Please remember this

It's the three of us, just the three of us, and it’s quiet—no TV, no phones, nothing. The only sound is something that beeps in B, and none of us is really paying any attention to that.

I survey my dad’s empty stare. I can’t tell what he’s thinking or feeling, even if his brain is starting to empty itself, I know that there’s something there.

My mom tosses. I study the sound of her breathing, the way her hair falls, her eyes, the way her skin feels like a composition of rubber and plastic. I brush my hand over hers.

I take in every moment in front of me, because moments like these where it’s just the three of us—quiet—they just don’t happen very often.

On another day, it’s the four of us around the room. We used to do this a lot, sitting around a round table. I think we’d read the Bible and take turns reading a verse. Then, someone would pray, and we’d finally get around to eating dinner.

These aren’t particularly fond memories, or bad ones either. I just remember them and have not thought of them for a while.

I reach further into my memory banks to try to retrieve more memories of where it’s the four of us, but I just can’t find that many.

I think we ate together outside our tent when we went camping.

I think we ate together in a lodge at a ski resort, or maybe inside a car and it was cup-of-noodles.

I think we ate together when my brother came home after being on a boat for a year and I was walking home from school and heard that he was finally back home and looked like a rockstar and I was so excited to see him.

There are photos of the four of us strewn throughout the house—evidence of other moments that existed—but I really don’t remember much about those.

I wonder why I don’t remember them. Maybe I was too young. Maybe they were memories I tried to forget. Maybe I just didn’t appreciate them enough to place a metaphorical marker on them, to make them easier to retrieve, to make them easier to remember.

So I make it a point to try to remember this:

There’s four of us, just the four of us, and it’s quiet—no kids, no relatives, no guests, except for the nurse who pops in and out. And that thing that beeps in B, which none of us is really paying any attention to.

It’s just us, back here in the hospital. My brother and I stand off to the side. My dad sits on a chair, his eyes empty, staring at the bed in front of him that my mom is lying in.

It’s not a particularly fond memory, but it is one, and I just want to write it down, for myself.

The four of us. It’s been a long time since it was just us. Maybe this is a vision of what our lives will be like in the future, for all of us.

But I just want to write this down, for myself. Just in case we never get to experience this ever again.