If I Only Knew

You told me I would see you on Wednesday when I came to visit you after the brain surgery.You left a handwritten letter in your beautiful cursive taped to the mirror in your restroom explaining how you couldn’t wait to get home in a few days, how things would go right back to normal when you got back. If I’d known that you weren’t ever going step foot in our house again, that you weren’t ever going to see me again too- if I only knew that, that hug was the last one I would ever get from you. That you were never going to talk to me again and everything in my life would be flipped upside down from that point on. Maybe I would have held on just a little longer. I remember the last time I spoke to you. The last words I said to you. As you lay there unresponsive in that dull hospital bed, I told you how much I needed you. How all I wanted to hear was your voice. I listened to the machine slowly breathing for you, and I told you how I would listen better if you would just wake up and come home. Better yet, just tell me you love me. We needed you. Dad needed you. I was only seven and Kolbi was two. How was I supposed to know what to do as “woman” of the house? You were my biological mother. You carried me inside of you for nine months and gave birth to me. You were the first person I saw as I was brought into this world. You knew me before I even knew myself. And you were taken from me. 

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