“I l-love you too, little.”
Hearing her nickname for me, and her declaration of love, caused me to choke back a sob. Mum frowned at me. I could see confusion in her eyes but I didn’t want this moment of her knowing who I was to end. I leaned over her, kissed her face and hugged her tightly. She returned my hug and when I cried she chuckled and patted my back. When I leaned back from her embrace, she stared at me and sighed.
“Did a boy hurt you, sw-sweetheart?” She clicked her tongue in frustration. “Tell me all . . . about it.”
I wiped my tears away.
“I’m okay, Mum.”
She nodded, yawned then wiggled a little in her bed. She busied herself with her covers and by the time she looked back at me, the familiar squint of confusion had her in its grip once more.
“Who are you, hon?”
When she asked the question this time, it didn’t hurt as much because I knew that inside her beautiful mind, and warm heart, I was there. I was her little and even though she didn’t always know who I was, I knew that deep inside, I was protected by her like I always was.
“My name is Frankie,” I smiled and wiped my cheeks. “I thought I’d sit with you a while, if you wouldn’t mind?”
“I’d love that,” Mum beamed. “What’s your name?”
“Frankie,” I repeated.
“Oh, I love that . . . name for a girl . . . be-beautiful.”
I smiled. “I like it too.”
I picked up mum’s roll of knitting and handed it to her. She took it from me instantly, unwound her patch and positioned the needles correctly in her hand and began knitting. As I watched her, I wondered how long it would be before she forgot how to knit or lost the mobility in her hands to be able to do it. How she gripped the needles right now was already clumsy, like she didn’t know how to do it. I thought of things like this whenever I was with her. I wondered how long it would be before she could do anything for herself. Every single one of those thoughts scared me to death.
“That wool is a beautiful colour,” I said to Mum as she knitted. “Do you like that colour.”
“It’s okay,” Mum replied with a shrug. “It’s my daughter’s . . . favourite colour, you know? She’s only a toddler. I’m knitting . . . her a cardigan.”
She was struggling to speak and I had to strain to hear her and when I realised what she said my heart clenched. What my mum was knitting was nothing more than mess of a random stitches. She wasn’t following a pattern, each time she began to knit, the end result would always be different to whatever she was working on. It didn’t really matter though, she never remembered what she had previously knitted, she just enjoyed the activity of doing it. Her mobility was getting worse and worse and I knew that soon she wouldn’t be able to hold her knitting needles. Simply holding them was a victory of sorts for her.
“It’s going to look beautiful on her.”
“I know.”
I snorted as I moved to the chair next to Mum’s bed, I took out the paperback I was reading and flipped to the page that I had bookmarked. Ten or fifteen minutes had passed by when Mum let out a big sigh. I bookmarked my page and returned my book to my bag.
“What’s wrong, Mum?”
“Enda,” Mum smiled at me. “When did . . . you get here?”
“Just now,” I said. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I’m tired. My chest . . . is heavy.”
I stood up, got her oxygen mask, turned it to the level Michael always did and fitted it over her face. She didn’t smack my hands away or fight me on it, which I was grateful for.
I tucked her blanket around her. “I’ll go and make you a cuppa, okay? It’ll help you relax.”
She reached out and touched my hand. “Two sugars, sugar.”
I laughed, lifted her hand and kissed it. “Coming right up.”
I left the room, feeling like a weight had fallen off my shoulders. I leaned against the hallway wall for a moment and I processed what had just happened. She recognised me. My mum knew who I was. I held back tears of joy as I pushed away from the wall and walked towards the tea and coffee station. As I placed the tea-bag into a cardboard cup, and filled it with boiling water, I kept replaying over and over in my head my mum saying my name and calling me her little. A little thing like that brought me so much happiness, I knew I would never forget it as long as I lived.
With two cardboard cups of tea in hand, I turned and walked back down the hallway and into my mother’s room. I was half-way across the space before I looked at her and I stopped dead in my tracks. For a second, I thought she was asleep but she didn’t look right to me. I got a sick feeling in my stomach.
“Mum?” I stepped closer. “Mum, are you okay?”
When she didn’t respond, I hurried over to her side and it took me all of two seconds to realise that she wasn’t breathing. I dropped both cups of tea to the floor. I stood as still as a statue. Inside, I was crippled with pain, and fear welcomed me into its open arms, but on the outside I could barely breathe. I felt myself stumble over to the door of Mum’s room, Erica was walking by when she caught sight of me.
“I think she’s gone.”
I heard myself say the words but instantly my heart firmly denied them. This wasn’t real. This was too soon. Much too soon.
Erica shouted something then hurried by me into the room. Somehow, I walked over to the bed’s end without collapsing. Two other nurses entered the room. Their focus entirely on my mum.
“This is too soon, Erica. The
