I put on my knapsack, picked up Mom’s box, grabbed a couple of morphine syringes for the road, and followed them out of the building. As we passed through the lobby I said a chipper “Good morning!” to the concierge as if nothing were out of the ordinary. (Maybe if I acted as if everything was normal she wouldn’t notice my nearly dead mother being wheeled out on a stretcher?)
I jumped into the back of the ambulance and sat by Mom’s side. She winced at every bump in the road. Fearful she might die en route, I talked to her the whole way, offering a play-by-play of the landmarks we were driving past: Casa Loma, the Annex, the University of Toronto. The streets where she’d lived her life. The Free Times Cafe on College Street, one of her favourite spots, disappeared in my peripheral vision as we took a right on Major Street, arriving at Kensington Hospice. I was relieved. This is what she wanted. Our death plan was working out.
Mom was wheeled through the front door and taken up to her new room on the second floor. I put on some classical music (baroque, her favourite) and collapsed onto the recliner next to her bed.
Josh called. He had important city council business that week and said he’d come as soon as his meeting was over.
I hesitated, looking at Mom. “I don’t know…if she’ll…make it until the evening.”
There was a pause before he spoke. “Should I come right now?”
My instinct was to tell him it was fine to come later, that he shouldn’t miss important voting. But I couldn’t deny what I was seeing before me. Mom was actually dying. I took a deep breath and made an executive decision: “Yes.”
Mom’s room was freezing. She hated to be cold, so I asked a staff person about turning down the a/c. Apparently it was stuck; maintenance had to be called in to fix it. I covered Mom with extra blankets and gave her one last foot massage. Then I wedged myself in next to her on the hospital bed and stroked her hair. A hospice volunteer brought me a grilled cheese sandwich. It felt nice to be taken care of. For the past many weeks I’d been Mom’s producer, her caretaker, her nurse. Now, for whatever time she had left, I could just be her child.
* * *
—
JOSH AND TEDDY arrived mid-morning. The original four, together for one last hurrah. One of the nurses told us that she could tell from the stiffness of Mom’s feet that she didn’t have much longer. “Maybe a few more hours.”
Josh and I razzed Teddy into admitting to Mom that she was right, about everything. She gave a slight nod, and we all laughed.
“I have a craving for a blueberry bun,” Josh announced. Mom used to buy them for us from Harbord Bakery when we were little. I told him that if Mom could talk she’d say, “They aren’t as good as they used to be.” Mom gave another slight nod.
Teddy’s phone rang. Josh and I exchanged a look as he answered it. Are you kidding me? Josh shooed him away to take the call in the hall. When he returned, we asked him what was so important. “It was the auto shop,” he said. “I had to take it.”
“Oh, of course!” We laughed. “We mistakenly thought it was some trivial business you didn’t need to take care of by Mom’s deathbed,” Josh joked.
The hot July sun was shining in through the window, but it was still freezing in Mom’s room. We inquired again about when maintenance would be coming. “Either the a/c goes or she does,” I said, knowing Mom would appreciate my play on Oscar Wilde’s last words.
Mom began to wince, squeezing her eyes. It was similar to how she looked when she was in pain, but not quite.
“Are you in pain? Do you need morphine?” I asked. She kept her gaze straight ahead. “Are you sad?” She kept her gaze still. She continued blinking hard. It looked as if she was crying, but there were no tears. “Are you happy, Mom?” I asked. “Are you happy we’re all here?”
She gave a slight nod. Incredible. I could hardly believe her focus on gratitude in the midst of losing everything. She might’ve been the most enlightened tragic hero there ever was.
I stayed in bed next to Mom all day long, getting up only to use the bathroom. In the afternoon, Teddy and Josh went out to get some food. Melissa came to say goodbye on her way to pick up Little Molly from preschool. Molly left work early to do the same.
By evening Teddy couldn’t handle just sitting in the room, so he went out to the common area. I was still in Mom’s bed. Josh sat on the recliner on the other side. There was nothing to do except just be there with her. Mom’s breathing got louder and deeper. Josh and I stared into space. The only noise was a rhythmic gurgling, which a nurse explained was the result of no longer having the strength to clear saliva from her throat. (I was getting a real education—you never hear dying people gurgle in the movies.)
