R.I.P Mum

• Georgia Osborne, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2013

My hand reaches out slowly towards hers. It's cold and hard like a rock. She still needs a mask to breathe. Dad keeps on telling me she will be fine, so does the doctor. I know deep, down inside myself, it won't be.

I can hear the pace of her heart beat through the machine. It is slow. It's painful to watch her like this. She was just too sick. It must have been the smoking. Why did she continue? There must have been a reason for the obsession.

I keep on asking myself questions like, what will I do if she leaves me? What will my life be like? Then suddenly, I hear her heart get slower and slower until, it stops. Her head slowly sinks into the pillow. Lying there infront of me is my mother and she is dead.

Sometimes I wonder why I keep on having these dreams or thoughts that she is coming back and that what happened in the hospital didn't happen at all. Other times I would curse and yell at God wanting to know why He did this to her. My Dad told me to calm down and think about mum. She was in a lot of pain and keeping her alive wouldn't be good. That is why she entered His kingdom.

Every night before I go to bed I like to talk to mum and ask her questions about life and wanting answers for some of my questions. She never answers me though. It is hard to have a conversation with someone when they won't answer you. I would ask Dad why she wouldn't answer me and he would always say she was sleeping. Mum must have been really tired.

It amazes me how hard it is to let something go. I remember an old saying mum would tell me, "You never realsie how much you love something until it is gone forever." I would sit and think about it and wonder how much I'm going to miss her.

I know my life won't be the same now without her in my life. I will never have someone to tell me that my shirt shows too much of my stomach or the heels I'm wearing are too high. Nothing will be the same.

I won't be like my other friends who all have mothers to look after them. I will be the only girl in my family which will be hard for me when I need advice for growing up.

I would go through her photos and see what she looked like when she was young and healthy. My mum used to be a surf life saver and that envolved a lot of physical activity but ever since she started smoking she lost of of that fitness and started becoming over weight and depressed.

Mum died from cancer. She had this disease because of her non stop smoking. She was in hospital for two years. She had to breathe with a mask and was alwasy attached to tubes. I would come and visit her daily but sometimes she was too sick to even open her eyes. That was hard for me. The day she died was her birthday. She was turning forty. I couldn't belive that she was that young.

By now you are probably wondering who I am. My nam is Eliza Munro and I am twelve years old. I have one dad and one brother and my life has just turned upside down as I no longer have my mother.