The Last Days of My Mother

by Sölvi Björn Sigurdsson

  I tried to tell her that she would always exist, in my mind and Helena’s, in cousin Matti’s heart, and Duncan’s and in everyone who had ever touched this grindstone, the people protesting her death in Iceland and in those who supported her all the way, who would stand by her when the final hour came. I told her that she was heroic, all the grand master painters of the soul rolled into one. I gave every speech you think will salvage something when the seas are calm, when the distant possibility of death is just a possibility, just fantasy on a summer’s day because death is a part of life, the autumn leaves fall, the seasons change, and we know that somewhere beyond all of this are longer days where the silence calls out to us, but all this time the idea is unreal in its remoteness. We say these things to give us courage, to console those leaving before us, claiming that we never stop being our works and actions, that which we leave behind with our loved ones for them to keep till the end of days. But this idea is shit. Because when all is said and done, nothing will make us reconciled with death.

  I sensed that Helena was having a hard time so I held her in silence. We moved closer to each other than could be constrained by daywear. Desperation creates hollows in the labyrinth of the brain that don’t require intoxication to fill, just anguish.

  “I just get lonely and then I don’t want you to leave.”

  “I don’t want to leave.”

  “So don’t leave. You can hold me, just for a while, because you’re you.”

  I was completely lucid, I’d never ventured through the days with such sobriety. The high I experienced was the undiluted reality, the dripless existence that I knew Mother would never experience again.

  It was well into December when we finally convened in the kitchen to go over the paperwork. Helena made tea, Duncan and Mother lay together on the couch, Frederik handed out the papers. I filmed her signing her name with an unstable hand. It had to be crystal clear that no one was making this decision for Eva Briem Thórarinsdóttir. She was the one letting go of the spark, the longing that was ignited of the very certainty that she had to die. Even Frederik, who had been in this situation numerous times, helped hundreds of patients down this painful path, let the scientist’s mask fall for a moment, giving our hands a quick squeeze under the soft kitchen light. We knew this was the end. She would be dead within a fortnight.

  “I’m going to drink barbital,” she finally said and handed him the document. “I’ll drink barbital on New Years Day and that will be that.”

  Chapter 20

  At the break of dawn on the day of the wedding I walked alone across the snow-covered cemetery and sat down by her plot. A grayish owl circled over the field that would become Mother’s last resting place. She chose the spot herself, a quiet corner at the edge of the already overcrowded old cemetery, under a large maple tree. She said her heart would always belong to Iceland, but her remains would find rest here, in Lowland’s cemetery where the road ended.

  I walked back to the church and counted my steps as they dug into the ground. The blankness all around exaggerated this intimacy with my surroundings: documenting each detail, constantly registering reality to memory before my world would disintegrate and disappear. The night had dressed the countryside in white as fitted the occasion, and the air was crisp from melting ice that drip-dropped on the church steps. It was pleasant to step inside the warmth. Steven sat in the antechamber drinking coffee and dressed in a corduroy suit. He was back to his lanky old self, stick thin like the day I had first met him. BodySnatch was now owned by a large corporation. He and Gloria had bought a penthouse in the center of Amsterdam with the profits and donated the rest of the money to Libertas. He pushed a cup of coffee toward me and asked me to have a sip, give it a minute, and then have another.

  “First hot, then cold?” he asked and I nodded. “I don’t know what’s inside these thermoses that keeps the coffee hot all day long, but as soon as it’s in the cup it gets colder much faster than newly brewed coffee. This must be coffee from yesterday. Monica probably couldn’t be bothered to make a fresh pot this morning so it immediately pisses out all heat.”

  “Unless it’s a matter of the coffee pissing into the cup and then pissing off,” I said. “Then all you’ve got left is piss, no coffee.”

  “That’ll be it—piss. I’m throwing this out.”

  As soon as he got to his feet Helena came in wearing a light blue dress and high heels with golden swans on the sides. I asked if her secret mission to hide all contours of her body was over, but she just smiled and took me by the hand, leading me outside. She said she had made up her mind.

  “I’m going back to med school, right after the holidays. If I do well Fred’s going to train me as his successor.”

  “That’s great news.”

  “It just dawned on me how absurd it was to ruin all my chances just because I was afraid of becoming a cliché. I thought that I needed to be the exact opposite of the people who brought me up in order to lead an independent life. But that’s nonsense.”

  “Of course. Who else could take over the place anyway?”

