Free Eden Burning by Deirdre Quiery

small book from his mother and put it into his jacket pocket with the medal to Our Lady of Mount Carmel. He threw his arms around his mother as she lay propped up on the pillows. Tears rolled down his face as he whispered, “I don’t want you to die.” Even as he said it, he knew it was a crazy thing to say. She had to die. Whatever is born has to die. His mother looked at him with a tangible gentleness, her head tilted to one side, smiling softly, with the kind of smile that wanted to tell Tom something more than could be told with words. She didn’t move her arms to hold him. Her arms stayed crossed on her lap. She then looked at him again quizzically as Tom pulled back, rubbing the tears from his cheeks with the back of his hand. She whispered, “You’re lucky. You can cry. I’ve never been able to cry.”
    Tom threw his arms around her once more. Tom’s mother caressed his hair with soft even strokes.
    “It’s my time Tom. You have to let me go.”
    As Tom worked carving grooves in the leg of an oak chair, his thoughts were constantly of his mother and her approaching death. He didn’t know what he could do to help her. He could only think of her. By keeping images of her in his mind, he felt her presence filling him, wiping out any other reality. As he turned the back of the chair in his hands, the smoothness of the warm oak reminded him of her skin, the curve of the wood, her nose, the warmth of the sun shining on his back, her caress. His body flooded with a sweet sadness, a melancholy, a piercing poignancy. The image of his mother now seemed to sink from his head to his heart. He couldn’t clearly see her at all but felther essence beating within his heart. At ten minutes past four he experienced a stabbing sensation above the groin on his right side. He sat still on the chair on which he had been carving.
    Was it the beginning of appendicitis? He pressed his hand into his side and felt his body flood with a mingling of peace and joy. In the peace was the sinking sensation of silence. He felt as though he was dropping through clouds of feathers, breathing slowly and deeply. The accompanying feeling of joy was as though he was simultaneously being lifted back up again to the surface. The feeling was so extraordinary that he wanted to laugh out loud. He felt light, buoyant, bubbling with a sense of anticipation and pleasure as though he was waiting at a railway station for a long lost friend arriving on the approaching train. He found himself observing these unusual sensations in his body with confusion. His body was being playful – like a kitten bouncing up a tree in the garden, patting with its paw at a flower or like a lamb jumping high into the air. Why, he wondered, did he feel so sublimely happy with his mother dying? Later that evening, when he returned to the hospital to visit his mother, Nurse Anne rested her hand on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry. Your mother passed away at ten past four. Would you like to see her?”
    When Tom saw his mother, she was lying on her side. The bedspread with its tiny roses covered her shoulders. He approached her, slowly, cautiously, seeing first her open mouth, spidery red veins around her nose, closed eyes. Her long black hair spread over the pillow like an oil slick. Her body gurgled and he could have sworn it moved. For a moment Tom thought that she hadn’t died, that they had made a mistake and that she was only asleep. He touched her forehead. It was cold and hard. He looked at her closed eyes. They were solid, slightly open but he couldn’t see the eyes themselves which before had looked at him, sparkling like the twinkling surface of a summer sea, or onoccasion pierced him like the thrust of a sword in fencing. No, her lashes were sealed as though with glue. He stroked her silky fine hair against the pillow case. He fingered her arm through the long cotton sleeve of her nightdress. It was still warm. He held her hand for the last time, her chipped nails,