Eggshell

I feel so small.I am floating on an eggshell. How am I meant to continue on in this new reality? Where no one will ever know me like she did, or love me the same way. In a world where no one understands

who she was and what she meant. I am losing an appendage of my soul - It was already lost years ago as she lost herself, but now in her final moments, layers of shell wilt from around me. The incubation of grief finally over.

I have already been drifting down this river of sorrow, watching as she fades away. 

I am left on rough waters with only pieces keeping me afloat. These final days of hospice giving me something between uselessness and hope. Her suffering breath and her silent voice, the slow death, of her fragility. 

She hasn't been here and I needed her. I need her so desperately. I've missed her…I'll miss her.

I am not ready to face this new universe, yet I've prepared for it. Why did she have to go so long ago only leave me one last time. Why couldn't she have stayed until her final moments? She became so lost in conversations, her memory a maze. Falling for every lie, scam, and deceit not understanding the truth anymore. Everyday items, now new experiences. I became her comfort, her care. 

For someone no longer there, she still laughed the same but her smile was changed. She couldn't remember me in my fullness, still thinking I was somewhere in the past. She grew so anxious and I held her hand, but I needed my hand to be held. 

She had grown smaller than the mountains she once towered. Her great person shrunken behind her eyes. She was still there somewhere, but life had taken her from me. The great twist of the knife for death to steal her away for the last time. I needed her embrace, her strength, her shoulder to cry on, I need her voice, I need it all. I am greedy for her being. To bask in the presence of all that she was

She became so fragile. So many times she fell. She broke so easily, bruised and swollen. I cant bare it how easily it caused her pain. I held it inside, she must be cared for.

Her aged body lays there so clammy, I massage the palm of her swollen purple hand. I brush lightly her whisps of hair with my fingertips, lay kisses on the thin wrinkled skin of her forehead.

I can barely see her behind her own eyes.

Struggling sounds mumble from her lips,

"I Lowve yu." 

I love you more.