(Sometime in early 2012. In my classroom. As a writing exercise I did while my students did theirs.) I remember I Love Lucy in the background. Sleeping on the floor of the living room. But little else. Except when the door closed and I sat alone. Alone except for my mother. I know she had crystal blue eyes and ravishing red hair, but I don't really remember. Through tears, my aunt, who even in my fourteen year-old memory is shorter than me, ushers me into my room to have a final meeting. I'm to tell her "it's okay" and that "I'll be alright." At fourteen I am to say goodbye and make the passing a little easier for my mother. It seemed ludicrous to think that a woman in a coma was waiting for the okay to move on. But that's the twenty-eight year old me scoffing the past. The fourteen year old me, in that room, on that day, surrounded by family urgings and the sacriligious spiritual murmurings of the unreligious could almost believe anything. And so I sat. In my memory the room is not my room and the woman is not my mother and I am not me. In my memory I am preoccupied with a boy and life and love, not death. The room smells stale and remains lifeless, except the sharp draws of breath on the bed.