Fifteen years old
‘You’re going to have to do something about this hair, kiddo. If you let it get any longer, you won’t be able to see a thing in front of you,’ my mom teases, running her fragile fingers through my blond locks and giving one strand a meager pull in playful reprimand.
‘Guess you better get well soon then, because no scissor is coming within an inch of my head if the person who’s wielding it isn’t you,’ I reply with a mischievous wink, gaining a small smile out of my frail mother.
Still rooted to my chair at her bedside, I slouch as much as I can toward her, just so my mom can get her fill. When she starts humming in delight while carefully combing my hair with her fingertips, I close my eyes and pretend I’m five years old again. In my mind, I’m the one who’s bedridden while my mother sings me to sleep, toying with the strands of my hair exactly like she used to do anytime I got sick. Her tune isn’t as strong as it once was, but the raindrops on the windowpane camouflage it enough that I almost believe we’re in my room back home and not in the sterile environment of Falmouth Hospital.
But this small reprieve is quickly stolen from me when one of the nurses comes in to do her daily routine of checking my mother’s stats. Resentment for the woman who just entered the small room consumes me when my mom quickly pulls her hand away from my hair and straightens up on the bed, trying to appear stronger.
‘Is your father coming today?’ she asks after a long pause, her eyes never straying from the nurse going about her business.
‘He’s on a fishing expedition. He’ll be back in a couple of days. We told you that last week when we were both here. Remember, Mom?’
Her face drops at the reminder, making her look even more fragile than she did when I first arrived. The sick feeling in the pit of my stomach always increases every time I see my mother deteriorating like this right before my very eyes.
Her memory not being as sharp as it once was, isn’t the only noticeable side effect of her illness. My mother’s sunken cheeks and ghostly pale skin are a testament to the ways her cancer has taken most of her natural beauty and jubilant nature away from her. The fact that she still has the frame of mind to wrap a scarf over her naked head and cover most of her skin-and-bones body under her hospital blanket before visiting hours is astounding to me.
But that’s my mom for you.
She hates to show us how truly weak she is and cause me and my dad any more concern than the ones we already have. Even before my mom got sick, she was always the type of person who hated to cause a fuss, so I get her need to try and downplay her sickness for us.
But sometimes I wish she didn’t.
Especially when she’s in so much pain.
A few months back, her doctor warned us about her blatant refusal to take any morphine whenever dad and I came into the mainland to visit her. Her stubbornness in not taking the drug has gotten so bad that I have to call the hospital first to see if she’s having a good day or a bad one, before I even think of coming to visit her. If the nurse on call tells me she’s having a rough day of it then I don’t come and make up an excuse as to why I have to stay back in Thatcher’s Bay. I won’t have her choosing to be in excruciating pain just so she can put on a brave face for me. It’s bad enough that I have to put one on for her.
I do understand the sentiment behind her not wanting to be all doped up around us though. The drugs make her loopy and it’s hard to have a coherent conversation with her when her veins are polluted with that vile stuff. And although I would prefer to know she isn’t suffering, anytime I come by and see that she’s lucid, I can’t help but hold on to that feeling of hope that somehow a miracle will happen and my mom will eventually beat this beast of an illness that has consumed her from within. When she’s all drugged up and zombie-like, it’s harder to keep that hope alive.
Just like me, my mom knows that all the days we spend together are precious. We might hope for the best, but deep down, all of us expect the worst. Her need to make each day count and be fully present for me, as selfish as it sounds, is what has gotten me through these past few years.
I really wish my father was here though.
I get that he has to work. With mom being so sick, we only have his paycheck to survive, and my mom’s health insurance only covers so much. If my father isn’t working, or here at the hospital, he’s home with the phone glued to his ear, negotiating with the bank and insurance company. Unbeknownst to him, I know fully well just how deep a hole my mom’s cancer has gotten us into. I hear his frustrated whispers on the phone, trying to come up with ways to pay for mom’s treatment. He’s taken out so many loans, it’ll take his and my lifetime to pay them all.
So, he works.
He goes out on his trawler, praying that the sea will be his friend and offers up a haul that will get us out of this ditch we find ourselves in. Even though I know this, anytime I come to visit mom and he’s not with me, I still can’t help but resent his absence.
But lately, it doesn’t even measure up to the resentment I feel when he does come.
When he is here, a part of me wishes he would go back out to sea and never come back.
My father has lost hope.
It’s clear as day in his eyes.
Mom sees it too, and it kills me that he can no longer pretend around her.
