When We Fall

I've started. I guess it's on now. Large parts to be fleshed out, but here's what I have. Miss Lethal said I should post it here.

When We Fall

Trash was lying by the side of the road. He was dying. I was at work. When the call came in I was alarmed to hear my brother's voice on the line and my heart beat sped up. I knew something was wrong.

The name of the song Rico finished was When We Fall but when I fell into bed later that night it was Tony V who sprang to mind.

When I say fell, I mean fell. Let me go back a bit. My cranky and arthritic hips have made it difficult for me to move around like I used to. Getting into bed is much easier for me if I get a knee up and roll in, kind of like mounting a horse. High ho Silver!

That night I was off my game a little and the mattress had slipped a few inches off the box spring. I got my first knee up okay but with the combination of a slick floor and the off kilter mattress, I started to slide and could not catch myself. I suddenly ended up planked on the bed, unable to get onto my feet because they kept slipping on the floor. I couldn't get a grip anywhere on the bed because I was right in the middle of it, my body forming a right angle to the bed. I was in a pickle, no one had a key to get in and I was not about to ask a friend to break into the house for this. Calling the fire department for help was out of the question. Far too embarrassing. I kept slowly sliding off the bed. There was no alternative. I would have to lower myself onto my knees, think things out and try to find a way to get up. I couldn't remember the last time I'd been on my knees. Not anytime recently.

The lowering process went slowly but well, all the while different scenarios playing themselves out in my mind. Most ended badly but at least, in the event of my demise, the cats would have plenty to eat until someone finally showed up to check on me.

I flashed back to my father kneeling down in this same room every night before getting into bed to say his prayers. He was a small mean man and I always thought it was odd that he prayed every night but acted like a dick for most of his days. Turns out that he had promised his mother on her deathbed that he would say his prayers every night. Oftentimes I'd wished that she had pressed him further to be mindful of his prayers during the day.

During my early teen years I had joined a church that my closest friend attended. At twelve I was baptized. I thought Jesus was cool and I loved Him. God was a little more inscrutable and off-putting, but I respected Him. The formality of my faith had lapsed, but I still maintained my friendship with Jesus.

As I sank to my knees, God and my father praying on my mind, I sent up a quick hello to God, figuring as long as I was down there anyway…hoping He was not holding a grudge. I thought of Tony V then and the light hearted way we talked about Jesus on line. That and knowing that even if God was pissed about my lack of contact He was contractually obligated to help me made me smile. I got to the work of dragging myself up, twisting and bending a cranky leg to get a foot on the floor, one arthritic knee still down as I bellowed and pulled myself up slowly and deliberately on the rails of my walker. I fell into bed. This time successfully.

The dreams always start with me sleeping. I hear a persistent sound in the background that becomes louder and more focused and eventually wakes me up. In the dream, I get up to go and see what is making the noise. No one ever answers the questions I tentatively shout as I make my way to the source.

My dreams were locked away from my remembering for almost a year after my mother died. Sometimes in that split second between dreaming and waking I would see how much was really going on in my sleep. Layers and layers of dreaming all happening at the same time. Too much for one mind or person to process, but gradually the images began to slow down and I would remember a scene or two.

I dreamt of my grandmothers house. Usually, when this happened someone in the family was about to die. When I dreamt of walking through her house as myself and it was all the way I remembered it from childhood I knew that we were about to lose someone dear. It happened when my grandmother died and it happened the same when her daughter Francesca passed away.

This time was different. My mother was there and she was around my age. Her hair jet black and teased into a flip. She was standing by the stairs that led up to the front door of the house. A large slice of soil had been cut away and it showed layers and layers of different colored dirt with objects that had belonged to people who had lived in the house over the years embedded throughout. It looked like a colorful archeology illustration from an elementary school text book. I approached the steps and my mother, I was a young child and so glad to see her and it all disappeared.

I had seen her the night she died before I went to work. She was agitated and I calmed her and stayed until she fell asleep. I wasn't there when she died in the night and felt like I had let her down. I hated it. It was the one thing about her death I couldn't accept.

There was a knocking that would not stop. It was coming from the kitchen. I followed the noise and saw my mother standing at the sink, but it was the wrong side of the sink. The side that was against the wall. There was no way she could stand there, but she did. She looked ashen and weak, so pale I was alarmed and rushed to her saying calmly 'Mum, what are you doing? You don't need to do the dishes now.'

Just like that day she went into the hospital, I didn't want her to know how concerned I was that she seemed so ill. She said nothing. She was too weak to speak. As I drew near I could see that she was about to faint and I reached out and took her in my arms so she would not fall.

The closer I got the more clear it became that she was not well. Her knees started to buckle.. She swooned into my arms as soon as I reached her, I was shocked. She felt cool and grew even paler. I knew she was dying. Suddenly I saw us both from just outside my body. When I put my arms around her I could feel her spirit push up and start to leave her body and woke with a start just as she finished giving up her ghost. Some part of both of our consciousnesses swirling together and spiraling up and up and into the starry Universe.

I don't know how to thank her for doing that for me.