The call came when she least expected it, on a Wednesday morning, one of the three days she had chosen to stay home. It was now a routine; four days at the hospital and three days at home. Not that she minded. Her first son was finally coming home after being away for five years, studying. Journalism and Photography had built him into a man. John always knew what was good for him.
"Hello?" She said, anticipating his voice.
"Mrs. Effiong?" The voice wasn't John's.
"Yes," she replied, confused.
"I'm calling from St. Lucy's Hospital."
"What happened?"
"Please, get here ma."
Simi Effiong wasn't a career woman. She had always been a stay at home mum. She loved it - the fragrance of her flower garden when she tended to it in her comfortable tee shirt and jeans, the scent of books when she arranged her husband's study.
She was twenty-one, dark eyed and slender when she married Anthony, a bartender who loved to read.
She pulled into the hospital tired. She had known the moment the call dropped that her husband was gone. Eight months of going to and fro the hospital and watching him slip farther away each time should have prepared her.
Hell! Cancer alone should have prepared her.
She barely managed to hold back the sobs as she followed the nurse into his private ward.
"Mum?"
Anthony wrapped his arms around his mother and stared hard at the corpse of the man he called father for twenty-five years. That moment, he realised that the only thing left for him to capture was his last blink.
Image source - ikea.com
Touching but thought the son's name was John?
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