There Was a Little Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Me (46 page)

This woman had once been asked by her supervisor to get a bottle of wine that was hidden under my mom’s bed. She was to tell Mom that she could have the bottle but just not keep it under her bed. The bottle would be safe in the main office downstairs and Mom could have it whenever she wished (I had no idea Mom was getting access to wine from the inside, but it didn’t surprise me). She entered her room and asked Mom for the bottle, and Mom complied readily by proceeding to pull out from under her bed an entire
case
of red wine as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Why have just one bottle at hand when you can get a whole case? Makes sense. Take out the middleman.

I shared a story about how Mom once used a turkey baster to infuse the breakfast melons with vodka while we were on a river-rafting trip down the Salmon River. The ladies loved that one.

•   •   •

These stories continued until the staff had felt like they had gotten a chance to tell me what Mom had meant to them and how funny and sensitive she had been. I was not at all surprised by any of this, because it had always been my mother’s way. She always immediately
connected with the staff at places to make sure that they never felt like she was better than they were. She always said that the working people were her people. Mom had a talent of making strangers feel special. She put me on a pedestal while placing herself, pinned, under it.

To end the good-bye, the first staff member held up a plastic pill cup filled with Fluff vodka and motioned to me that she wanted to put a bit on Mom’s lips as a toast.

I said, “Sure, it’s not like it’s gonna kill her. Go on, give it to her.” Now, Mom’s mouth had been open for days by this point. The cup was pressed to her lips, and in the same reaction that caused Mom to bite my finger and Lisa’s neck, Mom’s teeth clamped onto that cup like the Jaws of Life. Even though she basically did that to anything that got near her mouth, it was pretty funny. I didn’t ruin the “funny” part with an explanation. The women all squealed with laughter and a declaration of Mom’s love of booze. All at once there was a ceremonious raising of the last cup to God, and Mom, and life, and those we love. It was one of the most surreal moments I have ever experienced. It was tragic and sweet and real and odd and funny and profoundly heartbreaking.

Finally, it was time for them to leave. I thanked them for what was now my empty bottle and I was then alone again with my near-death mother.

The Fluff vodka had made me tired, thankfully. I had no way to get home because of the continued mass-transit strike and lack of gas. I had no place to be. My kids were fine, bunking with evacuated friends at my home, where we had a wood-burning fireplace and candles. The city was shut down entirely and I had had Fluff vodka for dinner. I decided I would get into the bed with Mom and get some rest.

I slept in the bed with Mom the whole night, not waking up once.
I raised the side rails so I would not tumble off during the wee hours and set off some alarms or sensors. I slept hard. I have no memory of my dreams.

•   •   •

That next day the daytime hospice nurse arrived at 9:00
A.M.
and changed Mom’s diaper and bedding and washed her hair. Mom loved animal prints. In her tiny freestanding blond-wood closet she had two leopard-print blouses. One was made of slightly stiff cotton with neon accents. The other was silk with a smaller print and no accompanying obnoxious color. I started to give the aide the silk one and then selfishly and morbidly changed my mind. I wanted the silk one for myself, and with dark humor joked to myself that it would be a shame to burn the more expensive silk one. I knew that if it had been anybody else in that bed and Mom and I had been making the same decision, we would have made the same joke.

Mom was now dressed from the waist up with her hair combed. I tried to pry her fingers open to put in some talc. Her fingers were so clenched, and as had become the ritual, she screamed through a once again clenched jaw and tried to pull herself up to bite me with the front of her teeth. I gave up and just calmly said, “OK, Mama, it’s OK, no powder.”

The attendant tucked in the sheets and was changing Mom’s socks. I rolled my eyes and shook my head when I saw that both pairs of socks were actually the gray unisex kind with no elastic that the airlines sometimes give away. The no-elastic part was fine, but it still struck me as funny, typical, and gut-stabbingly tragic that they were the same socks the airlines provided. They are usually offered only in business class, though, so maybe Mom thought them special and herself fancy. Mom just loved anything free, including the menus on airplanes or the tiny dishes for butter. Back in the day, Mom would take
everything from everywhere. She wiped clean anything travel-size she could get her hands on at hotels and on planes and from cleaning carts. She even pilfered the linens from Japan Airlines’ table setting from first class.

