The very first memory I have of my mother, and it is indeed my earliest memory, is of her bringing my little sister Bobbie home from the hospital. I was four and a half. Mom sat in a chair, dressed in a long, blue nightgown, looking impossibly elegant and very beautiful, holding our family’s new baby.
The last memory I have of my mother is from the night she died. She was wearing a silk, floral nightgown my father had given her some thirty years before. She had at long last stopped flailing about the hospice bed and had given herself over to the morphine that was dripping into her veins. She was tired and had slipped out of consciousness. She was still, however, incredibly elegant, and with her white hair, perfect skin, long, graceful hands and soft blue eyes, so very beautiful.
My mom had been diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia eleven and a half months earlier. The doctor had given her three to four months to live. He said she would eventually go to the hospital because of exhaustion, low platelet, hemoglobin and white blood counts and simply would not come home. My mom took him at his word and made her list of bequests, hauled her old sweaters and well-worn blouses to the local Goodwill store, finished up her volunteer work assignments, donated her collections of old sheet music and theatre Playbills to the University and resigned her post as president of the women’s investment club.
With the help of Thalidomide, Prednisone, Procrit and numerous other drugs, she outlived the pronounced sentence. Our family was able to make a trip together to Florida six months later, and we celebrated her eighty-second birthday with a huge red velvet cake and several glasses of Chardonnay six weeks after that.
When the medications stopped working and the fatigue set in, she became transfusion-dependent. My eighty-four year-old father drove her to the hospital each week for one or two pints of blood. It was comparable to filling her up with high-octane fuel. She was usually able to get through the rest of the week.
Toward the end, she got through the week by sitting in the recliner next to her bed. A good day was marked by moving from the chair to the bed, to the dinner table, to the bathroom, back to the chair, to the bed, and so on.
My siblings and I traveled back and forth to our hometown to help out however we could. This meant picking her up after she had fallen, helping her get up from the toilet on particularly bad days, putting a heating pad on her shoulders, stocking the refrigerator with sweet potato and split pea soup, doing the laundry, driving her to the doctor, organizing the sheets in the linen closet, trimming the rose bushes, washing her hair, and painting her fingernails.
On the last day of one of my trips home I dropped her off at the hospital for a transfusion before heading for the airport. She was extremely weak, but insisted on moving without a walker. She held her arms behind her back, her hands clasped in a defiant sort of grip. She announced her arrival to the nurse at the front desk, proceeded to sign in, and then carefully made her way to a chair in the waiting area. Though she scarcely had the strength to put one foot in front of the other, she was poised and proud. Her red and white pin-striped Brooks Brothers shirt was neatly tucked into her navy blue slacks. Her hair, though flat from spending so much time in bed, had been brushed out, and her cheeks were slightly flushed from the exertion of having left the house. She had on her favorite slippers.
That was the last time I saw my mom in a lucid state. Something went terribly wrong during the transfusion that day. Her blood pressure spiked, and the nurses reportedly began asking her if she had a living will. They told my father later that she had wanted to know if this was what it felt like to die.
She was not the same after that.
I returned four days later to find my mother slipping away. Dad had called hospice; there was one man installing a hospital bed in my sister’s old room, another plugging in an oxygen tank. The house I grew up in was humming with an odd sense of preparation. Mom was in bed, but hardly took notice of my arrival. With a skewed expression, she glanced at me from some distant place.
My mother was on some powerful pain pills at this point. Dad was confident that the discomfort stemmed from lying in bed all day, and the doctor had earlier confirmed this as a possibility. When she was due for the next round of pills shortly after I arrived, though, it was obvious to me that she was dealing with pain that went far beyond any neck or backache. She had begun to moan – a low, long sound I’d never heard before.
That night Dad and I decided to take shifts sitting up with Mom. He went first. I retreated to my old room. Nothing in it has been changed since I left home just before my eighteenth birthday. The pink shag carpet is worn in some spots, but manages to still beg me to stretch across it and talk on the pink princess phone with my girlfriends. The wallpaper, which matches the bedspread, which matches the drapes, is a barrage of green and pink flowers. Even the waste paper basket is covered in the same fabric. I climbed into bed and tried to rest. The sounds my mother made drifted down the hallway. Around eleven o’clock, I looked in on my parents and found them nestled on top of the bed sheets like two spoons in a drawer.
