The expected phone call comes unexpectedly, in the middle of working with a new customer named Sally. The phone rings and I tell her that I’m very sorry but I have to leave. My mother’s name is Sally, I tell her, and the nursing home has called. I hold the tears and fears back with a mantra prayer as I wind my way southward through the state and notice changes in the spaces by the length of leaves and fallen blossoms.
She looks so tiny lying there. And she’s wearing someone else’s nightgown though she wouldn’t know it, but it bothers me somehow. If today’s the day then something of herself should be with her, what little has been left to her at all.
"Mom," I whisper, then a little louder, "Mom? I’m here, it’s me." Me is anybody to my mother. She never opens her eyes. Even for the nurse who makes her sit up for a sip of cranberry juice. He’s so gentle with her. She looks so frail and white against his bulk. He is large and black and has one arm around her. She responds to him. She doesn’t know, I don’t believe, who I am or if I’m even there. "Thank you, Andre," I say to him. It’s meant for all he’s done the last six weeks for her. He knows. "She’s a sweet lady," he tells me, for comfort, and it is.
My sister comes, we hug and cry and sit and wait and go outside for just a moment through the waiting. We decide we will not tell my dad. She leaves, I wait. I sing, I dance, I tell her jokes. Then I ask for her forgiveness for anything and all I’ve done, and give her mine. The nurse brings me some orange juice. It cuts my throat with acid cold. I wonder if maybe it isn’t time at all. But there is little time left and things I want to learn yet from her have been kept from me for years by this disease and all I’ve got is time to let her dream of other things. I tell my mother that she need not worry; that we’ll take good care of Dad. Then two quick breaths, just a tad faster, a little louder than the rest. I watch. I squeeze her hand. She doesn’t take another.
I know and sit there for a minute quietly, still waiting for something I suppose. And when it doesn’t come, I call the nurse. My mother’s gone. Still, it’s hard to leave her there but I must go to see my Dad.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
As trite as it is, my sincere condolences.
I’ve reread what you wrote about three times, and I hope that your grief is as light as may be under the circumstances. May you be as graceful as your words.
Dean, thank you; and it’s not trite. Though I’m not a believer that the anniversary date of anything means anything, for the memories that sneak up on you mean even more, it was just a day to stop and remember, and write about what I didn’t feel I wanted to share before.
The grief has turned into missing; the doubts into a wonder at that very instant of life leaving. One of the last things she could teach me, I suppose.
We all seem to be look for the mystical and some kind of answer or insight in those last moments. I don’t know if revelations come to anyone. They didn’t for me, but the effort seems a small comfort.
I just came across your blog through the authorsblog.com site.
I lost my own mother almost 20 years ago. Sorry for your experience. Be forever grateful, perhaps, that you could be there for her. My own mom died suddenly while at work, and I didn’t get to tell her anything.
The grief never leaves, though like you say, it changes.
Glad to find you.
Lisa, it’s amazing how you picked up on that; the sensation was exactly what I was expecting.
Marta, I’m sorry for your loss as well. I’ll always be grateful that I was with her.
As sad as an experience it is, you’ve written it beautifully. I’m sorry for your loss.
Thank you, Miss Carolyn. I do wish I could find for you your own words on your grandmother’s passing.
You’re very welcome.
About my great grandma’s thing:That’s ok, but that you very much for trying. It’s my fault, really.