“Noah, sweetheart, tell me about school,” Mom probes, finally averting her eyes from the blonde nurse.
I offer her a smile and talk about my lame ass shit so she can feel like she’s a part of it. She patiently listens to me moan about teachers and friends alike. I wish I was the type of kid who got straight A’s and could make her proud. But I’m not. C’s are a win for me.
But even those have been hard to get these last three years.
My head isn’t on school—it’s on her.
The woman I love most in the world.
The woman who cared for me every day of her life.
God is cruel to have given her this fucking illness.
Fuck that.
God doesn’t exist in my book.
How could he when my good-hearted mother is literally lying on her deathbed, while bad people live long and prosperous lives?
Mom hates it when I say shit like this, so I keep these thoughts to myself while I tell her about the latest news and gossip from our little island. Not that anything noteworthy really happens in Thatcher’s Bay, but I still fill in the gaps, hoping it’s enough to keep her entertained.
We continue with our visit, and when one of the other nurses on call pops his head into my mom’s room saying that visiting hours are over, I promise my mom that I’ll come back the next day.
“I love you, kiddo,” she whispers as I place a kiss on her cheek.
“I love you, too, Mom,” I reply, hating how my voice sounds strangled and hoarse.
She doesn’t need that shit from me.
If she can be strong, then so can I.
I plant a wide smile and stand up straight so she can see that I’m okay, even if inside, my heart is shattering, piece by piece.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” I say, squeezing her dainty small hand in mine.
“And I’ll see you in a bit. In my dreams,” she retorts with a tired smile.
I kiss her knuckles and her forehead before turning around and finding the male nurse standing at the door looking guilty as fuck at the pair of us.
“Sorry, son. I tried to leave you in there as long as I could.”
“I know,” I mumble, taking one more quick glance at my mom over my shoulder and seeing that she’s already nestled in her bed, eyes closed.
Lately, any time I come over, it takes more than its toll on her. She’s out like a light even before I’ve left the room. I wonder how hard it must be for her to keep herself awake when I’m here. Maybe I shouldn’t come over tomorrow and let her rest, but since I already promised I’d come, I can’t back out now. She always sees right through any excuses I make up anyway.
“You good, son?” the nurse asks as we step out of the room.
“What do you think?” I snap, shoving my hands in my jean’s pockets and walking as fast as I can out of there.
Even though this is technically a hospital, my mom is in a separate wing of care.
She’s stashed away on the hospice side of the building.
In other words, the only thing the doctors and nurses are doing now is keeping her as comfortable as possible and waiting for the day her body gives up on her.
Like my dad, they’ve lost hope, too.
At least he was able to do one thing right.
Back at the island, the care facility she had been in was goddamn awful. She was there for less than a month before she started fading away from us at rapid speed. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when dad found bed sores on her back. Dad did the only thing he could do in those circumstances. He punched the orderly that had the gall to say these things happen and took her out of there that same day.
Unfortunately for us, the only proper facility we could take her to was on the mainland.
We knew this meant the price tag would be steep as fuck, but it also meant that seeing her every day would be challenging for us. Still, it was the only solution we could find. The hospice wing of Falmouth Hospital is reputable, clean, and the staff treats her well.
Well, maybe not all of them.
I’m hit with the memory of how my mom gave the side eye to that blonde nurse earlier today.
There was definitely hatred in my mom’s eyes.
Could that nurse be treating her badly?
Did she say something to offend her?
Mom has never been one to hate anyone.
She used to be a kindergarten teacher, for crying out loud. Mom doesn’t have a mean bone in her body, so if she was scowling at the woman, then she must have done something to piss her off.
I vow to keep my eye on the nurse and have a word with her in the morning. I have half a mind to turn around and have a talk with her now, but that would mean I’d miss the last ferry back to Thatcher’s Bay. If I did that, I would either need to sleep in the waiting room of the hospital or find a bench in some park to sleep on for the night. It’s not like I haven’t done it before, but with the rain coming down so violently as it is now, I would rather sleep in my own bed tonight and confront the nurse tomorrow.
When I step onto the ferry that will take me home, I don’t waste time and walk towards the empty upper deck, needing a few minutes to myself. Although the rain is heavier now, I prefer to stay up here and allow the rain to drench my face.
The dark gray sky resembles how I feel—angry at the world while filled with a deep melancholy.
But unlike the saddened sky and its tears streaming down my face, I don’t let myself cry. Although no one can tell the tears from the rain, I refuse to show weakness when my mother has been so fucking brave.
Between the three of us, she’s the one who has kept her shit together.