I took over for Dad around one. I made myself a bed in the Lazy Boy recliner and tried to fall asleep. Mom soon started thrashing about in the bed. She groaned, and began speaking in fragments. She got herself all wrapped up in the sheets and in her nightgown. She tried to lift her head to rearrange herself, but didn’t have the strength. As the night wore on, the flailing got more vigorous. She would move from a vertical position in the bed to a horizontal one, then back again. She started to repeat that she “can’t do this,” placing a huge emphasis on the word “can’t.” Often she would simply plead, “don’t make me do this.” Eventually, after a few hours, she began crying, “please, just shoot me.”
My mother was polite and soft-spoken. She rarely got mad at us kids and never raised her voice. The only time I remember her being really angry with me was when I got caught smoking cigarettes with the McCool brothers in my grandparents’ back yard. I heard her swear once. That was when I burst into the kitchen late one summer afternoon to report that my sister Bobbie had been bitten by a dog.
Bobbie told me she read somewhere that we die much the same way we live. My mother’s cries that night were soft and quietly expressive, caked around the edges with tearful exasperation. It was clear she didn’t want to bother anyone, didn’t want to make a fuss.
When she did manage to find a comfortable position and lie still, I sat next to her on the bed, our bodies touching. My mother was a private woman. She was also very modest. I felt unsure about being so close to her, awkward at first about stroking her cheek, embarrassed when her nightgown failed to cover her completely.
I need to mention my mother’s hands. They were long and slender and ridiculously graceful. They always seemed poised to begin conducting the musical piece she was hearing in her head. When she hummed or sang aloud, her hands danced elegantly in front of her. She played the piano and the cello when she was younger. The sight of those hands gliding back and forth across the bridge of the cello, her baby finger held delicately in the air, always made me feel slightly ashamed. My hands were thick and small, good for scaling trees and catching baseballs. There was always dirt beneath my fingernails. My mother’s hands were like porcelain – as white and smooth and tapered as you could possibly imagine.
I watched her hands as she moved about the bed that night. They often dropped to her forehead as she threw her arms up over her head. As excruciating as the pain must have been, her hands beautifully and miraculously landed like a fan around her face, as if protecting her from what was about to hit next.
There was one point during the night when I held her in my arms. I was trying to keep her from falling off the bed. How many nights had she performed this same act for me when I was a child learning to sleep in my first big girl bed? I looked down at my mother, who was cradled in my lap, and realized for the first time what it meant to be parent and child at the same time.
When the sun came up, I consulted with my brother, Ben, who had slept across the hall in his old room on the twin bed with the carved horse heads, and we decided to call hospice. I explained to someone on the other end of the phone that things seemed much worse than we’d originally thought. Within a half hour, a nurse was on our doorstep. She was alarmed to hear that our mother had essentially been asleep for twenty-four hours, that she had not been to the bathroom, that she had not eaten or consumed much in the way of fluids. The nurse catheterized her and suggested we consider taking her to the hospice care center to help get the pain under control. An hour later, two strapping young paramedics rang the doorbell, and then my mother left the house for the last time.
It was a beautiful June morning. As I followed the ambulance in my rental car, I took note of the neighborhood. I had ridden my bike around these corners, plastic streamers flying from my blue rubber handlebar covers. I had played kick-the-can on a myriad of summer evenings here. I had egged a few houses and had kissed countless boys in these driveways and basements as a teenager. I had watched the dogwoods bloom in the spring, the snow pile up in the winter. I had raked leaves in some of these yards, baby sat for many of the families who once lived here. I thought about my mom, who had driven these streets her entire life. She’d gone to the same bank, the same laundromat, the same pharmacy, the same grocery store for years. Just a few blocks away were the house her parents had lived in, the schools she had attended, and the house where she and Dad were married. She could navigate this neighborhood with her eyes closed.
My mother's life was altered once we got to the hospice care center. She was now in the hands of people whose job it was to make her death as smooth as possible. Although we were assured that some hospice care center patients stay for a few days and then go home, I knew we were there to let her die. My father, on the other hand, thought she’d be there four days at the most; we would then take her home and she would again sit in her recliner and ask for the heating pad or a glass of ice water, and life as we had known it for the past few months would continue.
