What’s the point of living if you’re just waiting to die?
The words were seared in her mind.
Branded there, like a hot iron.
She supposed that was the point that she knew her mother had stopped trying to fight it. The turning point where her mother had laid down her weapons and simply accepted what she felt was inevitable.
And, in retrospect, maybe it was inevitable. Maybe the damage it’d done to her body was already too much to overcome at her mother’s age. Maybe it wasn’t worth it. Or maybe the cancer was just too much.
But the disease hadn’t just taken her mother away, little by little, bit by bit, chipping away at her physically.
It’d also taken away her will to live.
Little bit. By little bit.
Inch by inch.
Until one day she flipped the book over on the windowsill and noticed how much the cover had faded.
Ava remembered the day her mother died. It wasn’t even a week after her birthday. Like her mom had been trying to warn her.
What’s the point of living, if you’re just waiting to die?
The visiting nurse had come by for her scheduled visit, taken a look at her mother’s readings and…quietly ushered Ava out of the room to talk to her mother in private.
Ava knew what that meant.
Then there was a call with a doctor that Ava wasn’t allowed to be a part of. Oh, that wasinfuriating.Ava was pacing around the living room, glaring at all the outdated furniture and throw pillows she’d grown up with like it was somehow their fault.
The nurse came out with a look on her face that told Ava everything.
Her mom wasn’t dead.
Yet.
But the decision was made.
Hospice care.
Ava had a choice. She could fight her mother on the decision—she could tell herno, you have a life worth living, you can do this.But why? That was a lie. Her mother was miserable. In pain every second of every day. It hurt her to breathe. Constant hospital trips to get fluid drained out of her legs or her stomach. Chemotherapy treatments that were almost as bad as the cancer itself.
What’s the point of living, if you’re just waiting to die?
Asking her mother to keep fighting for life was selfish. Ava only wanted her to live becauseAvawanted her to live. Not because hermomwanted to live. So, Ava walked into thebedroom, sat down on the edge of the bed, held her mother’s hand, and just cried.
There was nothing else she could do except cry, accept her mother’s decision, and promise she would be strong.
She promised that she would go on living.
She promised that she would figure out how to do that.
With the medication stopped and replaced with morphine to dull the pain, her mom didn’t even make it thirty-six hours.
Ava barely left her side. Just stayed beside her, holding her hand, wetting her lips, giving her ice chips from the freezer, and listening to the faint stories her mom wanted to tell her from her childhood.
For the last ten hours, though…even that was gone. Just a painful rasping noise of her mother’s breathing.
Ava had heard the phrase “death rattle” before. She’d never knew what it really meant.
