We visited her twice already. She hasn't eaten in days. She hasn't woken up in days. Sleeping Beauty syndrome, I like to call it when I look at her, with hair splayed out from her peaceful face like a black fan. Comatose, my mom says.

She didn't always have the peaceful face. The other night her face was perma-contorted. But the nurse came by around midnight to hook her up to a steady bag of painkillers, something stronger than Oxycontin.

I sat by her bed in silence for a bit. Went to the bathroom. Looked at her framed photos of past cats, Molly and Oliver, sitting on a shared chair by the kitchen table looking into the camera like a pair of her own toddlers. In her bedroom were photographs, of them are 3 different photographs taken on her wedding day. As cheesey as a prom-date shot but as nostalgic as your own parents. She married a German. He died of lung cancer a couple years ago. He is still the greeting on her answering machine. They had no children. They only had each other. They only wanted each other.

The similarities are fucking uncanny that I'm scared shitless, staring into this one-way mirror of a potential future of mine.

I think it hits me the hardest not because I see her in me, but because I see me in her.