  “Whatever happens, I’ll at least be happy with actually making a decision. To have one thing settled when so much is up in the air.”

  She didn’t ask me outright, but she undoubtedly wanted to know what my plans were, whether I was going to accept the job Helga and Fred had offered me. I didn’t think I had much to offer at the hospice—a representative of life where everything was doomed? I had never seen myself as that kind of person, but maybe something in me had changed. The joy of having been able to do this for Mother stifled the anxiety over my imminent loss. We were here because it was possible to hold your head high despite everything, possible to surrender with dignity. When all was said and done Mother and I were not in the hands of professionals, but rather held and supported by friends, and they had changed us. Each breath was impregnated with unrest, finality, and anxiety over what awaited us in the near future, but there was resistance in the void and something tangible to hold on to. I took Helena by the arm and as we walked back up the steps I told her I would think about it. The ceremony was about to begin and people were arriving: Gloria’s coworkers, friends of the Cannabis Museum, and the young girl from the reception, her eyes as heavy with makeup as when I first saw her. On the benches closest to the door were a few of Libertas’ patients along with Monica, Ljudmila, Helga, and Ramji, and up front close to the first bench Mother and Duncan sat in their wheelchairs, gaunt but with expressions of joy that would have made me cry in the long-gone, hung-over days of summer. The low reggae sounds of the band Satiricon provided a background for the hubbub while Steven took his place by the altar and exchanged Rasta blessings with the vicar. Finally Gloria made her entrance and the nuptials were sealed with a kiss and applause.

  “We should also applaud the grand newlyweds over here,” Gloria said and asked us to rise. “To Duncan and Eva, who will unfortunately not be able to join us at the party later on.”

  Mother was in tears over the generosity of the young couple to let dying pensioners share their big day, and said that this more than made up for my absence at her and Duncan’s wedding. We headed to Highland with our trusty Ramji at the wheel. He was himself at a turning point in his life; he was going to visit his village, Nainital, for the first time in eleven years, and spend the New Year celebrations with his family.

  “Have a safe trip, dear Ramjiminn, and thank you for all your driving,” Mother said when they said their good-byes at the door. “Give Buddha my greetings.”

  Darkness sprawled across in the living room and Mother and Duncan fell asleep in his bed. I helped Helena pack warm clothes and a raincoat for her trip to Kingussie, the childhood haunt of the Knight in the Kilt. She had agreed to take him to the Scottish Highlands and spend Hogmanay with him at a hotel by Loch Laggan. Duncan had dismissed the idea at first, claiming it was silly to embark on a journey when you were as good as dead—what on earth for? But in the end Mother managed to persuade him to go
.

  “You’ll be here when we get back, won’t you, Trooper? Promise me?” Helena said when we carried the cases down into the hall and prepared to say good-bye. I had no answer so I just held her tighter, trying to fill the silence with the only certainty I had—that ahead of me lay events that I could neither handle, nor comprehend. “I know you’ll be here,” she said and repeated. “I know you’ll be here when we get back.”

  And so the days passed until the new year. Mother wrote letters and had a final look at her tapes to make sure nothing was missing. I stayed awake by her side when she slipped into unconsciousness and prepared for the end, either perfectly guileless, or shivering from fathomless misery. We held on for dear life to the only thing that elevated the situation from this bewilderment: to, above all else, follow through with our plan. Maybe it did exist, a million light years from death—the place where people died satisfied and content, happy to shake hands with the Reaper. Maybe it existed for people who where comatose, lost to the world and without thought, people who had disappeared into the darkness; but as long as life was still all that occupied the heart, each breath, and each thought, you didn’t want to let go of it. I wondered what it would be like to continue being a part of this, to continue down this path that had helped Mother and I work a bit on the tangles and twists, accept the mistakes that Death left behind and the conflicts his predecessor, Life and its wonders, had brought us. In the end nothing would be explained fully, but at least the silence was not full of gaping wonder.

  When I entered the house that last day of the year, Dr. Fred had already set up in the lounge. The camera was on, watching him pour silent death into a glass: 9 grams Pentobarbital, 15 grams Ethanol, 15 grams distilled water, 250 milligrams Saccharine, 11 grams Propylene Glycol, 65 grams syrup, and a drop of Anise oil. Mother had been given three 10-milligram doses of a suppressant since early morning to stop her from vomiting. She was lying in bed watching a Christmas Special on TV. It was The Lord of the Rings, a movie she had never understood and found tedious.

