“Gone?”
April nodded.
“But not forgotten?”
Trust him to come up with a cliché at a time like this! She watched the soles of her mother’s feet turn purple, as the nurses told her they would. Everything was correct.
Mum had cared about propriety until the last. “Is this normal?” she’d asked when her words began to flutter like released butterflies. “I’m glad. Where are my black nurses?”
They’d worked out what she meant. Mum wanted the ward orderlies who cleaned her room.
The ones who talked to her. They’d come in smiling. Now April smiled at her brother.
“Never!”
Image: http://www.thefamilygp.com/mrsa-and-hospitals.htm
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That made me think of my mother in her last days.
It was pretty much as it happened – I was the brother who made a crass comment, hence the wish behind the title.