The worst was one year on Halloween when she decided that instead of candy, she would make little care bags of mini toiletries to hand out. I begged her not to and suggested we instead donate the stash to a women’s shelter. Disaster and humiliation diverted as mini Butterfingers and Hershey’s Kisses replaced the shampoos and conditioners.

Well, this day was Halloween and the recollection gave me pause. This pause would turn out to include the last smile I would feel on my face while she was alive.

I was shocked out of the moment by the insensitive aide, who grabbed Mom’s airline-sock-covered feet and announced, “Oh, so cold. Yup, in my country we say they die feetfirst. Yup, that’s what they say. . . . Feetfirst!”

I did not know or care to which country this woman was referring. I did, however, wish she was currently in it. I could not believe the lack of compassion she was exhibiting. However, I did go feel my mom’s feet, and they were indeed colder than the rest of her and colder than usual. But it was almost November so I overlooked the callous comment. I could never really bring myself to say she was dying.

I put the blanket over Mom’s gray socks and pulled my chair around to the side of the bed. I sat in it facing her. I put a classical music station on my iPhone and held it up to her left ear. I saw no flicker of acknowledgment of the music but tried to believe the people who told me that the hearing was the last thing to go.

I sat trying to read a book and kept glancing up at her eyes to see if there was any movement under the lids. I periodically held the back of my hand to her open mouth to feel air, just like the mirror Mom
held to my mouth to check for steam. I’d also stare at the sheet over her chest to make sure it was still rising and falling with her breath. All of a sudden my iPhone chirped and it was Lisa calling. The phone call interrupted the music. There was still almost no movement from Mom. But every so often a slight, almost imperceptibly faint rise in the white cotton sheet would occur. I breathed then, too. Mom’s body seemed so heavy and flat, as if it had melted into the bed like Silly Putty in the sun.

I picked up the phone and with the other hand touched Mom’s left arm. I had long since stopped trying to hold her hand because she would clench her fist tighter if I even tried to shove my fingers in between hers. I was giving Lisa the update when Mom suddenly and violently clamped closed her mouth with a smacking sound, teeth crashing, and then equally as quickly and forcefully sucked in a widemouthed breath. She then brought her lips back together. I blurted out to Lisa that something was happening and I had to hang up. I dropped the phone and stared at Mom’s chest. It was still slightly rising up and down like the pulse of the light on an at-sleep computer.

I worriedly shot a glance over at the aide, who was sitting in the comfy chair at the window, oblivious and fully engaged in her Sudoku puzzle. As much as I hated this woman and her cold-footed country, I still thought it better to have her around in case I was missing some kind of sign. This was a ridiculous idea, because she was not paying attention and, in the end, I had resented her being in the room.

Then it happened again. Another gasp of breath followed by a tight clap together of her lips. My adrenaline started pumping and I began to panic. I counted beats in between these gasps: one, two, three, four, gasp, shut . . . one, two, three, four, gasp, shut.

I just stared and was startled off my seat with each lurch of her breathing and accompanying gaped mouth. The time in between them varied as did the seconds in the open position. There would be
nothing and I’d think maybe she died and then, bam, another gasp. There was no rattle like I had anticipated. Finally I said, “Ah, Mom? What are you doin’ to me!?”

I was on the edge of my chair in a surreal and seemingly suspended state, focused and watching and waiting, but unclear as to what for! I was holding my breath in sync with hers, and it was like she died a hundred times! I took another quick peek to see if the aide was watching, which she was not, and returned to Mom. When her mouth was clamped shut I kept uttering “Ahhh?” in an attempt to ask the oblivious aide if
this
was
it
? But then Mom would pop her mouth open again and grab a mouth of air.

