by M. Leighton
It’s regret, regret that I’m missing out on so much of these last days with my family.
Even though it’s beyond my control, I have no idea what I’m saying or doing half of the time. I can’t remember all the times I’ve held my child or kissed my husband. I can’t remember if I’ve told them I love them today. I can only hope I’ve done it all.
A lot.
Gathering what little strength I can manage to garner these days, I flip through my phone’s directory and find Dr. Taffer’s contact information. I click on the number and leave word with her secretary that I’ll be contacting hospice.
I’ve been on the ordering end of hospice care enough times to know that all my oncologist will have to do is forward some paperwork and a diagnosis and I’ll be in.
My condition permits it.
My love for my husband dictates it.
My next call is to Wendy, the coordinator of my favorite hospice center. I listen as Wendy sniffs discreetly, as though she might be holding the receiver away from her mouth. She wouldn’t want me to know she’s crying for me as she puts in the last request I’ll make of her.
The last hospice request of my life.
********
When I wake to Nate sitting on the edge of the bed, I’m not even aware that I’d been asleep. “Hi there, beautiful,” he says, love permeating both his voice and his gentle smile.
“Well, hello, handsome,” I reply, returning his smile despite the disorientation I feel. I have no idea what to expect from one moment to the next, and it’s very disconcerting. I feel like I’m always playing catch-up, like I’m always a step or a moment or a day behind.
I’m always questioning things. What have I missed? How long have I slept? What have I been told that I no longer remember?
I search my memory for evidence of coming into the bedroom, of lying down, of drifting off to sleep, but I find nothing. Not a single reference point to which I might cling.
The last thing I remember is pretending not to notice Wendy’s soft crying. And then…nothing.
Just a blank.
“I’ve got a surprise for you. Come see.”
It’s getting harder and harder to mount much enthusiasm for anything really. I’m just so tired all the time, I feel like I only have the energy to do the basics, like walk and breathe and hold a bottle to my baby’s mouth. The change has been swift and sudden.
At least I think it has.
“Great,” I exclaim with as much eagerness as I can muster. I don’t argue when Nate helps me to sit and then to stand. I don’t argue when he helps me down the hall, walking so close that I can literally lean on him. I don’t argue because I know I need the support. My legs don’t always want to cooperate anymore, and I feel dizzy fairly often.
Or at least I think I do.
As far as I can recall.
Guiding me slowly into the living room, Nate stops in the doorway, his arm slipping nearly unnoticed around my waist. Maybe he knows how tired I am. Maybe he thought I’d need the extra reinforcement when I saw the “surprise”. Or maybe his arm has been there all along and I haven’t even been aware of it.
I’m certain of very little these days.
Leaning harder against my husband, I catch my breath as my eyes take in the unfamiliar and unexpected sight before me. On the couch, in my home, looking as uncomfortable as I feel, is my mother. She’s feeding Grace, a bottle propped expertly in her hand, with an unreadable expression on her face.
“Momma?” I mutter before I can stop myself.
My mother raises her head, bringing sad eyes almost the exact color brown as my own up to my face.
“This is why.”
This is why.
Those are Patricia Holmes’s only words, enigmatic as they are.
I watch as she begins to rock against the cushion at her back. One might think that she’s rocking Grace, that it’s merely a grandmother soothing her granddaughter, but I know better. I’ve seen my mother do this before when she’s upset. I just can’t figure out what’s happened to upset her.
I know I couldn’t have said anything to distress her. It seems I’ve been asleep for quite some time. But I have no way of knowing what transpired before I came into the room. Did Nate say something to her? Have they fought? Did my mother make some out-of-the-way comment about Grace?
I don’t know.
What I do know, however, is that I don’t want my mother holding my child if she’s going to have a fit. Because, at this rate, that’s what will come next.
