Iridescence

        “I’m sorry, but your mother is suffering from an severe form of dementia. Her brain has degenerated very quickly and there’s not much we can do to stop it. I’m afraid she doesn’t have much time left. ”

        Noemi’s heart skipped a beat. “Severe?” she repeated, “Severe dementia?” Noemi gasped in despair and clenched the stiff metal bed railings surrounding the narrow hospital bed, turning her knuckles ghost white. “No! There must be some way to slow it! Make it stop!”

        The doctor bowed his head dejectedly and retreated out of the room. “I’ll let you have a moment,” he murmured apologetically before quietly closing the door

        Shocked, Noemi stared down at her mother: merely an empty mound beneath the starch white linen sheets that concealed her frail, withering body. Her hands were ice like the metal railings around her bed, and her eyes were filled with a sadness that casted a dark shadow over her pasty, wasted face. She was blue with depression, mirroring the solemn steel blue sky just beyond the plastic white blinds in the cramped bedside window. How could this be? What had she done wrong? Her mother had only shown signs of sickness a few weeks ago and everything was happening too quickly for Noemi to grasp.

        “Mum,” she whispered cautiously, not sure if she’d get a response. “Mum?”

        Noemi’s mother slowly turned her head, crinkling the pillow beneath. Her eyes were blank like the walls that confined the suffocatingly small room.

        “Hi mum,” Noemi breathed, somehow managing to pull out a little smile. “How are you feeling?” Of course she wouldn’t respond to that. She hadn’t talked much for days. She had no energy and she couldn’t remember things. The awful disease was sucking the life out of her like a black hole growing from inside her brain. Noemi couldn’t take it anymore and burst into uncontrolled tears. “I don’t get it!” she cried and shook her head. She looked down and grasped for her mother’s fragile hand, afraid to let go of the person who had loved her so much her entire life. “It’s not fair!”

        Suddenly, Noemi saw something out of the corner of her eye. She looked up to see a teardrop streak down her mother’s cheek and chase into the folds of the crinkled pillow. Noemi looked into her mother’s eyes to see them well up with tears as crystal clear as glass. But her eyes were not swimming in tears of sadness. They were swimming in tears of understanding and forgiveness and courage and love, so many feelings that could only be accounted for by matching each to a color shown through the rainbow iridescence in her tears. Something sparked in Noemi’s mind. She remembered the same rainbow iridescence from her childhood: a small fishbowl sitting on a quiet window ledge in her room. Underneath the afternoon sun, its water would reflect and shine like a polished pearl before her eyes and amuse her with its dancing lights and shadows that stretched across her tiny, soft yellow room. Inside of this fishbowl was her most prized possession: a little spotted guppy named Sadie. Now, Sadie was not an ordinary store-bought pet guppy. It lived in a terrarium fishbowl with rocks at the bottom, some floating green algae, and a brown snail to keep her company. As Noemi grew, Sadie did too and when she was bored, Noemi would spend hours watching her fish swim and flip through the water, splashing the surface and sending more iridescent drops up into the air. Sadie was a shy but loyal and obedient fish and never failed to swim to the front of the bowl to greet Noemi whenever it was feeding time. Except for one time.

        One hot summer evening, Noemi was just about to go to bed when she noticed Sadie hadn’t eaten the food Noemi put in earlier. Noemi playfully skipped over to the window ledge, sure that Sadie was only playing some game of hide-and-go-seek, only to find algae, rocks, and… a snail with a fish large head sticking out of its mouth! The snail was eating Sadie! Noemi watched in terror as the malicious snail slowly sucked the remaining end of the guppy into its ominous slimy mouth with more power than the unsuspecting snail would ever have been thought to have. More and more of Sadie was disappearing into the unknown depths of the snail’s acidic, vile stomach by the second until only Sadie’s black circular eye was left uneaten. It was unblinking and bold. Her last act of courage. And then she was gone.

        Noemi screamed, horrified by the sight of the savage snail and sick to her stomach. She didn’t understand. Why would the snail do this? Why would it just take the life of another without reason, without warning, without knowing how much the it meant to Noemi. To Noemi, her mother’s dementia was like the snail: cold and evil and wretched, that didn’t give a second thought before taking what meant the most to her straight out of her hands. It was a monster that couldn’t be stopped no matter how hard she tried and that didn’t bother looking back at the shattered heart it left her clinging to with no way to piece it back together.

        Noemi looked back into her mother’s eyes. They were now a beautiful shade of grey like a rising summer storm, strong and lively. Her mother gave a weak smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes like they used to when she laughed and danced with Noemi in the living room when she was young. Noemi smiled back, pushing more tears over the rims of her eyes, but this time they mimicked those of her mother’s iridescent ones and shared their feelings of understanding, forgiveness, courage, love, and so many others. Noemi loved Sadie and Noemi loved her mother. “I understand now,” she murmured to her mother and her mother squeezed her hand one last time.