“I’m right here, Mom.”
She raised her hand very slowly, pointed to the old, torn pillow she had slept on for so many years, and with a faint, raspy whisper, said:
“For you, Mabel… only for you.”
Then she tried to say something else, but she couldn’t. Her hand went limp in mine. And her chest… stopped moving.
My world came crashing down. I cried, clinging to that bed until dawn.
A while later, the other children arrived. Shouting, crying, phone calls, neighbors coming and going. In the middle of clearing out her room, one of my brothers-in-law grabbed the old pillow to toss it into a trash bag.
Without thinking, I snatched it from his hands.
“Not that one.”
“What do you want that old thing for? It’s torn and filthy,” my sister-in-law scoffed.
I didn’t know what to say. I just hugged it tightly against my chest. Because those were the last words Fiona had said to me. Because she had left it to me. Because even though it looked old, stained, and almost falling apart, she had gathered her final breath to name it right before she died.
