Al otro lado de la puerta
_¿Qué tienes? ¿Fuiste al baño? - me preguntaba mamá cuando escuchaba que me asomaba a la puerta. Yo asentía medio dormido y luego me iba a mi habitación, como si fuera un sonámbulo.
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Efectivamente, mamá estaba grave y aunque los médicos habían hecho lo humanamente posible, al final la habían dado de alta con unos cuidados muy puntuales. Por eso llamé a mi esposa y le informé que me quedaría con mamá todo el tiempo que fuera necesario.
Y así fue, estuve a su lado día y noche, y aunque había ocupado mi antigua habitación, me gustaba, al igual que cuando niño, despertar en la madrugada y entrar a su habitación para ver cómo estaba.
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HASTA UNA PRÓXIMA OPORTUNIDAD, AMIGOS
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Mom was sleeping in her room, which was at the end of the hallway, and although my room was close to the bathroom, if I felt like going pee in the middle of the night, I liked to stop by her room afterwards to make sure she was okay, there, asleep, and so that she would also know that I had woken up:
"What's wrong? Did you go to the bathroom?" - Mom would ask me when she heard me peeking into the doorway. I would nod half asleep and then go back to my room, as if I were sleepwalking.
Once, I must have been around 8 years old, I got up in the middle of the night and after going to the bathroom, I peeked into my mother’s room and, in the darkness, I saw the shadow of a man near the bed and something like an indistinguishable body on the mattress, which was moaning and connected to some machines. At that moment, the man turned to look at me and frightened by what I had seen, I slammed the door shut and ran away. With my heart racing and trembling a lot, I got into the bathroom and closed the door for fear that the man would run after me and catch me. My mom found me there the next day, asleep, lying on the floor, and when I told her the little I remembered, she said that maybe I had imagined it or it had been a nightmare.
Time passed and that experience faded from my memory, like many things do as one grows up. I studied, graduated, started a family, and moved out of my parents' house. At that time, I lived six hours away from my mother, so when I was told that my mom was feeling unwell, I didn’t hesitate—I took a plane to get to her as quickly as possible. Indeed, Mom was seriously ill, and although the doctors had done everything humanly possible, in the end she was discharged with significant care needs. That’s why I called my wife and told her that I would stay with Mom as long as necessary. And I did just that—I stayed by her side day and night, and even though I had taken over my old room, I liked it, just as when I was a child, waking up in the middle of the night and going into her room to see how she was.
On Mom's last day of life, they had to put oxygen and other equipment on her. Knowing it was the end, I stayed with her all night, sitting by her bed, with one of her hands in mine. That's how I fell asleep and woke up in the early morning, startled, when I heard the bedroom door opening. I turned to see who it was and saw a child peeking through the doorway. The child saw my mother, then looked at me, and terrified, slammed the door shut with great force. At that moment, I remembered that night and recalled what had scared me so much: at 8 years old, I had seen my mother dead.