Like a bolt of lightning snapped at my heels, I streak across the room. Obviously, Nate wasn’t expecting it and he loses his hold on me. He lunges, grabbing at me, but only catches the tail of my shirt and the breeze I left behind.
I’m reaching for my daughter before my husband can stop me.
“‘This is why?’ What does that mean, Momma?” I ask, taking my baby girl into my arms and then smartly reaching for the bottle to continue feeding her. The instant Grace is no longer occupying her hands, Momma begins to wring them, watching them as though she can’t work out why they’re suddenly empty.
I feel a stab of guilt over hurting my mom, but it’s short-lived. I’m protecting my daughter. No woman should feel guilty about defending the well-being of her child. So I won’t. I refuse.
Momma doesn’t answer my question for several minutes. Everyone in the room—Nissa, Nate, me, even little Grace— seems to be holding their breath, waiting quietly for her to calm herself and reply. As the silence drags on, I can’t help wondering if everybody else is as tense as me.
“This is why I didn’t want you anymore,” my mother finally explains. “I knew I’d lose you, too. And I just couldn’t lose anybody else. Can’t you see?” She begins to whimper, a pitiful sound that tugs at my heartstrings, despite the trouble we’ve had in the past. “I couldn’t lose anybody else.”
A streak of resentment runs through me, the aftershock of an earthquake that happened long, long ago. My mother had only been concerned with what she would lose, how she would feel. She obviously never took a minute to think about how her only remaining child might feel. She didn’t bother to think about how it would affect me.
There is a noticeably frigid edge to my voice when I respond. Even I hear it.
“Oh, I can see, Momma. You forget that I was in the exact same boat. I’d lost my family, too. First Janet, then Daddy. But I lost even more because then I lost you. They didn’t have a choice when they left, but you did. You did, didn’t you, Momma? I lost you because you gave up on me. You were all I had left, and you just…gave up. You might as well have left me, too.”
I can taste the bitterness on my tongue like a mouthful of bile.
“I didn’t leave you!” Momma defends.
“You didn’t leave me physically, but you left in all the ways that mattered. You just checked out and left me to raise myself, to take care of myself. And to take care of you. I was a child! I’d lost everything and I couldn’t even grieve. I didn’t have time to. I had to go to school and cook and grocery shop and clean and take care of you. I didn’t have the luxury of giving up.”
I can see my mother’s chest rising and falling rapidly. The room is silent but for the muted pant of her breathing, no one else daring enough to interrupt our emotional face-off. Mother and daughter, we simply stare at one another until she breaks the taut stillness.
“And now you’ve brought me here to get back at me. Is that it?”
My mouth drops open. “Is that what you think of me? That I would subject you to this horror just to get revenge? After all these years?”
“Then whyyy?” she wails pitifully, rocking faster, bouncing off the cushion like she’s propelled, only to slam back against it, over and over and over.
Suddenly, as though someone has opened up an invisible cavern beneath my feet to sap it silently from my body, my small store of energy dissipates, leaving me to waver on legs made of warm rubber. Before I can fold, however, my sturdier h
alf, my better half materializes behind me.
Nate.
He is never far.
Long fingers wrap gently around my upper arms, providing me with much-needed support. I feel the hot solidity of my husband’s broad, muscular chest at my back and, for just a moment, I lean into him. As always, he’s my rock, my ever-present rock in my time of need.
When he starts to bend, I know to sweep me off my feet and carry me to calmer waters, I stop him by turning to place our daughter into his strong, capable arms. I meet his eyes, my determined brown colliding with his worried green, and nod before I pivot.
When I face my mother, I see the woman who gave up on life when I needed her most. I see the woman who let me care for her when my world had fallen apart. I see the woman who couldn’t find the strength to pick herself up for the daughter who begged her to. She’s still that woman. She’ll always be that woman.
