We were all quite surprised when she started acting that way, as if she had been awakened with new magical powers, to do whatever she wanted as if that was all it were about.
I immediately sensed that there was something wrong, but stared in eager anticipation with the rest of the family who were visiting her on her seventy-ninth birthday. Naïve, prepared and unknowing at the very same time.
So this is what she did.
She swung her coffee cup around and around, making high-angled circles in the air, and then she held it upside down, motionless as if to prove an important point. Not a single drop of the brownish liquid fell from the inverted opening, and failed to stain the carpet waiting for it to happen. The surface of the coffee remained suspended inside of the cup, with little ripples forming as the hand holdng it trembled ever so slightly, those subtle tremors of old age.
Then she picked up the plate with the slice of cake, tossed it onto the air so that it did a double flip, and nonchalantly caught it upright in midair, as if that was the most normal thing in the world. The whole loop-to-loop movement was slowed in time, as if the attenuated gravitational forces of the moon had just then taken over.
When she started to slow down, to stare longingly into the distance, and the tricks became less and less, that is when I knew it. The bleeding in her head had caught up and tightened its grip on a vital convoluted section of the brain matter.
Her face became pale, like a thin layer of ash, and then she closed her eyes. Her skin became yellow and swollen, and she stopped breathing.
At that exact moment, the cup of coffee spilled to the ground, and the slice of cake slid off the edge of the table and landed upside-down on my right shoe.
That is when we knew for sure that it was all over.
