Lyric Prose
The things we do when nothing can be done.
Lynn picked them because they were almost blue. “Mom liked blue flowers,” Lynn said, wiping her eyes.
It was too late to find a flower shop. By then, Mom had a couple of hours left at most. Maybe less. Mom’s eyes remained closed longer now, her breathing slowing and slowing. Once or twice her breathing stopped entirely.
We all held our breaths,
…wondering if it would be her last.
Eyes wet, cheeks red, Lynn raced to the parking lot where the hospital planted flowers along the pathways. She grabbed two fistfuls of short stems cradling tiny flowers that really weren’t quite blue.
She hid them in her jacket pocket to bring them back to the room where monitors beeped beside our mother’s bed. We sat closer.
Lynn gently closed mom’s fingers around the ragged green stalks, the tiny purplish flowers still bright, still alive, almost out of place in a room holding its breath.
I took mom’s other hand. Still warm though her eyes were closed.
We watched the space between her breaths lengthen until the room seemed to wait with her. And then mom breathed out with a deep grating sound.