The paramedics lifted her from the stretcher to the bed. The nurse removed the sheets we had thrown over her when we left the house and handed them to me. They were the ones featuring my mother’s monogram stitched in fancy blue letters, with decorative scallops along the edge. I thought of military funerals I’d seen on television, where the flag that once draped the coffin is removed, folded with precision, then handed over with great fanfare to the grieving wife. I wrapped the sheets around my shoulders.
We sat and listened to my mother breathe. We listened as the nurses came and went. We watched them push the morphine into her veins. We got up occasionally to sit next to her. We asked questions of the staff, but no one was willing to commit – would she die today, the next day, or the next? Might we please be able to take her home and start this whole thing over again?
By mid-afternoon, Mom’s breathing became labored. I watched as her nostrils flattened fiercely with each inhalation. By now the pain was so intense that the morphine lost its charm after just half an hour. My mother made guttural sounds that were at odds with her dignified, refined manner. We grew anxious when each half hour passed, because we knew, like clockwork, the low, desperate cries would begin again.
My Aunt Barbara came to visit. She was born just four weeks after my mother. They grew up the only children of two sisters. They were raised like siblings. Barbara had not seen my mom for a few days and was shocked to see how her condition had deteriorated. She sat on the edge of the bed and reminded my mother that this was not the way they had planned it.
A doctor finally arrived. She began to ask my mother questions. There was no response. We suggested she try putting my mom’s hearing aids in. She did. The doctor inquired, “Mrs. Baker?” No response. Louder. Louder still. After the third or fourth try, my mother called back from a place very far away, “yes?” It sounded like she was in the middle of a wind tunnel. The doctor leaned in closer to her face. “Where does it hurt?” Nothing more. That was the extent of the interrogation.
I have had a recurring dream for years. It takes place in a classroom, or a foreign city or even my own living room. The people I know very well surround me. For some reason, though, they can’t see me or hear me. They talk around me. I grow increasingly frustrated as I speak to them and get no reaction; they continue to converse without me. They ignore me. They begin to seem comfortable, content even, without my presence, even though I know I am present. I start to speak louder and louder; eventually I begin to sob as I plead with them to acknowledge and not abandon me.
***
By late afternoon, my father, brother and aunt decided to take a break for dinner. Ben went to a restaurant with his wife, the others went home. I wanted to stay with Mom.
I made myself comfortable on the chair next to the bed and tried to stretch out. Staring up at the ceiling, listening to the rhythmic breathing and moaning of my mother, I was reminded of the times I had been in labor giving birth to my two children. My husband, Eddie and I had gone to classes to learn, among other things, how to breathe correctly, how to work through the pain of the contractions. I remembered that we had dimmed the lights and played soft music on a tape recorder to provide a gentle entry into the world for our babies.
It occurred to me that this was not that much different.
I went to the nurse’s station and found a boom box. I called my brother and asked him to bring some compact discs of Mozart maybe, or Bethoven, when he returned to the hospital after dinner. I turned off all the lights. There was still a bit of afternoon sun making its way through the window. The light spilled across the foot of my mother’s bed. Her moans were beginning to turn to whimpers.
The nurse arrived with the morphine drip apparatus. Rather than wait every half hour for a shot, my mom could now have relief on a continual basis, and I could help by giving her a “bonus” shot once each half hour if I felt she needed it. The machine made a kind of purring sound each time the morphine was released.
I was keenly aware, at that point, of the sounds of the room: the cadence of the machine, Mom’s painful intake of air, the soon to follow exhalation, and yes, my own breathing. I began to align mine with hers. It was comforting, somehow, just as it must have been for Eddie as he breathed along with me while I was in the agonizing throes of labor many years ago.
The nurse left, and my mother and I were alone. I sat very close, watching her face move ever so slightly with each breath. The morphine seemed to kick in right away, and her whimpers nearly vanished. I could see that her eyes were slowly moving beneath their lids, side to side, up and down. Her mouth began to relax. I held her hands, those long, perfect hands, in my own.
Suddenly, and without warning, her face pinched with terror. Her eyes flashed open for a second, and she gnashed her jaw. She did not look familiar. She snarled at the air around her.
And then, something in the room shifted.
The light changed, the air changed, the sound changed, the look on my mother’s face changed. I noticed a catch in my breathing. I held her hands tighter. And then, as she became herself again, it seemed she was ready to die.