  “Isn’t this that film you were always watching when we lived on Spítala Street?”

  “I can’t remember,” I said. “But then I tended to be hung over a lot on Spítala Street. And then I’d watch TV. Do you remember? How often I was hung over? I think it was your home brew. It made me pretty sick.”

  “Of course I remember, Trooper, you’d lie in all day watching war movies and eating Danishes. I’ve never understood all this ruckus myself. How come people enjoy this sort of thing? These disgusting slimy creatures for instance? And all this war nonsense?”

  “It’s the adventure, right?”

  “Maybe, but I have to say that our adventure has been a lot more fun. All these things we did. I was thinking about it earlier, how long ago we set off from Spítala Street. And so much has happened. Just imagine if we’d never have come to Highland . . . or Hotel Europa? How would we have survived this? And all the things we’ve done. All these interesting and fun things that are down to you, my lovely Trooper. Because it’s certainly not down to anyone else, the fun we had. Maybe there’s one thing that’s not absurd in that war movie of yours, and that’s this Frodo fellow, the one with the broad neck—he reminds me a bit of you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Because he has to go through all this trouble with that ring. And it got me thinking: that is how it must have been for my Trooper. My cancer is like those slimy creatures and all the evil of the ring. My Trooper has to carry me through all of this to destroy it. I told Duncan about it and he thought I was quite clever to make the connection. He thought I didn’t get the film at all—because I nod off during the battles. But don’t you agree, aren’t I clever to have realized this with you and Frodo?”

  “You’ve always been clever, Mom . . . though I’m no Frodo.”

  “Oh, yes you are, Trooper, you are so much more than all these fellows chopping down the slimy creatures. That’s what I wanted to tell you, more than anything, my lovely boy, that you have done so well. The greatest hero of them all. You did more than anyone else would have done. And you forgave everything, everything I did. Even though I yelled at you. You did it all for me, my Trooper, you helped me more than anyone.”

  That was the moment I started crying, and Mother cried too and leaned against me. We sat there for the longest time, holding each other, crying together in the living room in Highland, by the window where the moon glowed in the sky and pulled at the waves by the Dutch coast, in time with the waves breaking in Iceland, clawing our old country back into the sea, like the hearts quaking in our chests.

  “This is best way,” she whispered. “To do it while we’re alone here. I told Duncan I would do it while he was away so it would just be you here with me, my super trooper. I want it now before the Morphine wears off or takes me into oblivion. I want to do it while I’m still conscious. While you’re here with me.”

  I took her into my arms and carried her across the living room, down the hall to the nook where the clock resonated steadily into the future, further into time where the doctor sat silent in the corner and kept to himself. It was just the two of us, my mother and I, two people beyond everything that had happened and everything that would never be forgotten.

  “This way is right, my Trooper. It was all right from the very start.”

  I lay her down on the bed and put the bottle in her hand. It was sherry on Spítala Street, stars sparkled over Highland in the frosty night and the shimmer of her breath flew in between everything as I sat there crying with her in my arms and the last day was done.

  Sölvi Björn Sigurðsson is the author of three books of poetry, as well as three novels. Most recently, The Icelandic Water Book was published in the fall of 2013. A translator of classical poetry, he has also received distinguished nominations for his translation of Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell. His Diabolical Comedy, a modern take on The Divine Comedy, has been translated into Finnish, Swedish, and Danish.

  Helga Soffía Einarsdóttir grew up in Tanzania, and has since lived in Copenhagen, Barcelona, and Edinburgh. She has an MA in Translation Studies from the University of Iceland and has worked as a freelance translator and proofreader. Her translations (into Icelandic), include works by Zadie Smith, Alexander McCall Smith, and Lemony Snicket.

  Open Letter—the University of Rochester’s nonprofit, literary translation press—is one of only a handful of publishing houses dedicated to increasing access to world literature for English readers. Publishing ten titles in translation each year, Open Letter searches for works that are extraordinary and influential, works that we hope will become the classics of tomorrow.

  Making world literature available in English is crucial to opening our cultural borders, and its availability plays a vital role in maintaining a healthy and vibrant book culture. Open Letter strives to cultivate an audience for these works by helping readers discover imaginative, stunning works of fiction and poetry, and by creating a constellation of international writing that is engaging, stimulating, and enduring.

  Current and forthcoming titles from Open Letter include works from Argentina, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Latvia, Poland, South Africa, and many other countries.

  www.openletterbooks.org