My eyes flutter open. I am warm, comfortably curled into my favourite blanket on the couch. Napping, no doubt. The air wafts of my wife’s perfume and I am momentarily tethered in the blissful limbo of half-awareness, and everything is good, and warm, and safe.

Suddenly, movement catches my eye. I yelp in a bizarre mixture of fear and surprise; waving to me from my living room window is none other than my long-dead and buried, beloved mother. The sun behind her in a bright halo, her soft face beckons me from behind the glass, her familiar hands coaxing me towards her arms. They are soft, warm and safe, as recognisable as they were when she held me as a child, and when I held them as she died, nearly a decade ago. I am struck with a conflicting sense of panic and yearning and find myself moving from my position to reach towards her. My arm is half-outstretched, when something tugs me back to bed. Reality pierces my skin like a needle and my head flicks to the bookshelf where the marble urn housing my mother’s ashes sits.

My vision blurs. Am I dreaming again? I turn my aching head towards the window. She smiles at me from the glass. She’s speaking to me, but I can’t hear the words. She opens her mouth, but all I hear is beeping.

Rhythmical beeping. It reminds me of a heartbeat.

Wafting of my wife’s perfume. The pierce of a needle. My arm jerks backwards. The living room fractures in front of me, and I call out to my mother. I yearn for her warm arms, I yearn to go back to sleep. The beeping fills my head and my body, and the needles are in my skin and my belly. My mouth is dry, and I wake again.

My wife’s face. A concerned nurse beside her, injecting another fluid into my drip. The aching in my body, the weakness in my arms and legs, the throbbing in my head. I am tired, now.

I am ready.

I close my eyes. My mother waves at me, and opens her arms to embrace me once more.