I suddenly detected a slight variation in her breathing.
“Josh!” I yelped, whipping my head around to meet his eyes. We didn’t say anything. We both knew: This Was It.
We sat on either side of her and each took one of her hands. “I love you, Mom. I love you,” we both said, over and over, as the gurgling quieted and long silences stretched between breaths. Breaths turned to gasps, then to gasping in slow motion, like a fish out of water. She took one last inhalation and then slowly exhaled, her head lowering gradually with every bit of air released, before coming to a full and complete stop. Her large hazel eyes went blank. I was shocked by how totally empty they were. Josh glanced up at the clock on her bedside table. “7:23 p.m.,” he pronounced.
I kept staring into Mom’s hollow eyes with disbelief. “Where did you go?! Where did you go?!” I cried. I slid my hands under her limp torso and hugged her tightly. I didn’t ever want to let her go. My mind was flooded with one thought on repeat: I want my mom, I want my mom. I must have uttered it out loud because I heard Josh say, “You have me.”
“I know,” I said, thankful he was there with me, “but I really want my mom right now.” It had been so abrupt. In a split second she was gone.
I stood up and took a step back, keeping my gaze fixed on her. “I can’t believe you just went and died, Mom! I can’t believe it! YOU JUST DIED!” What I was processing with my eyes was so baffling; her lifeless corpse was so strange, eerie, freakish. “You’ve done some pretty weird things, Mom. But this is definitely the weirdest.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” I heard Josh say behind me. We burst into laughter.
Josh went down the hallway to let Teddy know. I sat with Mom—what used to be Mom—for another minute. She was already stiffening, and her face had gone chalky pale. Mom had left the building.
I texted Molly: “Mom is dead. Please don’t text back for now.” (I know, I’m a weirdo, but I couldn’t handle my own feelings in that moment, never mind Molly’s bundle of emotions.)
When nurses came in to clean Mom’s body, I joined Josh and Teddy in the common area. Josh told me that Teddy had just cried in his arms. I’d never seen Teddy cry before. I realized that underneath all his restlessness, he was really suffering. The love of his life had just died.
I sank down into the couch. I’d been dedicated to Mom for so long, and now, suddenly, there was nothing for me to do. Teddy came over and sat beside me. “There’s nothing like losing a parent to make you feel like an adult,” he said. He was trying to comfort me in the best way he knew how, but in that moment I felt like the furthest thing from an adult. I felt like Bambi.
* * *
—
BEFORE LEAVING, TEDDY called the funeral home. Josh and I walked back to Mom’s room. From the doorway we could see that she’d been positioned with her hands clasped above her stomach. The odd sight made us laugh. We’d never seen her look so proper before.
Over by the window, two maintenance workers were finally fixing the air conditioning unit. One man was on a stepladder and the other was passing him tools. I felt like we were in the middle of an absurdist “better late than never” skit. They were clearly not clued in to the fact that the wom
an on the bed was dead (and no longer gave a damn about the temperature). We stared, speechless, at the bizarre scene for a few more seconds before Josh finally asked if they could come back another time. The workers looked over at Mom’s corpse, then at each other, and then bolted out of the room.
The funeral director soon arrived, pushing a stretcher with a red velvet body bag on top of it. The red velvet struck me as dated, and maybe a little sensual for the occasion, but definitely nicer than the black heavy-duty plastic body bags on CSI. Mom was wearing a lavender T-shirt and a diaper when the funeral director and one of the nurses placed her inside the bag. They stood to the side as I leaned over Mom’s head and ran my fingers through her hair one last time. Tears blurred my eyes. A suffocating sadness began to rise in my chest.
“Goodbye Mom,” I whimpered, letting out a single involuntary chest-heave cry. I’d been keeping it together for so long, and now I was afraid I’d come undone. I forced my sadness down and took a step back. And then, just like that, Mom was zipped up.
