My time is running out. It’s time to tell you about the third thing that happened when Mother was dying. The third thing I was a witness to. Have I built up the tension enough? You’re probably expecting something gory, something horrifying, something that will stay with you as it’s stayed with me all this time. A story so ugly that you’ll need to tell it to a couple of people to dilute it. A story that will teach you something new about what it is to die. You’ll be disappointed.

It was the night that Mother died. She was in hospital. We were there, Dad and me — she hadn’t been awake for a while; she’d already said her goodbyes. It didn’t feel like she was hanging on to life, more that she was waiting for death, like waiting for a bus. Getting impatient. We both sat there in silence for hours on end and listened to her breathe. There was too much time between each breath. I waited for each one, like when someone is snoring, and it’s not the snoring that keeps you awake, but the waiting-for-the-next-snore. It started to feel as though I were keeping her alive by making sure of each new intake of air.

We only spoke to each other when we fetched coffee or went to the toilet. Dad was too deep in his grief to look after me, to worry about me. And I was fine with that — I wanted to be left alone. I don’t know what I thought about, those last hours. I didn’t even look at Mother much, just sat in her room, reading, doing puzzles in a puzzle-book. Dad just looked at her, his eyes glazed. And then, just when I was wondering if she might go on forever, she took a big breath and then her breath left her, but it was different, like it was leaving of its own accord, not being blown out. It went on for a long time. I wondered how she could have so much air in her. There was a silence then, stretching on and on.

How long did we sit like that? After a while, I realised that I was holding my own breath and let it out suddenly. Dad was looking at her face, waiting. He took one of his hands and held it flat over her chest, not touching her. I don’t know what he was trying to do, what he was thinking. And he said, ‘No.’ So quietly, so quietly I could hardly hear. No. No. No. They didn’t join up into a string, each ‘no’ was separate, all on its own. Utterly final. No. No. No. I wanted to leave the room. I wanted someone else to be there. It was too much, the three of us together in this small room. The two of us. One of us gone. Dad got louder, slowly. No. No! No! NO! NO! I felt embarrassed. I felt embarrassed that someone would hear us, that someone would hear my dad grieving for his dead wife. I said ‘Dad!’ quietly. He didn’t hear me. I was stuck to my seat. There was no room for me to be sad. He was taking up all of the space, all of the space. And then people came in, lots of people, and started doing things to my mum. Not Mother. My mum. My mummy. One of the nurses went over to my dad and put her hand on his back. And he just kept on. NO! NO! NO! His face distorted. No-one was with me. I got up. I left the room.

And none of this, none of this is the third worst thing. The third worst thing was this: I walked out of that room, that room where my mum was dead and my dad was screaming. I shut the door behind me. I walked out into the corridor. I didn’t know where I was. And I walked out in front of a woman, all dressed up in a business suit, a bunch of flowers in her hand. She was in a hurry. She bumped into me, she dropped the flowers. I opened my mouth to say sorry, but before it came out, she looked right at me and said, ‘Get out of my way.’ She said it quietly; her eyes were cold. And she picked up the flowers and walked off. She says it to me in my dreams, night after night. Get out of my way. Get out of my way. And I stood there, thinking, ‘My mum has just died! Don’t you care? Can’t you even stop for a minute to let me tell you?’

And then I wondered why she should care. I thought about how Mum’s death was going to affect the world. It would rip into me and Dad, of course. Her family and close friends would be left with huge holes in their lives. But her acquaintances — would there be more sadness that she’d gone, or more fear about how this could happen to them? And the people she used to know — her best friend at primary school, her third boyfriend — would they ever find out? And the people she passed on the street in her lifetime? And all the people she’d never met, who never even knew she existed — that anonymous woman in her business suit — the shockwaves wouldn’t even touch them. When we die, it’ll be the same.

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