“Dorotka, wake up,” my aunt was kneeling beside my bed. It was a single mattress on top of a box spring lying on the floor.

She was my mother’s older sister, my godmother. She had come to Canada about four or five months earlier to care for our dying mother and for us. She was young, I know that now as I approach her age, but at the time she seemed so old. Her hair was mostly silver, her face looked tired, and she had permanent worry lines. Two years older than my mom, she was only forty-six.

I was sleeping on my stomach, my right arm folded above my head. The sounds of her voice woke me from my dreams. I didn’t move, I just opened my eyes and saw her sitting there.

“What is it?” I mumbled through my sleepiness.

“Mama died.” Two words, that’s all she said.

After the word ‘mama’ her voice broke, her lips began to quiver and she whispered ‘died’ as though no one should speak that word. Her eyes filled with tears. She put her hand on my bent arm; I hadn’t moved it from where it was resting on the edge of the bed. 

I was sixteen years old. In one second, the life I knew was gone. Again.

It felt like there had been no warning, everyone talked about how my mama would get better and come home, like all the other times. I was with her only two days earlier, right after school I took the bus to the hospital and stayed there until my aunt switched me off for the night.

Someone was always with my mother, as much as we could. After the school year started, I was with her more on the weekend and sometimes after school, I couldn’t do the day or the night shifts anymore. I’d take the bus straight after class to the hospital.

We were with her to help, do whatever was needed, as the nurses were very busy. I’d spoon water into her mouth or gently place tiny ice chips on her tongue. I’d change the blankets, adjust the head-wrap she wore to stay warm, covering her bald head, or I’d call the nurse if she started to whimper in pain. The morphine wasn’t enough, but there wasn’t anything else they could give her. She didn’t speak anymore.

I’d stay until 10 or 11 p.m., do my homework by her bedside, tell her about class, the teachers. She only starred at me, or past me, I don’t really know. She hadn’t been responsive for weeks.

The last evening I was with her she looked at me blankly. I don’t know if she recognized me anymore. They said she had tumours everywhere, in her brain too maybe; maybe she didn’t know who I was. In our culture there’s a candle you light when someone dies. My aunt had brought it to the hospital and left it there, in case it was needed, she said.

I lit the candle and sat beside my mother. She was asleep. In the otherwise dark room, the flame flickered and danced on the walls. I gently lifted her hand, it was so thin, the skin was cold and stiff. Everything inside her the once had life was slowly fading. Until that point I was praying for her to be okay, but in that moment I understood what that meant. For her to be okay she had to be gone. She was holding on for us.

“Mamo, ic. Damy sobie rade, nie wiem jak, ale postaramy sie utrzymac, zyc dalej. Mamo poczekaj na drugiej stronie, nie czekaj tu, tu juz nic nie ma” I whispered to her.

[Mom, go. We’ll be okay, I don’t know how, but we’ll try to stay together, to keep living. Mom, wait on the other side, don’t wait here, there’s nothing here anymore.]

My aunt arrived. She quietly entered the room letting in a sliver of light. We were switching off for the night; my father was waiting for me downstairs in the car.

“Dorotka, we burn that when someone has already died, not when they’re dying,” she said softly so not to wake my mother. Her words were kind.

She was standing away from the bed.

“I know, I know that,” I whispered back. I lifted my mother’s hand and kissed it. “Pa Mamo.” [Bye Mom]

I had walked over to my aunt, “I don’t think she’s there anymore.”

“We can’t give up, God will decide.”

I left my mother for the last time.

This was my aunt’s faith; this was what she needed to believe.

I didn’t know what to believe, but I knew I wanted her suffering to end.

I lifted my head and looked my aunt squarely in the face.  

“When did she die?”

“12:46, in the night.”

I glanced past her shoulder to see what time it was. Not quite 7 a.m. My mother had been dead for hours while I slept.

“You don’t have to get up. If you want to stay in bed, it’s okay.” My aunt said. “I have to talk to your brothers.”

My brothers, they were only ten and eight years old. What can you possibly say to such small children?

Slowly the sounds of house began to reach me. I could hear crying through the wall. My sister’s bedroom was next door, she already knew. My aunt was going room to room to tell all my mother’s children that she was gone.

“No, I have to go to school.” I sat up. My mind was empty; I was so numb, cold. Going to school was what I was supposed to do that day, I wasn’t deciding, it was the rhythm of my life taking me away.

She tried to dissuade me one more time, but wasn’t forcing the decision.