The head nurse placed a special procession quilt over Mom’s body. A few more hospice staff joined our train while we followed Mom out. I walked behind the stretcher and kept my hand on her head through the velvet as we took the elevator down to the first floor and then down the hallway. When we got to the lobby, everyone stopped. The head nurse lit a candle and said a few nice words about Mom, an especially kind gesture considering she really hadn’t had much time to get to know her. Mom was then wheeled out through the front door—the same door she’d come in earlier that day.
Out front, Mom was lifted into the back of a black hearse. I was surprised by its modern, angular design—hardly the old-school Harold and Maude car I was expecting.
“Where are you taking her?” I asked the funeral director.
She hesitated before answering matter-of-factly: “Cold storage.”
Ouch! It’s not like I was expecting her to say “Heaven,” but I wasn’t exactly prepared for the icy truth. I had to appreciate her honesty, though. Why sugar-coat death? It never goes down easy anyway.
Josh and I watched the hearse drive off up the street. I had my knapsack on and Josh carried Mom’s box of things—we’d never even had a chance to unpack. It was dark outside, with a warm breeze. The world already felt different: foreign, strange. Shell-shocked, I took the first few steps in my new life without Mom. We walked to College Street, where Josh gave me a big hug and put me in a cab. I was confused. Where should I go? Where’s home?
I decided to go back to the rental condo, the home Mom and I had created. Molly met me there, and I poured us some wine. Then I sat on the purple couch and wrote an email to Mom’s friends, letting them know she’d died and to “save the date” for her After-Party.
Our amazing mom passed away peacefully this evening at Kensington Hospice. We were with her until her last breath, telling her how much we love her. We believe it was, as they say, a “good death.”
I stepped into Mom’s abandoned room. Her hospital bed was in the flat position, the mattress stripped bare, just as she’d left it that morning. I grabbed her vape and my newly inherited Mason jar of organic weed. Back in my room, I took a few pulls from the glass mouthpiece, hoping it would help me fall asleep. I was exhausted, shaky, in shock. I said goodnight to Molly, grateful she was by my side even if I felt a world away. It was all so surreal—I was lying in bed on a warm summer night and Mom was lying on a gurney in a freezer.
* * *
—
THE NEXT MORNING I woke up to my strange new world. Teddy, Josh, and I texted each other right away. It was obvious that none of us wanted to be alone. We didn’t know what to do with ourselves, so we made plans to have brunch at Teddy’s. Lox and bagels would provide the stability we needed.
Molly and I took the elevator down to the lobby. “How’s your mom doing?” the concierge asked. I panicked. “She’s…she’s had better days,” I replied. I wasn’t ready to say the words. (And it was true.)
It was comforting to be with Teddy, Josh, Melissa, and the Mollys that morning. And in the evening Mom’s friend Lola hosted dinner for us at her home, where everyone shared their fondest memories of Mom. (“Grandma changed my diaper!” Little Molly fondly recalled.) It never dawned on us to have a traditional shiva—even though I understood its value, it wasn’t Mom’s style.
The next day Molly and I went to book the venue for the After-Party and apply for a liquor licence. As long as I had things to do—arranging a weekend getaway to wine country for my one-year anniversary with Molly, organizing the closing of Mom’s apartment, planning another hiking trip in Europe—I wouldn’t fall apart.
The city seemed incredibly quiet, a post-apocalyptic ghost town. I knew this place. But it didn’t feel like the place I knew. The colour had drained from the world. I felt so raw and exposed, as though I had no skin. I was surprised that strangers couldn’t detect my grief. If I felt like this on the inside, how could people not see it on the outside?
I spent the next few days cleaning up the rental condo, putting everything back the way we’d found it, throwing out bouquets of dead flowers. The CCAC took back the hospital bed and medical equipment.
While clearing out Mom’s room I spotted her little amber bottle of Michael’s herbs in its suede pouch. Anger rose in my chest. I hated these herbs. And now I could exact my revenge. Five years of pent-up rage surged through me as I chucked the bottle into the garbage bag. Next I headed for the ampoules of Phoenix Tears in the fridge. I considered they could still be of use to some stoner, but they made me mad—I tossed them in the garbage bag, too.