Although the anger is still there, the resentment, the hurt as well, I feel more of something else today. Today I feel pity. For the first time in my life, I look at Patricia Holmes, and I see the broken woman that she is. I see someone who simply wasn’t strong enough to weather the horrific agony that comes with having lost not one, but two loved ones to cancer. I see a woman who was knocked to her knees and couldn’t find it in herself to get back up.
She’s made bad choices, she’s been weak when she needed to be strong, she gave up when she should’ve fought back—yes, she did all of those things. But this woman is my mother. For better or for worse, she’s my mother and although she’s not asking for it, I have the opportunity to forgive her.
And I likely won’t get another chance.
I’ve done right by my mother. I’ve ensured that she’s had the best care, I’ve visited her monthly, I’ve done the best I could for her, but it’s always been out of obligation. I’ve never felt free to love her again. I was hurt, betrayed, and I was happy to hide behind the wall I built to shut her out. But the words of the priest I met in Rome resonate in my head, through my heart, showing me what I have to say, what I have to do.
He would never allow tragedy without purpose, never give a gift without a plan. He will guide you in it if you but ask Him. He waits for you to bring this to Him. Give Him your sickness. Give Him your child. Give Him your choices, and He will make your way straight.”
The tragedy in my life has brought me here, to this moment. I’m dying, but I have so much to be thankful for. I don’t have room in my life, no time for this kind of blackness anymore. There is only time for love.
Love and forgiveness.
Drawing from the love I have for my own child, the infinite capacity she gives me to pardon the sins of others, I move slowly across the room to kneel in front of my mother.
“Momma, I’m not trying to hurt you. I just wanted you to know that...that…” I force a swallow past the bloated lump in my throat and then begin again, tears coming out of nowhere to stream from the corners of my eyes. It’s like a purging, a purging of all the dark and ugly wounds I’ve let fester, become gangrenous. “Momma, I just wanted you to know that I’m dying. I have a daughter that will never know me, and you’re the only part of me in the whole world that she will have left. I w-w-wanted you to keep me alive for her. Tell her stories about me. Tell her how much she was loved, and how I took that love with me, to the grave and far beyond. Don’t let her feel for one second the way I felt when I was young—alone and unwanted. Deserted. Be a part of her life. If not for me, then for you. She will be all that you have left, too.”
I hold my mother’s eyes for ten long, painful heartbeats before I give up, letting my chin drop to my chest and giving in to the urge to cry in earnest. Between muffled sobs, I faintly confess another reason for wanting my mother here. “I’m dying, Momma, and I just wanted to see you one more time. Just one more time. Is that so wrong?”
In the hush, I hear my husband’s choked voice. “Oh Jesus!”
I imagine him running angry hands through his hair like he does, spinning away from the sight of his dying wife on her knees, begging for love. It hurts me that he has to see this, but it’s something I must do.
But for the wet patter of tears on the back of my clasped hands, the room is absolutely silent.
Seconds tick by.
No one speaks.
I can feel the sadness, the hopelessness. It saturates the air like a physical dampness, a moist cloud that hangs over furniture and skin and hair.
Minutes, hours, days later, the first sign of movement is heard. It’s the sound of Momma sliding off the couch and onto the floor, where she gathers me into her arms. I let her. I want nothing more than to let her. I fold into her softness, into her warmth and, together, we weep.
“I’m so sorry, my heart,” she says, the words themselves a soothing balm to my aching soul. My mother hasn’t called me that since right after Janet died. “I’m so, so sorry. Please forgive me. Please, Lena, please. Please don’t go thinking that I didn’t love you. I loved you more than anything. That’s why I let you go. I was afraid to love you that much. I was afraid of what losing you would do to me.” Her voice drifts off into the same whisper, like a mantra she repeats over and over again. “I was afraid. I was afraid. I was afraid.”
I raise my leaden arms and wind them around my mother’s slight shoulders, holding her close. “It’s okay, Momma. We’re all afraid.”
“Say you forgive me. Please say you can forgive me.”