In the beginning, I used to hear dad cry every night in his room.
And hated him for it.
It was so selfish of him to simply cry like that.
Didn’t he know I could hear his wails of misery?
Didn’t he realize his pain would only increase my own?
Every night for two years, he broke down, and I swore to myself that I would never be as selfish as he was and let everyone witness my suffering. I resented him for being so weak when my mom has been nothing but courageous.
But my dad doesn’t cry anymore.
He hasn’t cried in months.
And that has widened the rift between us.
I resented his suffering.
But I resent him for giving up on her even more.
These are the thoughts that filter through my mind as the ferry pulls up to the island I call home. Fifteen minutes later, I walk through the front door of our two-story house and let out an exhausted exhale.
Everything is a mess.
Not that it surprises me anymore.
What can you expect from two guys with no woman around telling them to clean up behind themselves? I let out another groan and walk over to the kitchen so I can clean up before I nuke some leftover takeout in the microwave.
Mom would give us hell if she saw her house this way.
And the smell.
God, the smell.
Fish.
Dad says after all these years that I should be used to the stench already.
I’m not. Nor will I ever be.
When Mom was still living with us, our home always smelled lemony-fresh. I don’t know how she pulled it off or what her secret was, but not once did our place smell this bad. You would never have guessed this was a fisherman’s home when you stepped foot inside of it.
Now it reeks of fish guts.
Fucking nauseating.
Disgruntled that this is the new norm, I start to straighten everything up, knowing it won’t be enough to erase the stink. After the kitchen and living room are somewhat livable again, I bring my dinner upstairs to my room. I crack a book open in an attempt to get some homework done, only to quit ten minutes later.
Fuck this.
It’s not like I’ll need any of this shit anyway. My future has been set in stone since birth. I’m to be a fisherman like my dad and his dad before him. No one gets out of Thatcher’s Bay. We all lead the same lives our parents did and their parents before them.
It’s a waste of a life but it’s all I have.
That shit never bothered me so much when mom was here. She made even the crappiest of moments bearable. I didn’t care that I was poor or about the impending future that awaited me. I didn’t care about any of it since mom gave me room to simply be a kid and enjoy my childhood, free of all obligations and concerns. Even though I’m only fifteen years old, I feel like I’m fucking fifty, having lived more heartache and suffering than any of the kids my age could even manage to comprehend.
And soon I won’t even have these small moments of reprieve that my mom offers.
It will only be me and my dad.
In this lonely house, going through the motions of our pathetic existence, until we meet her on the other side.
Not wanting to let that forlorn thought grow roots in my brain, I put on my headphones and start my playlist, praying that the loud, angry music will do its job of eviscerating every thought in my head. After kicking off my secondhand Jordans, I lie down on my bed. It still has the blue comforter with white sailboats that my mom bought for my tenth birthday.
“It’s to help you dream. Never give up on your dreams, kiddo,” she said when she placed it over my bed. “They might just surprise you and come true.”
There was a time where I actually believed her. I may not like the idea that I’m predestined to become a fisherman like my father, but I’ve always been enamored with the ocean. Sometimes I let myself daydream of a life where my mom waves to me from a pier, as she watches me sail off in a thirty-foot-long boat, as I go on an adventure and cross the Atlantic Ocean just to see what’s on the other side.
But that’s all it is.
A daydream.
A wish for a tomorrow that will never come.
But it’s with this elusive vision playing in my mind, that sleep comes to me and takes me under, dreaming about open skies and a tame vast ocean on the horizon. I let the dream take hold, as I live a life that is not in the cards for me. But my blissful dream is all too soon stolen away from me when I hear a distant voice call out my name.
“Noah…”
“Noah…”
“Son…”
I stir in my bed as the strangled voice successfully pulls me from my happy place and back to the darkness of my bedroom and my bleak reality. I rub the sleep from my eyes as they get accustomed to the dim-lit room, a dark shadow sitting right at the edge of my bed. It takes me a minute to focus on my father’s frame, and another minute to realize how distraught his facial features are. His eyes are swollen and red, and when he uses his forearm to clean them, I realize he’s silently crying as he stares at me.
I don’t ask him why he’s back early from his fishing expedition.
I don’t ask him why he’s in my room crying.
I don’t ask him anything.
Because I know.
I know the next words that will come out of his mouth before he’s even uttered them.
I know.
I know.
My mom is dead.
While I was dreaming of the sun on my face and the vast blue ocean all around me, she died.
It’s just as I thought.
There is no God.
She’s gone.
And all I have left now is him.
I will never dream again.