Then I opened the cupboard doors above the kitchen counter. Suddenly, my rage dropped. There must’ve been about seventy bottles of vitamins and supplements in there. This was a woman who really did want to live, I thought. She wouldn’t stop reaching for a cure, even if she was just grasping at straws. It was such a goddamn shame. My rage rose back up and, one by one, I whipped the bottles into the garbage bag.
* * *
—
“I’M GOING TO pick Mom up,” Josh told me over the phone. It had been a few days since she’d died, and her cremated remains were now at the funeral home.
I’d been browsing online for cremation jewellery, a vial I could put a bit of Mom in and wear around my neck. Thinking I’d sport a Billy Bob–Angelina look for the After-Party, I’d ordered a simple, tasteful silver chamber on a chain.
When it arrived I went over to Josh’s house to pinch some of Mom’s ashes. Teddy, who happened to be visiting, looked uncomfortable when Josh brought out the wooden box containing Mom and placed it on the living room coffee table for me.
“Can you take it into another room?” Teddy asked, shuddering.
I picked up the box and carried it away, along with a small jar, scissors, and a roll of duct tape. Little Molly looked up at me. “What you doing, Wachie?”
“I’m going to put a bit of Grandma in the jar so I can keep her at home with me,” I replied. As I headed for the dining room, I could hear Josh behind me explaining: “Grandpa doesn’t want to watch Rachie pour Grandma into the jar.”
At the dining room table I opened the wooden box. Inside was a thick, clear plastic bag of ashes—probably a couple of litres worth. The bag was twisted tightly at the top and secured with a metal tie and ID tag. A black-and-white label read “Elaine Ruth Mitchell 61409.” It was surreal to see Mom distilled into a bag of dust (never mind the disconcerting association of Jews, ashes, and assigned numbers). I made a small slit near the top and poured roughly half a cup of ashes into my glass jar.
It wasn’t until later that day, when I was filling up my pendant at home, that I noticed something dark among the light grey powder and white bone fragments. I dug my fingers into the jar and fished around for it, like a kid digging for a toy at the bottom of a cereal box. Then I pulled out a smooth round granite stone, the same size and
shape as a sweet tart. It looked like some sort of runestone inscribed with two identical stick figures, side by side, their hands up in the air.
What the actual fuck?
I’d never seen it before and was pretty sure it didn’t belong to Mom. So I called the funeral home and explained my unusual situation. They were as dumbfounded as I was. They did admit that even though the chamber is cleaned between incinerations, it was conceivable that the stone had been lodged in the cremation furnace or processing machine prior to Mom going in, and that it came loose during her turn. But there was no way to know for sure. I tried to keep a sense of humour about it. After all, Mom probably would have found it funny.
* * *
—
FOR THE NEXT three weeks I put all my time and energy into planning the After-Party, coordinating the venue, the catering, the programming. Molly helped me create photo boards of Mom throughout the ages. I asked David to pick out the wine. The community centre felt more like a school gymnasium than a fancy hall, but that was Mom’s style: she was all about the affordable small luxuries, not the showy stuff. We didn’t need pomp and circumstance; we had tasty hors d’oeuvres and mini lemon tarts from Daniel et Daniel. At one point while we were setting up, Molly tried to put her arm around me. I shooed her off. I didn’t want to be consoled. I had a show to put on. I was in producer mode—even if I was running on autopilot.
More than a hundred people showed up: friends, family, colleagues, former students, ex-boyfriends (I’m not sure who had more exes there, me or Mom). Michael and plant-spirit-medicine Monika showed up, too. I was on my best Buddhist behaviour, knowing it was what Mom would’ve wanted. I even shook Michael’s hand. He looked nervous, as if he thought I might punch him, but I’d already thrown all my punches in my email. Aunt Barbara, whom I hadn’t seen since Mom cut her off months earlier, appeared on edge. A friend from the women’s writing group broke down when she saw Mom’s Silver Fox jacket hung next to an enlarged photo of her mounted on an easel.
Dead Mom Walking Page 25
