This Chair

I am sitting in the same chair my mother died looking out onto a balcony of dying plants. They are withered just like me as I dither over her heavy death sentence from a harsh and aggressive pancreatic cancer. This cancer quickly took over and destroyed her life. She did not deserve this and neither did I. I cannot believe my loss. I too I have given up on life. I now cannot get a life. I am stuck to this chair feeling life is not fair and in total despair.

I cannot repair myself sitting around a confusing collection of photos of both her and my dad’s current girlfriend. Time has now moved on. As I stare into all these photographs and other bits and pieces of memorabilia, I can’t help but get hopelessly depressed. My arms uselessly hang. I can’t even stretch to fetch a paper or magazine right in front of me. This chair is where I now hang out. My heart bleeds at her loss. How I wish I could get the living hell out of this chair. How I wish it could grow wings so I could meet her in heaven. Sometimes I can feel her presence floating above me in the chair. This feels surreal.

Sitting in this chair brings back strong memories of her dying and me crying. I am now left sighing deeply with disappointment. I feel hopeless as I play with my phone yet again uselessly shopping for even more unnecessary items and other times talking to phoney men. I feel I am on the road to nowhere, not even out to the courtyard to water the dying plants.

I am really not up to much these days. I cannot be bothered to put on a slicker of lipstick or get out of my miserable grey tracksuit. I am no longer up to hitting the town hard dressed to the nines looking like a million dollars with all the glamorous clothes and beautiful jewellery mum and I used to buy together. Mum used to make me feel like a perfect ten with all these precious things but they are now left in the dead museum of my room.

Others who visit the house also frown at me doing almost nothing productive in the chair which I am chained to. I do not even have the energy to slowly rock it like a much older person in a nursing home. Even they have more of a ticker than I do.

I really cannot cope with all of this. Instead, I pack up and lay my feet solemnly out in front of me like an invalid. My energy levels are so low that I feel I am almost lying in a coma like she once was.

Sometimes I am almost left immobile in the chair not fit enough even for musical chairs. I cannot for the life of me get up and go.

I can’t even get a leg up. Instead, it feels like I am in an electric chair about to be electrocuted. I can feel my mind also shot to bits as I think of her. As I lie idle in this chair I really feel hopeless. I am anything but well as I do anything but forget. I revel in her memory.

Again, I feel real torture as I try to fill the time with simply eating drinking and sleeping again like a poor retiree in a nursing home. I have officially retired from life. Before, mum and I used to embrace life.

The more I sit in this wretched chair the worse it gets. I twiddle my thumbs and wiggle around annoyingly with others who cannot take it and leave me alone in my chair. I then turn to my phone or the television taking in total and utter nonsense. I also listen to soulful ballads feeling truly sorry for myself. The more I do this the worse things get.

The only comfort is dreaming about my mother and her telling me firmly to water the plants and to pick myself up and not to feel so sorry for myself. I still cannot believe her death. Still, she tells me to water the plants. I would like to be well enough for this. My sadness is overwhelming like an overflowing well.

I never knew my life would come down to sitting in this miserable chair with nothing worthwhile to do. Many times, I don’t even have the energy to get up to change the television channel and end up watching the boring cricket with no sound for hours on end. As I cut myself off from the world I feel cut off at the knees. My heart still aches for my mother.

I do keep longing for those special moments where she floats above me in the chair. It is almost like I am back tracking. As I feel her presence, I feel myself rejuvenating. I stand up, get the watering can and water the plants. Finally, the plants come back to life, and things start to feel beautiful and fair once more, even amidst the hardship of grief, and missing her very dearly.