I walked to where she lay, my heart racing in my chest, something inside of me making me sit on the edge of her bed and take her cold bony hand in mine.

As our gazes met, tears escaped the corner of my eyes just at the sight of hers. I couldn’t fucking take her crying, it broke my heart. It broke my heart knowing that those tears were out of worry… out of disappointment in me.

I lifted Mamma's hand to my lips and pressed a kiss on her thinning skin. “Sorry, Mamma,” I whispered as she stared up at me, her body unmoving, her tears coming thicker and thicker the more I spoke. “I know I’m not the son you wanted me to be. I’m sorry I’m such a huge fucking failure.”

Mamma closed her eyes, blinking away the sadness filling her gaze as I told her those words. My head fell to her hand and I whispered, “I just wanted to help you, Mamma. Even as a kid, with Papa beating you, I always wanted to protect you, to keep you safe… to save you from having such a shit life. But I know all I am to you now is a letdown. I ain’t the sports star like Aust. I ain’t like that young sweet kid in the next room that you just know is gonna be somebody someday…” I choked on a breath and met her eyes again, moving my finger to brush away the fresh warm tears from her cheek and the damp hair from her face. “But I love you all the same, Mamma. I love you so much that I don’t know how to deal with all this shit you’re going through, this fucking disease. I just can’t stand what’s happening to you. I can’t stand not being able to do shit about it. I’ve always protected us all, but I can’t protect you from this… and I can’t fucking handle it.” I squeezed my mamma’s hand tighter and paused so I could breathe. “And I ain’t sure what the hell I’ll do when you leave me… when you leave us all…” A sob ripped from my chest as I thought of what it’d be like to live in a world where she didn’t exist and it fucking broke me.

Mamma’s breathing increased, and as I looked at her face, even though her muscles couldn’t move, I saw the grief in her expression… I saw the gutting truth that she didn’t want to leave us either… that it was eating her that she had no other choice but to slowly fade away.

“I ain’t sure how to do this life without you, Mamma. I’ve fought for so long to keep us going, to keep you going, that I don’t know what the hell I’ll do when you go… how I’ll cope…”

I cried an age on this bed with my mamma’s hand so weakly in mine. I didn’t think I could move from sitting here, just holding Mamma’s hand, but Gio pounded on our trailer door, telling me we had to leave.

Wiping at my cheeks, I stood and washed Mamma’s face with the wet cloth I kept beside her bed. Leaning down, I kissed her on her forehead and whispered, “Ti voglio bene, mamma… sempre.”

Just before I left, I moved to her old record player and switched it on. “Ave Maria” immediately began playing from the speaker.

Walking to the door, I left without ever looking back.

And I never saw her again…

*****

“Shh…” Ally whispered in my ear as she rocked me, crying into my hands.

Lifting my face, I met Ally’s sympathetic gaze and said, “I never got to say goodbye, Ally… I never fucking got to say goodbye to Mamma…” Louder cries burst from my mouth and I fought just to breathe through the racking guilt.

“I was selfish… so fucking selfish, and I ran, I ran and left her all alone, left them all alone. She must have been so afraid for me, so worried about where I was as she laid there unable to get up and come find me. Because she always worried about me, Al. Even as she was dying, years of slowly wasting away, I didn’t give her any peace. What the fuck was I thinking? She died in that hospital room without me there to tell her I loved her, to tell her to finally leave this shitty life and be at peace… and that I’d miss her for the rest of my life… Christ, Ally, how the fuck do I get past that? There’s no going back and I don’t know how to go on.”

Ally’s tears splashed on my head and she said in a cracked voice, “She knew you loved her, baby… she knew that one day you’d be someone.”

“But she didn’t live to see any of it, did she? All she knew of me was disappointment. She died thinking that all she’d raised was a piece of shit coke dealing son. The guilt… the guilt of that just fucking rips me apart. She must have died thinking she’d failed as my mamma… but the truth was, I’d failed as a son…

“Axel…” Ally went to speak, but I looked up at her and said, “I don’t even know what it was like when she passed. I’ve never been able to ask Austin about it. I don’t know how she looked, what time she died, what was said. I can’t ever forgive myself for it… for as long as I live, I’ll never forgive myself.”

All the color drained from Ally’s face and her arms tightened around me. Then she opened her mouth and confessed quietly, “I was there, Axel…”

Still trying to stop my chest from suffocating me, I didn’t understand what she meant. Ally’s shaking hands pressed on my cheeks and she explained, “Baby, I was there when your mamma died… I saw her… I was in the room as she took her last breath.”

Confusion made me freeze. Ally’s face broke into soft cries. “I’ve wanted to tell you for so long that I was with Austin and Levi when your mamma passed. We were all at the hospital for Lexi when she relapsed and your mamma was brought in. Austin almost broke having his mamma dying and his soulmate fading away. He couldn’t cope, so we all stayed to support him and Levi.”