They say that, at a certain point, people run out of tears to cry. Then, they go numb to a situation. People talk about that being the beginning of acceptance. Of emotionally preparing oneself for the devastation a situation will eventually wreak. But even after two days, I hadn’t reached that point.

I wasn’t sure I ever would.

My mother was nothing but a ghost of the strong-willed woman who had raised me. She and my father had one of those relationships where you could never tell if they were joking or fighting. But there was one thing no one ever denied, and that was the fact that they loved each other. And they both loved me, their only child. Her punishments always matched the crime, but she always had a tenderness to spread when it was necessary.

What I wouldn’t give to be able to call my father in that very moment.

I needed her tenderness to help me get through the pain and the fear that wracked my body, but all I had was her ghostly-white form. Her eyes were closed. Her cheeks, sullen. Her face was so relaxed it showed every line I’d missed forming while I was gone. I’d only visited once a year, but it wasn’t enough. Not enough to justify the relationship the two of us had built after she left my father.

I tried to think of her friend’s names, so I could contact them. I tried to think of anyone I could tell. But her only sister—whom my mother moved in order to be closer to once I left for college—was gone. Passed away three years ago from, you guessed it. A damn car accident.

But as much as I tried to think about people she mentioned on a regular basis, nobody came to mind. Was my mother really that alone? Or was it that I’d missed the details of her life by being away all the time? Tears pricked my eyes as I slid my hands around hers, squeezing tightly as though it would wake her up. Like she did my father’s when he had his accident.

The familiar setting triggered the memories in me like a gag reflex.

My mother had been five years younger, her hair still more red than gray. Her skin matched the color of her fiery hair, soaked from all her crying. Even though my mother left my father and moved to Colorado after I went off to college, she still kept up with him. Something I never did understand about her. I guess she never really could let go to the good man underneath all the falsities. My father, ironically enough, was hit by a truck while crossing the road to visit my mother at her job. The truck ran a red light and he didn’t stand a chance. Resuscitated at the scene, put on life support the second he got to the hospital, and my mother pulled the plug that evening.

After squeezing his hands and begging him to wake up.

“Please, Mom,” I said with a whisper. “Please wake up.”

They had been married for seventeen years before she left. High school sweethearts and the best of friends before his lying changed everything. They never once were apart unless it was work-related. They never went anywhere without one another and they never spent a major holiday or celebration alone. Despite the demise of their marriage, it was my father that instilled within me a confidence that went beyond my size. Beyond my hips. Beyond the snide remarks of shitty high school boys who wanted to poke fun at the ‘curdling Christie’, the girl with thighs that looked like spoiled milk.

What I wouldn’t give for my mother to wake up.

My mother only had a few hours with my father before he passed, which—in some ways—already made me lucky. I’d been able to hold my mother’s hand through the entire weekend. But I wondered how much pain she was in. I wondered if she was aware of her surroundings. If she could feel my hands wrapped around hers. If she could hear my silent tears in the middle of the night as I begged for her to flutter those eyes open.

I felt my phone buzzing in my pocket and it ripped me from my trance. I turned it back on that morning to try and call the towing company to inform them on what to do with her car. I didn’t want to look at the thing, and I didn’t want it towed back to her home. Not after what happened to it with her in it. If my mother somehow pulled through this, I’d take out a loan to buy her another car. Anything so she wouldn’t have to look at the thing and be reminded of the accident that almost took her from me.

The accident that was taking her from me.

Ignoring my buzzing pocket, I sobbed. I broke the silence in the room and it made my voice spring forward. I could no longer hold it in. I was no longer strong enough. I needed my mother more than anything in the world, so I bargained with a God I never acknowledged while placing my cheek on the side of her thigh.

“Mom, I’m so sorry,” I said. “I should have come out more. I should’ve been with you more. I should’ve made an effort to come back for holidays more. But I was scared. I hated Dad more than anything for what he did to us and didn’t want to be in Louisiana when I saw him everywhere. I couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t handle passing by that ice cream shop he always took me to after being teased relentlessly in high school. I couldn’t stand passing by the tree he proposed to you underneath and not hear him tell me once again how he did it. All of those good memories were tainted by his constant lying, and it made me sick. So, I ran and left you to deal with it alone, and it pushed you out to Colorado. Further away from where I ended up and no longer within reach.”

I wiped my cheeks on the blanket of her hospital bed as I drew in a shaking breath.

“I didn’t think of anyone but me,” I said breathlessly. “There’s so much of my life I didn’t share with you. So much of yours I never thought to ask about. I lost my job at the craft shop a month ago and didn’t say anything because I was worried it would scare you. Maybe I should have taken it as a sign to come home. To come back to you and help you acclimate to Boulder. I should’ve come home to spend time with you and Aunt Patty before she died. I should’ve stayed with you after her funeral.”

