This Horrible Event

What you won't know until it happens to you is that the hospital death of a loved one, besides being filled with grief, is grindingly dull. The same stupid stories and platitudes over and over again as new uninvited visitors come to express their sympanthy. Also, The Complete and Total Loser is finding while tending his mother during her final hours, much of the process is simply repulsive, but he won't go into descriptions of bodily fluids and the like.

The Loser's mother's last coherent sentences were demanding an end to her suffering, for the Loser to choke her to death. He half considered this early during the night shift, but decided that his resume would not be enhanced by an entry reading, "October, 2011: Matricide." It's awful, but the in the 220 million years of mammalian existence evolution has strove to maintain life at any cost. That means that although the Loser's mother's spirit is gone, her body fights on, and in the four long seconds after each exhalation it commands her to breathe yet again, even against her will.