He sat bedside to his mother, staring at the palms of his hands; studying the intricate lines as if they would return the answers beyond his 6 years of age. As his thoughts drew to a halt like an anchor drawn aboard, he lifted his heavy head to see the frail body before him. She lay ill and lit to a pale glow set off by the moonlight that poured through the large window. She breathed in slow and heavy, causing her chest to sink so each time it seemed that gravity itself was causing her body to collapse. Her chin slowly fell to her shoulder as her weighted eyelids lifted slightly that the pale-blue in them, that was once so brilliant and now dimming to grey, beamed into Ellom’s eyes.
Her finger moved slightly with infinitesimal strength, his heart leapt and caused his hand to touch hers as if to calm the movement to save her energy so he could keep her as long as possible. Her body swelled as she drew in a long breath, and the vibrations in her throat were prelude to the symphony of her voice. “Ellom." Ellom looked at her with wide with joy of her words, but full of fright that they would be her last. "You will be the man I always wanted to see in this world...." she drew in another breath, this time with a slight grimace that flashed across her face that she quickly threw off like a bird to a storm, so she could have this breath to speak to her son. "…because you are the son I always wanted."
With that a smile thinly curled across her sunken face like a cloud against the sky, and a tear slipped from her glistening blue eyes dispersing into the pillow. Ellom’s heart was pounding so hard he could hear its tumultuous beat in the dead silence that blanketed the moment. His mother's eyes began to close, their glisten now blotted out like the sun into the horizon, and her smile drew into their lips supple slumber.
Ellom's grip on her hand grew tight in his reflex to awaken his mom. She could not be gone. The unstoppable nightmare could not be now. His lips bore a tremble, as new tears began to heat his eyes and gradually rain the carpet he use to play on just years ago when he was small enough for her to pick him up and hold him and tell him how much she would always love him.
But 'always' came to end, and Ellom was alone. Sobbing, he buried his face into his mother's hand, for maybe it would rise to wipe his tears away. But when no movement answered his disparaged cry, he looked up onto her sunken face. A jolt of care, and promise that he'd always had for her grew out from within like new flame, and he felt the soul of valor and responsibility of a man take him over. Thoughts of how he would be that man right now, if her eyes would just open. He would take care of her and make her a happy woman. So he took in her beauty, and gave hope one more chance.
But her eyes did not open, and he was stricken with a sadness that broke him down into the crest of her neck crying so hard he hoped she could hear him from wherever her soul may be. The smell of her lotion still alive and still ten thousand graces to his senses, drew memories of all their embraces. All the times she made his days golden. Her touch on his cheek, the constant smile she wore when he was in the room, now darkened as the shadows that swallowed his fetal form.
Then he remembered he could not stay. He would make the phone call, and they would be here in the morning. He raised his head and looked at the old grandfather clock once more. It seemed to stand taller than ever. Brooding and foreboding as if it were Death itself. Time was ever against him; but he had to do what was necessary.
He wrote his mom a good-bye note coupled with the daisy he'd picked for her that day, and laid it on her shoulder. He set her hands folded in a calming form atop her chest as if to say she was ready and prepared to go where she has gone. He stood in a moment that seemed to slow with his heart's wane, just so he could have the last image of the greatest love he’d known with him indefinitely. He bowed down to grace her cheek one last time with a kiss. His lips lighted to her like a butterfly to a flower, and remained there for the longest they ever had. Still pressed he drew in a breath, and lifted himself from her; opening his eyes from the moment's last embrace and never letting her leave his sight. He took one step back then, as if taking a great leap from a cliff’s edge, turned from her and continued down the darkness of the hallway picking up his one satchel and walked out the door leaving the only place he had ever known into a world he did not.
