Your breakfast is ready.

It was like a dream, like a strange thing that was not real, could
not be real.
"Your mother is dead" So easy to say as if the words held no real
meaning like "Your breakfast is ready".
"Your mother is dead"
No I'm sorry you must have made a mistake.
A mistake.
A terrible mistake.
We sit in a cold unfriendly room, in chairs that look as uncomfortable
as they feel.
It's raining outside and the tree in the car park is hanging down onto
someone's car.
I see it before it happens, my Nan comes in and says her Cherry is gone
and then minutes later I see I for real.
Her Cherry is gone.
My mother is dead.
This morning she told me I could have another day off school because I
wasn't feeling well.
I wasn't feeling well.
I was alone with her when she said she had a headache, she was trying
to phone my dad when she slipped into a coma. I tried to lay her the
floor and I bumped her head on the corner of the wall.
I sat in that room thinking about it, focusing solely on the corner of
that wall.
"Your mother is dead"
A brain haemorrhage, caused by a bump on the head. It was my fault. If
only I had gone to school, but then she would have been alone and I
would have come home to find her.
A mistake.
I sit in the car on the way home thinking about missing neighbours on
the T.V.
People are in the street doing their usual things and I think how could
they, don't they know what day it is, how dare they act as if today is
just another day.
I'm missing neighbours.
The car is too quiet, even the engine seems duly silent.
A terrible mistake.
It's her birthday in a few days so she can't really be gone, because we
have her presents and cards at home and she has to have them.
The house is empty even with all of us there. It is not a home anymore,
it is something else, something unfriendly and cold. My dad keeps
smiling at me but his smile is strained and I know he wants to cry and
that makes me want to cry.
I wait for the telephone to ring, for the hospital to apologise for
their mistake, Their terrible mistake. I've seen it on T.V. people's
hearts stop but then suddenly they start again and all is well.
I wait for the telephone to ring.
I wait.
"Your mother is dead"
My aunts start milling around helping out. Suddenly I have a cupboard
full of feminine products as my aunt says "You're 13 you'll need
them"
Why do I need anything, my mother is dead.
I wait.
My sister doesn't understand properly, she's only six.
My brother fades into the background, quiet, unassuming.
I am not myself, I am someone else, looking at it all from outside. It
is not my world, in my world the telephone rang and the hospital
apologised for their mistake. Their terrible mistake.
I suddenly can't remember the sound of her voice.
Her smile, her anything.
My mother is dead.
How can this be, I have been a good girl.
I struggle to remember her, and with each day it seems something else
fades away, everything fades except the pain, the pain is as fresh now
12 years later as it was on that day. I lost my mother and now I am
losing her. The photos seem lifeless, they hold only physicality, no
soul, no emotion. I want it back, I want it all back, every single
second of every single day that we shared. It seems the more I try to
remember the less I do. How can the events of that day linger so when
the 13 years I spent with her have dwindled.
I think she came here once, to our new house, I recall the scent of
apples at the top of the stairs that seemed to come from nowhere. I
think it was her.
I miss her tremendously and even though I may be 25 a girl never stops
needing her mother. I would trade all I have for one more day with her.
She loved to read and with my love of writing we would've been a good
team.
I write this for her as much as for myself. With each thing I write
about her I remember her that little bit more and hopefully in the end
I will have her back if only in my memories.