She woke up in the middle of the night. About the same time her father had woken her up 25 years ago. “Wake up,” he had said, “your mama just died.” It still feels like yesterday and in the same moment like a lifetime ago. She should have seen it coming. Everyone did only she couldn´t. It was impossible to imagine. Simply impossible. She knew on a certain level that the day was coming closer. But she kept on thinking ‘Only tomorrow! Only one more day’. She diddn´t realize that she had the same thought every day over months now. She didn´t realize that there was no tomorrow.

When she opened the blinds the next morning the sky was bright blue as if it was just another beautiful day in spring. As if the world would keep on turning. But it did not, not for her. She felt like being in a vaccum. Her body felt different. Everything felt different. Or better she didn´t feel anything at all. The silence hit her and to this day she can´t stand it. Silence means nothing but emptiness to her. They went to the hospice. She would have gone there anway because it was the day after she last saw her, it was only ‘tomorrow’. So, naturally, in her mind her mum would have still been alive.

They had said good bye before her father brought her to the hospice, yes, but it was not a real good bye it was a ‘see you tomorow’, in her mind anyway. Her sister had cried and she was wondering why, thinking ‘We’ll see her tomorrow again’. But she had died the very first night. People go to a hospice when it is ‘about time’ to spend their last days and nights there. People don´t pass away the very first night. This is not the way it was supposed to be. She saw her, her body, skinny, pale, tortured by the disease. But she couldn´t comprehend that she was gone. Not that moment, not the next day, not after the funeral, not over the next months. The constant silence in the house reflected her emptiness, that gigantic part inside of her that had died along with her mother. Every once in a while this surreal feeling of ‘it´s impossible, she can´t have gone’ catches up with her and she thinks time and again ‘I can´t believe I am spending my life without you. It can´t be, we never even said good bye!’