I don’t hesitate. I don’t have the luxury of waiting or holding a grudge. It’s now or never. “I forgive you, Momma. I loved you anyway. I always have.”
Finally, after all this time, I recognize that it was more than mere obligation that took me to see my mother once a month for the last twenty-two years. It was hope, hope that maybe my mom would love me again. I thought my hope had died when I was a young girl, but maybe it was just buried under a lifetime of hurt and loss.
A bone-deep peace settles over me. It begins at the crown of my head as a soft tickle that sweeps away the pounding behind my temples. It eases onto my shoulders, brushing away the tension I hold there, and then it makes its way down.
Gossamer wings flutter through the rest of my body, washing away hurt and bitterness, anger and resentment, malice and ill-will. I’m left with nothing but love.
In my heart, I know I have only one last confession left to make. It’s to Nate. Already I know that once the words are spoken, my soul will be at ease.
I’ll be free.
I also know that I need to make that confession soon.
Twenty-four
Wanted Dead or Alive
Lena
My mother stayed all day. She was there when I drifted off to sleep in the chair, and she is still here when I wake in the bedroom, hours later, as the sun is setting.
Hers is the face I see right after I see my husband’s, leaning over me with a purposefully blank expression in place.
“I’ve got a delicious steak dinner blended up for you,” Nate says, his lips curling up at the corners. “Broccoli, some bread, baked potato with extra butter—it’s all in here.” He holds up the canister I hadn’t noticed him cradling. It looks like it contains vomit. It’s food that will be administered directly into my stomach via the nasogastric tube.
“Why don’t I actually eat with you?”
Nate’s features widen in surprise, his eyes rounding, his mouth forming a silent O. “C-can you do that?”
“Of course, I can do that. I’ll just have to chew really well.” I know in the deepest part of my being that this will be my last meal with my family, and I want it to be as normal as possible. I know enough about last days and golden days to know the importance of making today special and memorable, even though it already has been.
“What about the…?” He doesn’t finish his sentence, but rather sort of flips the tube that still dangles from my right nostril where it’s taped.
“Help me to the bathroom?”
Nodding, Nate sets th
e container of nutrition onto the nightstand and helps me out of bed. When I stand, I glance over at my mother, Grace asleep in her arms, and I smile. “I love you, Momma.”
Patricia Holmes simply nods. I don’t take offense. I know my mother is probably overwhelmed and incapable of speech. I knew it wouldn’t be easy for her, these last moments. They’ll be bittersweet. Momma knows what’s on the horizon for me. She’s seen it too many times before.
With the help of Nate’s sturdy presence at my side, I hobble past my mother and my daughter, pausing to kiss Grace on the top of the head. “My angel,” I whisper, inhaling deeply before I continue toward the bathroom. Once there, I shoo Nate away.
“What if you need help?”
“Then I’ll yell.”
“What if I’m not fast enough?”
“You will be.”
“What if I’m not?”
“You always are. I’ll be fine. I promise.” To emphasize my words, I pull myself up onto my toes as much as I can and I plant a kiss onto my husband’s perfect mouth. I can’t sustain the position long, the muscles in my legs trembling with that small effort. “Now go, you handsome hunk of man, before I take advantage of you with my mom right out there and embarrass us both.”
“I honestly don’t give a shit,” he replies with a grin. “I’d take you anywhere, anytime.” Even though he takes the bait and responds to my taunt as he would at any other time in our life, I see only a sad awareness on Nate’s face. He knows that I don’t feel like having sex. And I know that he knows. Yet neither of us acknowledges it. It seems easier somehow to pretend that things are as they have always been.
Even though everything has changed.
With a sweet kiss to my forehead, Nate backs toward the door. “I’ll be right outside if you need me.”
“I’ll let you know if I do.”
When the door is closed firmly between us, I lean against the sink and let my heavy head sag down between my arms. I take several cleansing breaths before I lift my eyes to a face that I hardly recognize reflected in the mirror.
