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by MJ Sanchez September 27, 2021 3
Life Loss

In dreams

‘Oh, I just started going,’ my mum gasped with an odd note of excitement.
‘Going where?,’ I asked from her bedside. She had been confused in her last days and for a moment I wondered if she had forgotten where she was.
‘Oh, you know,’ she said with a smile, ‘going.’
It was hard for her to talk now; she did so with her eyes closed, as if speaking in dreams.

by MJ Sanchez August 9, 2021 Number of comments0
Loss

Make time for the stingrays

When the doctors told us that my mum’s time was running out, I made a list of the experiences I wanted to share with her before the time came. The aquarium seemed like a good place to start. What I didn’t know at the time was that this would be our last family outing together and that one month later she would be gone from my life.

by MJ Sanchez July 5, 2021 Number of comments0
Fiction Loss

Decimated

It was not a proper clothesline cord, but an old rope and sun and rain had worn the fibers down to a tangle of strings. In places it hung by a thread. It was mottled brown with dirt, and sticky with old cobwebs. Its decimated shape brought me a familiar pain.

by MJ Sanchez July 1, 2021 Number of comments0
Loss

Three days to pack

I wanted to close the door and ensure everything stayed in it’s place for eternity, to create a place where I could go and be with her, with all those traces of her presence. Instead, I found myself prepared to keep only the very few things that could fit into my tiny home and got ready to say goodbye to majority of the things that had made her who she was.

by MJ Sanchez June 30, 2021 2
Loss

How do you say goodbye

When my mum passed away at 11.22 am on 10 June, I felt the world stop. I was on my way to the aged care residence where she was spending her last days with my dad by her side. The road was thick with traffic and I was about two minutes away from arriving when the phone rang. ‘Mum has just passed,’ they told me.