Beggars for Roses

Shell-Shocked

Unbelieving was the state of my mind.
My mother was lying in waiting in
bed, for one last breath any time coming;
luxurious her temporary room,
state of the art Fey City hospital's_
the same one my father had died in more
than twenty years ago. I was eight then.

The doctors had told us to savor these
last weeks with mother. We had hardly left
her side this past week, I and my sister,
Josephine. My coworker friends at Scope
had been managing in my absence well.

Jose, short for Josephine, had also been
relieved of motherly duties by her
loyal husband, Danny, for the present.

I had seen this slow but sure in coming.

Mother wasn't old, only in fifties.
She had accepted her ailments for some
years almost relieved that she had, at last,
something else to worry of, other than
all the ways I found to embarrass her
time and time again, all the ways she felt
that she let her husband down by never
turning me into the eligible
son he would want me as. Not prodigal
this son.

                     She had welcomed the steadily
weakening condition of her heart like
a comfort blanket, enveloped herself
to no longer feel the gnawing fear that
my sister might make a mess out of her
life any moment. It was not beyond
expectation, that irrational fear,
given the kind of examples I had
typically provided as her one
sibling.

                   Half-sibling. That is something still
unbelievable to me...

                                                I looked up
and found her crying miserably. She
looked deplorable, utterly helpless.
I had never seen her like this before.
Like a fountain, tears sprang out of her eyes.

Her hands trembled, inviting me to her.
Gosh. This was a first, her begging for me
to come near.

                               She had been speaking, shaking
with effort, but I had taken in naught
since her cataclysmic revelation.

"No. No. No."

                              I kept turning my head. I
whispered my denial, my refusal
to believe this sick joke the universe
had chosen this moment to play on me.

Why would my mother, spending her last days
with her only real family left,
suddenly decide to play her eldest
and one son? It must be the universe,
fate, destiny..., some such cruel construct.

But if it was something destiny had
sprung on me, had it to be true?
                                                                     "No... No..."

Mother must have been trying to explain
how this celestial jest could be true.
Her lips were still moving, but I was too
shell-shocked to catch a single syllable,
denial a last thread of sanity
keeping me placed. There was nothing beneath
my feet. The ground had parted. My world, my
history, my roots, my identity,
my very existence as I had known,
all had evaporated.

                                            An abyss.
That's all there was left of it.

                                                              A sniffle...
I turned my head and looked at my sister.
She was younger to me by many years.
Naive, guileless, still emotionally
dependent on her brother and mother
for happiness, even after marriage
and birth of two adorable children.