Avery on Evelyne's death

She was 30 that year. Two months before the wedding. Two months exactly. 60 damned days.

Disease, the doctors said. So many things wrong with her body. Her heart was weak, her lungs were weak. It was like her organs had aged too fast. HA, is that not ironic? While I never aged a day, she aged too fast.

They told me it might be an effect of the pregnancies, and that is how I found out about my children. I asked her after that, and she introduced them to me on her deathbed, before the disease went too far.

She…her mind went first.

She lost most feeling in her body, so there was no pain. But she also lost memories. She forgot her parents, she forgot her children. She forgot her home, her friends. Her name. Eventually, she forgot me too, but that did not stop be from visiting her every day. When she forgot how to do things like eat and brush her hair, I stopped leaving her. I eventually lost my job, but I did not care. I stayed with her. I fed her, brushed her hair, changed her clothes. It got worse every day, but I refused to leave her. She needed me.

She cried in her sleep. She remembered in her sleep. She would call for the children. For me.

The children came to see her a lot. Well, Charles and Jaylene did. Ariel refused to see her once she forgot about her. It was too painful for her. Jaylene was too young to really understand what was happening. Charles was angry with Ariel for a while, but finally came to understand. While Charles wanted to spend as much time with his mother as he could, Ariel wanted to look back and remember her mother in good health, not sick.

One morning, I left the room to get her breakfast. I came back and she…

She was gone. I stood there for probably an hour, just staring. Tears ran down my face. I was vaguely aware that there was hot food down my front and shattered glass on the floor in front of me. I could not move.

I beat myself up over that for weeks, that I had not been there when it happened. 4 weeks and 3 days after she passed was the second time I had tried to take my own life.