MY ELISA

That night you held his large-knuckled, dying hand in your small, life-filled one for hours and hours and never once let go. You slept upright, somehow, in that plastic and vinyl hospital chair jammed next to his bed in the tiny room overlooking the church.

I draped you in white hospital blankets and stroked your hair and paced up and down the darkened corridors throughout the night knowing he had your hand in his and your sweet rhythmic breaths near his belaboured ones.

I offered you water and food but you declined. You were worried that drinking would make you need to leave him momentarily and you couldn’t let go of his hand.

Instead you talked to him of Barcelona and the architecture of Gaudi you were off to see. You spoke of dreams of sailing boats off the Croatian Coast and the Gothic spires of German minsters that you climbed to the sky to touch; the worn-down stone masonry underfoot on the endless stairs you both climbed to the tallest bell tower in the world.

You told him of all the things he had inspired in you to do and all the things you would do in his honour. You rattled on into the night, sometimes speaking out loud and sometimes in your head when you felt he could hear your thoughts through your fingertips. Whilst I massaged his toes and feet and talked of the universe and the night littered with stars, you spoke of dreams and musings and your visions for the future.

You chatted to him after he’d gone when we were waiting for the doctor to check for life. You reassured him we were there and still you didn’t let go. Not until the doctor asked us to step outside and not until you reassured him again that we were only on the other side of the door.

You sat with me later that morning in the sudden torrential summer rain, the two of us in our soaking wet fluffy bed socks I had bought for the vigil; both wrapped in that same blanket under the cascade off the courtyard pergola. We didn’t care if we were wet through to our underwear. No one cares what you do or how you do it in those places where death is a nightly occurrence and an oddly-welcomed stranger.

You were by my side when no one else had the strength. You were there through every step of that passing over into death. Adults three and four times your age said their goodbyes and went home to wait.

Not you. Not my Elisa.

You were nineteen years old and that night and that morning you showed me how to live.