It’s very unusual to have snow in the early days of December. I never could get accustomed to driving in this kind of weather. Thank God it’s an early Sunday morning, and traffic is slow. It must have been 7 AM when the phone rang. I used to pull out the plug every night before I went to bed. It became a habit after receiving a lot of annoying phone calls late at night. Last night I broke that habit. I needed to be prepared. So now the sound of that ringing piece of machinery still resonates in my head, exploring and activating every little brain cell in its search for answers, but all it does is add more questions. And it just rings, and rings, and rings. It won’t stop, not until I park my car in front of my youngest sister’s house.

My girlfriend and I haven’t been talking on our way over here, or maybe we have, but my emotional topsoil has been poisoned with the sound of that same old bakelite phone. And words just don’t make sense or sound right now, or maybe they do, but they just can’t find receptive grounds where they can grow in to sentences, however, the first words that do make any sense or sound are the ones my sister asks me: How? What? When? The same questions I keep asking myself.

So I just tell her about last night, and how I only got 3 hours of sleep after driving from my parents’ house to the hospital in a thick layer of snow, and back home again in an even thicker layer of snow. As soon as she and her husband settle themselves in the backseat of my car, the phone starts ringing in my head again. I can hear my sister, my brother-in-law and my girlfriend talking, all the way to the hospital. But all I hear is this ringing again. It won’t stop, not even when I park my car in an abandoned parking lot, in front of the main entrance of the hospital. The four of us get out of the car, and hurry inside.

My sister and my brother-in-law walk straight to the reception desk. My girlfriend and I are a few meters behind them. I look around and notice how clean, empty and desolate this building looks when there’s no such thing as visiting hours. The emptiness feels like a pause, like it’s slowing down time, but it’s merely the calm before the storm.

Within seconds the hands of the clock turn minutes into hours and gone is the sound of the ringing phone; gone is the desolation of the building; gone is the slow pace. We rush through the empty corridor where I can hear people talk, and where coffee cups rattle. A nurse takes my sister by the hand, and off we go again through the empty hallway. Then the hands of the clock stop, in front of an open door. There’s a faint sound of a phone, a whispering nurse, a few heartbeats, followed by the shortest silence I have ever heard. Time stops. My sister cries. I cry. I can feel my girlfriend’s arms holding me. Tick, tick, tick says the hand of the clock. Intensive care, says the sign on the door. “We tried everything”, says the whispering nurse. Someone screams: No, no, no. There’s my dad. Someone screams. There is my other sister and my two brothers. Someone screams. There’s my mum. Someone screams. December 6th; I’m a child, unwrapping presents. I’m awake. Someone screams and that someone’s me. I’m a grown up man. I’m awake. The phone stopped ringing. Time stopped ticking. My mother stopped breathing just 15 minutes ago.

Outside it snows.