When The Kaleidoscope Breaks

It’s fascinating what your mind notices in the split seconds before you die.
I remember noticing the vivid technicolor landscape spinning wildly like a kaleidoscope of colour. I remember sharing a moment of helplessness and confusion when I caught my sister’s eye just before I uncontrollably elbowed her in the chest. I remember seeing my mother’s head smash through the side window. But what I remember noticing the most were the few precious seconds of nothingness after the car had stopped spinning and before the mad rush of helpful first responders.
In these ineffable moments life does not exist. I do not exist. I am a soulless jellyfish floating aimlessly in the cosmic ocean, my endless tentacles stretching through time. I am the nothingness of space and time and the infinity of life and death. I am everything and nothing and in my quietude, I float blissfully forever.
Suddenly, without warning or explanation, I am unceremoniously pulled from my sojourn, my womb of tranquility, and thrust into my maladroit man suit. A cacophony of lights and sounds and pain rushes back to me in a wave of consciousness and as I wake from my dreamless sleep, I remember the image of my broken mother.
Something changes in you when you see your mother moribund. It’s a realization that she is mortal, that she is not unbreakable.
I did not die that night but a little part of my innocence abandoned me forever.

Three months earlier my mother excitedly enters my bedroom and announces that we are going on our first family holiday up to the Gold Coast. We are taking the scenic route through Sydney to cross the famous bridge. In other words, she couldn’t afford plane tickets. She beams at me expecting me to match her ebullience. She was trying her best to be a good mother, something that didn’t come naturally to her, so I returned a faint smile. In our household, it was always best to reserve your enthusiasm as things had a way of subceeding your expectations.
Three months later my aunt sheepishly enters my hotel room and asks if I was ready to leave. She was trying her best in my mother’s stead, and although at times she could be clumsily overbearing she was undoubtedly more maternal than my mother, something that made me jealous and my mother resentful. I returned a faint smile and made my way to the car.
The journey to the hospital was uneventful save for my sister’s mewling when my aunt refused her request for ice cream. Such things seem so trivial today.

As we entered my mother’s room I couldn’t help but feel a sense of helplessness for her as she sat there in her restrictive neck brace. Her head was heavily bandaged obscuring her right eye, her face was covered in lacerations from the glass and her left arm was held in a sling.  This was not my mother. This was a stranger with my mother’s voice. My sister ran up to her and they embraced. My mother then turned her attention to me with an ameliorating smile. This time I returned the expression and awkwardly hugged her. I elongated our embrace in an attempt to hold on to something that I knew was no longer mine.
For the very last time, I quietly sobbed in my mother’s bosom.
Twenty years ago I almost saw my mother die.
That was the last time I felt like a child.