"The News We Carry"

“It’s stage four,” he said.

My brother-in-law, always blunt. No preamble, no softening. Just the facts, spat like gravel.

When you hear something like that—news that punches its way into your chest, drags the breath from your lungs and leaves your jaw locked in a wordless scream—it’s as if time fractures. The world, once ordinary, suddenly tilts. A before and an after is born in a single sentence.

“I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I didn’t realise she—”

“–I need to tell your mum,” he cut in.

Of course. My mother. Ninety-one. Frail. Still bright-eyed in moments, but drifting more and more into the blur of forgetting. Her days are soft repetitions now: tea, roses, sunlight, naps. She has no sense of future anymore—and tonight, the present is going to tear her apart.

“I’ll come with you,” I said.

The walk to her retirement apartment takes less than twenty minutes, but we barely speak. The sun is gone, the day fading into a heavy dusk. Street lamps flicker to life along the winding footpath, casting long shadows onto the hedges. In daylight, we might pause to admire the roses—lush, perfumed reds and golds from the recent plantings. But tonight, the flowers don’t matter. Tonight, we carry something heavier than silence.

I glance at him as we walk. The news he holds is not just a medical update. It’s a sentence. My sister is dying.

I’ve barely swallowed it myself, and now we are delivering it to our mother—who will lose her child.

They say there’s no grief like it. Parents aren't meant to outlive their children. It breaks the natural order. I don’t know what that kind of pain feels like. I hope I never do.

When we knock, she opens the door slowly. Her face brightens, lit with genuine delight.

“What a surprise!” she beams. “You’re both here!”

We smile back, pretending we’ve simply dropped in for tea. For a few moments, we live in her version of reality, where things are still warm and safe and familiar. We sit. We talk about the weather. She makes tea in her dainty floral cups with shaky hands and serves us shortbread from a tin she’s had for decades.

She takes our hands, leads us to the small sitting room, and we settle into the ritual: sit, sip, chat.

A lamp clicks on beside her. Its golden glow casts long, uncertain shadows. Still, no light is enough for what’s coming.

I watch her face, lined by nearly a century of life. How do you prepare a mother to hear the worst?

I glance at my brother-in-law. He gives the faintest nod. I nod back.

He clears his throat, hands trembling just slightly as he sets down his untouched tea.

“I have to tell you some very bad news,” he says.

The teacup in her hand clinks hard against its saucer. Her smile fades. She looks from him to me and back again. The air shifts—heavier now.

“What is it?” she asks, though I think some part of her already knows.

Her hand finds mine. Cold. Taut as porcelain. She squeezes, hard.

He says it as gently as he can. The words drop like stones into the stillness.

She gasps. Not loudly. Not theatrically. Just a small, sharp sound, like the beginning of a sob she won’t allow.

“No,” she whispers. Her grip on my hand tightens, nails pressing into my skin. “Not my girl. Not my baby.”

We sit in that room for a long time. No one says much. The tea goes cold. Outside, the roses bloom unseen in the dark. Inside, three people try to exist around a hole that has just opened in the center of everything.

Later, she will forget pieces of this night. Maybe even most of it. Her memory is a sieve now.

But for tonight, in this unbearable moment, she remembers. Every word. Every silence. Every heartbeat.

She remembers that her daughter is dying.

And I will remember the sound of her hand on mine, the unspoken grief passing between skin and bone, mother and child.

We carry this news, now. All of us.