“No, no, it’s okay, you can stay home, no one expects you to go to school.”

‘No one expects me to go to school’, those words. I knew she meant just today, today and tomorrow maybe, and then it was the weekend. A few days off wouldn’t make a difference.

‘I didn’t make it. I tried but I didn’t make it.’ See, when my mom started getting sick a few years earlier, as the cancer came back and the chemo and radiation weren’t working; I started doubling up my classes. I wanted her to see me graduate.

I knew things weren’t going well, not because my parents told us, but because I overheard them. One evening they sat at the kitchen table, believing we were all asleep or at least out of earshot, and started talking about her sickness. They talked about what would happen “when” she died, not “if”.

I don’t know where this conversation falls into the timeline of her final years, but I understood then that the prognosis wasn’t good. We kept praying for a cure, they kept saying she could be healed, but I don’t think they really believed that.

“’They cut out my stomach Andrew, next it’ll be the intestines, how much can they remove?’” I was sitting on the stairs, around a corner, no one saw me. My mother’s voice was very matter of fact, my father responded with frustration. Her sickness, her slow dying, it was all something that was happening to him. Even now, as they faced the end, there wasn’t much tenderness between them.

In their marriage, to me it seemed like there had been more tears and arguments and my mother putting herself between his anger and us, than there was kindness.

I snuck back up the stairs into my room; I didn’t want to hear more of this conversation.

It wasn’t a conscious decision I don’t think, it just made sense, to hurry school along. I knew once I had a grade ten credit in English, I could sign up for the grade eleven credit and so on. Maybe I could finish school before she was gone, so she’d see I’d be okay.

Now she was gone. It was September 11^th, the start of the school year, the start of grade twelve. These marks would decide if I could get into university, something I promised her I would do.

My sisters were both adults, young adults. But I was still a kid, kind of, and this moment and every one after it, they all really mattered. If I didn’t finish strong, what would become of me?  

“I have to go to school.”

My aunt didn’t answer.

I quickly dressed; the bus was coming in about fifteen minutes. I shoved my books into my shoulder bag, tied my hair into a ponytail, threw on a sweater, and made sure my bus-pass was in my jeans’ pocket. I was at my bedroom door when I heard my brothers start screaming.

Their tiny bodies were wailing, from the basement. Since we moved into this house, their room was in the basement with my parents. Most nights my mother was sandwiched between them. Now, from that same bed, I could hear them crying and shouting at the same time. The sound was so awful.

I don’t know where my older sister was at this point, if she had gone down there with my aunt, if she was still in her room. I didn’t know if our oldest sister already knew, she didn’t live at home anymore, I didn’t know where my father was.

The sound of their anguish was more than I could bear.

I walked down the stairs, put on my shoes, someone said ‘you don’t have to go to school’, I don’t honestly know who.

I opened the front door and walked out.

Sunrise.

The sun was rising in the east, to my left, the sky was changing colours. I could hear cars, birds; the world just kept going as though nothing had happened. Behind me, the world had just ended, but no one out here knew.

Time did not stop, not even for a second. As much as I wanted to, it was impossible to ‘will’ myself to stop breathing. I wanted my life to end just as hers had ended, so we could stay together.

But you can’t stop living, even if you want to. I put one foot ahead of the other and walked to my bus stop.   

7:18 a.m., right on time. “Transfer please,” the words came with me thinking. I found a seat near the front.

Nothing and everything was different about that day.

Nothing and everything, that’s what I learned the day my mother died.

In the worst moments of our lives, nothing and everything changes.

I learned years later that when we see lightning, it is a kind of fire burning up the oxygen in that piece of the sky. The loud noise that comes right after is the sound of air rushing in, crashing into itself, immediately filling the space created by the the burnt up air.

That’s what happened in my house that morning. Lightning, oxygen burned up, the noises of air rushing to fill the emptiness. Existence does not allow for vacuums in time or space. It does not allow for a void, a wound to remain untouched.

I arrived at school and climbed the stairs closest to the office. The receptionist greeted me with ‘good morning’ and I answered her with ‘please remove my mom’s name from my file, she died today.’

I went to the bathroom to wash my face. My eyes were empty and lifeless. I didn’t know what I was looking at.

Within a few hours my classmates knew, the whispering began. I went from class to class and just sat there. I think people were saying ‘I’m sorry about your mom’, but I’m not sure.

The shock that hit me in bed only grew throughout the day. I don’t remember crying. I don’t remember anything else.

I only remember that nothing and everything changed that day, all at the same time.