From the time I was very young, I have suffered from an acute fear of public speaking. Things got really bad once I started school, because, like all kids, I was often called upon in class and periodically required to give oral reports. I created quite an array of maladies and excuses to explain why it was not possible for me to perform. It was an odd juxtaposition to my gregarious and extroverted personality, one that continues to baffle me even today.
One event in particular stands out in my mind. I was eight or nine at the time. I was wearing my very favorite fire-engine-red dress with the cloth belt and the Peter Pan collar. I had a large part in a presentation that was to be given in front of the entire school and all our mothers. My mom came early; she knew I would be a basket case. I waited patiently for the third grade teacher to finish arranging us by height, then I wiggled my way through the other kids and snuck off the back of the stage. Mom found me in the bathroom. I threw up and started crying uncontrollably. My whole body trembled. My breathing became ragged, and I could hardly get any words out. So we just sat there as I shuddered and shook, tears and snot soaking the front of my red dress. She ran her smooth hands up and down my arm, sometimes using her polished pink fingernails to scratch my skin ever so softly.
If we let them, memories can offer us the luxury of creating our own reality. Here is how I imagine the rest of the story unfolded: Mom and I sat in the girl’s bathroom, alone, without speaking. She continued to stroke my arm, then brought me to her chest where she held me until I stopped shaking. She rocked me back and forth until I fell asleep, my head resting on her shoulder, my face nestled into the crook of her neck. We stayed there until the presentation ended. She would have known it was over because she would have heard people walking down the hall, putting their coats on, speaking to one another. Then she gathered me up, carried me out to the car and took me home.
***
No one had ever prepared me for the task of watching someone die. As much as Mom and I had talked about her illness, her funeral, who should have her favorite sapphire pin and her collection of souvenir spoons, we had not quite gotten around to covering what the actual death scenario might look like. I was on my own.
My mother was serene now. Her breathing had moved from her belly up into her chest. It was growing more and more shallow. The sheets were draped around her frail frame; her head was propped on the pillow. Her face looked round and peaceful, like a full moon bobbing just above the clouds on a cold, clear winter night. I began to talk to her.
I thought of death scenes from movies, from books, from plays. Words came tumbling out of my mouth – words that had been uttered by so many others so many times before: “Let go now, Mom… it’s okay, just let go… you’ll see, it will be so much better without the pain… you were a wonderful mother… we all love you so much… we’ll miss you terribly… let go now, Mom… go on, it’s okay… I’m here with you… we love you… we’ll think about you everyday… you’ll get to see your parents… I’ll see you again, I know it… just relax, let go… it’s okay… I’m right here with you.”
Her breathing started to move up out of her chest into her throat and became very short and thin. Every third inhalation or so, it seemed like minutes passed before she finally exhaled. To my surprise, her eyes opened. They were glazed, but as blue and pure as ever, and they darted about as if she was looking for a place to land. I leaned down and wrapped my arms around my mother, my chest on top of hers. I placed my head on her shoulder and nestled my face into the crook of her neck. I was a little girl again.
Then she fell silent. And suddenly I was hovering near the ceiling watching the whole scene. I floated high above and saw the two of us, wrapped up together on a small hospital bed in a small, darkened room. I saw myself kiss her neck. I watched with fascination as I told her, when I felt sure the breathing had stopped, goodbye.
I saw myself pick up the phone to call my father.
***
During those last twenty-six hours with my mother, I found myself waiting for some important secrets to be revealed. When she was speaking in random fragments, I felt sure I would hear something that would astonish me, enlighten me, surprise me, answer the unanswered, explain the unexplainable. I figured I would come away from the experience wiser about who she was, more informed about our relationship as mother and daughter, and absolutely clear as to what the point of her life, or any life, might be. When her eyes opened at the very end, I guess I had hoped she might call my name, speak suddenly, and tell me what she was seeing and where she was headed. When she drew in that last breath, I suppose I was holding out for a dramatic last word or two, something that would change my life in a profound way and provide me with strength and purpose.
***
The morphine machine kept purring every few minutes after my mother died, still releasing the drug into her arm. I looked out the window and noticed that dusk was settling over the city. The fireflies would be out in full force in my parents’ back yard by now, flickering like stars.
I saw myself embrace my father when he entered the room. An hour or so later, I watched as I drove him home.
July, 2005
