My Mother Is a Symphony

My mother, she breathes like an accordion. She wheezes in, out. In, out. The breaths stretch her chest, empty but for lungs. Huge lungs, built for yelling. Her voice is sharp and discordant, but when she sleeps she’s nothing but breath. In, out. In, out.

My mother is stout and short, and her body creaks when she moves. Only her ribs move now, though, as she sleeps. There’s a rhythm to it. In, out. In, out. I rest my hand on her chest just barely, just to feel it. I think it’s in 4/4.

She doesn’t have much hair, my mother. It’s wispy and gray and it tickles her face. Sometimes it makes her nose or cheek twitch in her sleep, and it floats with her breaths as they go in, out. In, out. She looks old, like she’s aged forty years in less than a month. I wonder if she’ll keep aging like this until she wastes away into nothing at all. At this rate, it won’t take long. Maybe another month.

Her fingers are like claws, gnarled and threatening. Not as sharp as her voice, though. They clutch at her pristine white sheets, bunching the thin fabric in her fists. I don’t know how a sleeping old woman can look so ready to attack, but she does. Even as quiet as she is, with her pianissimo breaths, she looks crazed and fearsome.

My mother’s eyes are a cold, dull gray, but I can’t see her eyes right now. I haven’t seen her eyes in three weeks, two days. Her eyelids, those thin, wrinkled flaps of skin, are all that protect me from her harsh glare. I can see her eyes moving underneath them, though, looking for me. They’re at a faster tempo than her breaths, not matching up. It’s arrhythmic, startling.

Her face is never at peace, even in sleep. Her eyebrows are furrowed and her mouth is set in a perpetual frown. I don’t know if she deserves to feel at peace. Each breath is a pained sigh. In, out. In, out. She plays an awful tune.

I tell the uncomfortable doctors and sympathetic nurses that I’m very sad. That I miss her. That I love her.

But each night I pray that she never wakes up.