Sheets

My aunt stood opposite me staring at a collection of neatly curated socks. We had just peeled the quilt back to strip my mother’s sheets for the wash. Right now, my mom weighs a stubborn 93 pounds. “Something to be celebrated,” the doctors suggest, illustrating how pressed we are for celebrations lately. We smiled at them, the socks, or at least I think we did. Smiles stopped being seen outside the household sometime last March. 

“Your mother and my sister shared a twin bed for nearly a decade” my aunt began, memory blooming behind her mask. She explained how my mother, the smallest of five, was so young she would still wet the bed. My other aunt was expected to change the sheets, tuck them both back in, and soldier on. She carried out this duty without complaint, and fell asleep the sound of my mother whispering her fears while clutching the bow of her older sister’s nightgown.  

And I’m not sure if it was the image of my mother, tiny and helpless looking on as her sister changed the sheets. 

Or that she’s watching again tiny for a different reason and just as helpless.

Or that when I mentioned the twin bed to my mom during a small window when she seemed well enough to talk, she just closed her eyes and said she hoped she lived long enough to say thank you. 

But after weeks of soldiering on in my own way, I broke in two. Heaving sobs, breath catching, beastly more than human. I needed it. 

And I’ve decided maybe that day I broke in three, or four, or enough pieces to be picked up by the women who carried her then and will carry each other when she is gone.