The time came.

We watched standing huddled together while a doctor removed the tube which had kept her alive and deprived her of speech. The chaplain quietly prayed. We are not religious yet the lyrical rising and falling of the words made sense. The blessing of water gently done.

At times like this, when the sound of your own breathing feels magnified, when the awful sound of air in a dying throat rattles round a room, the rhythm of language soothes.

Then our mother looked upwards as if she was seeing something astonishing.

Was she amazed by an angel or was it the shock of breathing unaided?  I  like to think she saw something lovely, who wouldn’t. That her imagination had released a vision so beautiful she felt at ease, welcomed.

Pin points of time ticked by and her breathing grew faint

and then she was gone.

In a moment.