< Back to Issue 11

NONFICTION

Waiting on an Angel

Friday, 7:31 p.m.
Two women recline side by side in the bed. Mimi is drifting in and out of dreams—dreams of a life well spent, a life well loved. Their heads are pressed lightly against each other, gray and white hair curling around each other and tickling the other’s forehead, but their hands are more firmly intertwined. Silence often reigns, with conversation and noise filtering in from the rest of the crowded house, from people waiting their turn to sit with her, wait with her, be with her when the end does finally come. But for now, the two women just sit, one with a rattling breath and the other with even inhales that sometimes turn shaky on the exhale.

Saturday, 10:53 a.m.
Her grandson lies along the floor of the hallway, head propped on one hand and a book laid out in front of him. His fingers follow the words as he reads aloud, reading to the toddler sitting in rapture on the other side of the book. The toddler is equally enthralled by this grown-up second cousin as he is by the bright colors on the pages. When the man makes a silly face, the toddler’s sudden laughter echoes around the hallway and through the open doorway. The joyful noise reverberates around the room where Mimi lies propped up on her bed, mouth agape as her body fights for oxygen. And if you look closely, you might see her mouth twitch into the facsimile of a smile.

Saturday, 4:27 p.m.
There’s a crowd in her room, formed after she opened her eyes for the first time in hours. No words were spoken, as the group may have hoped, and her breath continues to make irregular noises as it fights her dying body. First one voice and then another begins to sing “Amazing Grace.” The melody is slow, and the words swell as quiet voices are raised. The room is small, but it is full of bodies and heat and voices and something inexplicable. The music, made up of off-key vocals and an oxygen machine that no one properly hears anymore, is so close an embodiment of love that it almost shimmers in the air. If on occasion one person or another cannot sing a few lines, if their throat closes over the words, it only adds to the melody. And Mimi must be in awe of the love they all weave around her because even after the last verse is sung and prayers are said, her breath struggles on, keeping her body here even if she cannot manage a smile anymore.

Saturday, 9:15 p.m.
The dining room table has, by some miracle, been cleared of all the food that it carried throughout the day. Instead, cards scatter the wooden surface. Three grandchildren and one daughter play a game that takes little effort, a game that Mimi has tweaked and passed into the family’s lore. The TV plays quietly while another daughter lies on the couch, futilely trying to close her eyes and get some rest. “We thought maybe she wanted to be left alone,” one of them comments, almost in jest, but not quite. Every few minutes one or another of the card players leans back, cranes their neck, and checks if her chest is still rising and falling. Always for a moment, there is fear—fear that she actually has gone. But then there quickly follows an ache. Because this sweet 89-year-old woman is ready to meet her Maker and this body is holding her back from what she has been waiting for her whole life.

Sunday, 1:15 a.m.
A calm descends in the small hours of the night, only allowed in now that the moon is high and everyone else is asleep. This is the time she chooses to wake. She has never been one for an audience, and in death she is no different. One last breath pushes out of her failing body, and now, now, now. Now she can see the light, and she finds the peace she’d never once doubted would carry her away.

---

Angie Brady lives, loves, and writes in NEPA with her husband and son. She primarily writes short pieces of fiction and creative nonfiction.

---

Next (Bob Smith) >
< Previous (Jennifer Baker)

---

Image: Saint Catherine, Carried up to Heaven by Angels, Giovanni Baglione, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.