and yet the reality does not change. I am facing a world without her, one which I must somehow navigate alone. I have begged for more time. Begged God or fate or medical science, I don’t quite know who I hope will hear my pain. But I have tried. They do not hear me. Why should they? Why should I be the exception to the rule? Why should the person I love be given more time when so many others have to lose people they love? I know this, and yet I still hoped that somehow my pain would be greater than all of theirs; that my pain would turn the tide and change the future. Because inside I am still a child.

I try and soak in the details of our conversations. I try to remember what we talk about and what jokes she makes and what pointless details I tell her about my life. I try to remember because one conversation will be our last and I must remember it. I must know what was said. What else do I have but memories? Memories which I am already trying to file away and cling to before she has even gone.

I have already lost so many. I was going to be one of those people who remembered every last. Who knew them all. But then the lasts crept up and had passed me by before I even knew. And if you asked me to pick them out of the landscape of my history, I could not do it.

What was the last meal I cooked for us both, all those months ago when I was at home and assumed we would have many more shared dinners ahead of us? What was the last TV programme we watched together? When did we last drink tea together or when did I last make a pot of coffee for us both? Why don’t I know? And why does remembering a television programme or cup of coffee feel so important when I know it isn’t, not really.

Did I rush too many of our conversations? I know I must have. And what of all those months when we didn’t speak, not because we were avoiding each other as such, but because neither of us picked up the phone to seek out the other. How much time did I waste without even knowing? How could I ever have thought that there would ever be enough time to contain all the things I wanted to do and say.

Now there are weeks. How many I don’t know. So few moments left. Moments I try and cling to even though I know that I cannot possibly contain them all. What will I have in a year? In five? In twenty? What will I remember then?