I paused, listening to her breathing. But she still didn’t open her eyes.

“I started a new job,” I said. “A complicated job. I probably don’t have that job anymore, honestly. So, I guess I have time to be out here.”

My voice drifted off and I chastised myself. What kind of daughter had I turned into? How in the hell could my mother be proud of the woman I had turned into when I turned my back on my only family because of my own grief? My mother was still young. She wasn’t supposed to die. She didn’t need to. She couldn’t.

I still needed her with me.

“My boss there was a far nicer man than the other one,” I said. “I know you weren’t happy with what I told you about the last one. I still find it funny that you told me you’d beat him senseless if he ever tried that shit again. You know that’s the only time I’ve heard you cuss?”

I huffed out a small laugh, remembering that phone call as if it had been yesterday.

My gosh, I hadn’t called her since that phone call.

“He’s nice,” I said. “But complicated. He’s not who I thought he was, but it seems like no one is in my life. I wish I knew what you would do in my shoes. He lied to me, you know. Just like Dad always did. Until I confronted him. Which, I guess makes him better than Dad. Kind of.”

At least Dad didn’t run drugs.

I laughed to try and cover up my crying. Just in case she could hear me.

“Please, Mom. I really need you to wake up.”

After she was gone, I was alone in the world. She was my last bit of family. The only sliver of family left to stick around and tell me they loved me. She was my last piece of home, and I’d neglected her. Abandoned her. Ran off to the city to find a new life while I left her behind to deal with an empty nest and an empty marital bed. Once my mother was gone, I’d have to deal with the world on my own.

The machines pushing out noises that were supposed to be signs of life were nothing. My mother might have been alive, but she wasn’t there anymore. Not in a tangible way. Not in a way that allowed me to talk with her and hold her like I had when I was younger. The tubes running to and from her body made her look like a science experiment instead of a woman who lived and loved and laughed and lost.

And finally, I accepted her fate.

My hands trembled on hers as my eyes looked up to take in her face. She seemed to be paling by the second. Slipping away from me without really, truly leaving. Without ever finding peace. I stood from my seat and leaned over her, relinquishing my selfish nature to the wind. It was selfish of me to will her to stay her any longer. She deserved to rest.

She’d been through enough.

“If you want to go, you can go,” I said as I kissed her forehead. “Don’t stick around for me. Especially when I didn’t for you. I won’t be mad. I won’t resent you. I love you, Mom. I could never resent you. But I know Dad’s calling to you. And I know you want to go to him, despite everything he put us through. I know you still loved him, and I had no reason to shame you for that. Go to him, Mom. Be with the man you fell in love with in high school.”

My face was hot and drenched with tears. I pushed a few strands of her gray hair away from her face, one of my hands still firmly holding hers. Her breath rattled in, louder than before, and I knew it was happening.

I bent over to kiss her lips, my tears leaking onto her wrinkled skin.

“Tell Daddy I said hello, and with any luck, I won’t be seeing you guys anytime soon.”

I opened my eyes and was shocked when I saw my mother staring at me. My heart leapt into my chest and my soul overflowed with joy. My trembling hand cupped her cheek as she parted her chapped lips to speak. I wanted to tell her to rest. To save her energy so she could recuperate.

But she gave me something I’d one day find invaluable to my progression in life.

“I’m proud… of you.”

I drew in a shaking breath as her eyes fell closed. Her body went limp as tears rushed and fell down my cheeks. The machine that had been keeping a rhythm all weekend flatlined, and my world shattered at my feet. My jaw quivered. My legs weakened. My chest sped up with my uneven breaths.

“Mom?” I asked weakly.

The droning grew louder, and my words became more desperate.

“Mom!?” I asked.

I heard footsteps running in through the door behind me as someone tried to pull me away.

“Mom!”

I stumbled on my feet, but my line of thought was interrupted by two warm arms pulling me against a warmer body. I watched the doctors work their way around my mother, taking her vitals as a crash cart rolled in. Her body jumped with the electrical jolts as nurses wrangled all the tubes running in and out of her body. And when I finally felt my legs buckle underneath me, the pair of arms turned me into the person holding me. I looked up as tears blurred my vision and took in the soft gray stare looking back at me.

It was Maximus.

Maximus had followed me.

“I’ve got you,” he said as he pulled me closer to him. “I’ve got you, Christie.”

And instead of pushing him away, I clung to him. Fisted his shirt as tears of anguish and relief poured down my face.

My mother was proud of me.

And I was now an orphan.