Mom continued to do this for what felt like an hour but what was, in actuality, only about thirty seconds. I stared, waiting for each gasp. And then, as suddenly and as without warning as it had all began, it just stopped. I waited for it to occur again. Nothing. It was the opposite of what I thought would happen. I always thought it would be an exhale—a slightly pushed-out pop of air coming from the back of someone’s throat—that signaled the end. That was what the movies showed, often. Instead, my mother’s mouth simply stopped opening. Nothing else happened.

It all just stopped happening.
She
stopped happening.

I exclaimed, “Ah, is that it? Is this It? Did it just happen? Ah, excuse me, whatever your name is, is she . . . ah . . . done?” I checked my phone for the time. It was 11:37. I couldn’t help but release a quiet crying chuckle and say, “Oh, Mom, of course it’s a thirty-seven.”

Thirty-seven had always been my mom’s favorite number. I never remembered why and always forgot to ask her, but I did remember that we always bet on horses or picked numbers that had a thirty-seven in them. I had been desperate for signs of any kind during the entire dying ordeal and instantly prayed that this thirty-seven was one of them. Of what, though, I could not tell you.

The aide got up in slow fucking motion and came over to feel for a pulse. Now it was my mouth that was open. She just nodded at me and muttered that she had called it. . . . “Yup, they always go feetfirst.” Oh, I wanted to punch her and stick a plane ticket in her mouth. This woman then suddenly acted sweet. She gently placed my mom’s hands back on her stomach, slightly overlapping each other like you see on dead people in open coffins. She then whispered some quick words that felt like a “Go with God or peace” or some sort of a sentiment, but I did not comprehend any of it. I could no longer decipher sounds. I felt like I was in a sound booth with the volume for the outer room turned off. Only the sound of my own heart pounding in my head kept me from passing out.

Oh my God. . . . Wait, no, wait a minute, can we go back?! Just for a minute. I have to grab something. I just need to get it.

I had this overriding urge to believe that I just needed to go retrieve something and therefore Mom could not die just yet because I needed to get my stuff. She had to wait to leave. She had to say something to me. Please, God, bring her back just so we can say good-bye with words and sounds and with closure. She needed to tell me something, anything and that she knew that I had always loved her deeply and that I was sorry if she ever felt hurt.

Wait
—if I stare long enough at her, she will wake up for sure.

I took a deep inhale to calm down, cleared my eyes, and stood up over Mom to look at her face. I hoped she could somehow pop up and comfort me. I still wanted my mommy to tell me she loved me and it would be OK.

It was not that her face looked “peaceful,” but it was true that she was no longer grimacing. What struck me, however, was that she no longer looked like my mother. She was not in there. Her skin was still so beautiful and almost iridescent. It was like silk velvet and her forehead was still warm. I desperately wanted to kiss it before she got
cold so I could still feel the warmth of the living. I kissed her and told her I loved her and then added that she could come back . . .
now
.

But I was talking to a stranger and an it. I wanted to shake this being and tell it to give me back my mother. Then I realized I was not talking to a dead person but was addressing something else entirely. Something that looked nothing like Teri, or even human really. The woman I had shared life with was no longer in there. This thing lying in the bed was an inanimate object—an emptied package. I had heard all sorts of versions of the body being only a vessel, but they had never really struck me until this moment.

Maybe it is the soul or the spirit—or a myriad of different labels—but all I can say is my mom was no longer in the room. Her essence seemed to have instantly disappeared. I said out loud but to myself, “She’s not in there anymore. Who is this body?” The room got very foggy and it felt alien.

I felt the panic starting to mount yet again and my eyes darted all around trying to find something I could recognize. Where had my mom gone? Where was I? Flashbacks of when I was a little kid and did not know my mother’s whereabouts coursed through my body. On a floral chintz-covered armchair (oh, how my mom loved her floral and especially her chintz fabrics) sat a huge stuffed doll I had made when I was nine. It had a completely disproportionate body made out of heavy white linen. The chest and lower half formed a square and the arms and legs were tiny and stuck out like a brontosaurus. She had glued rows of thick yellow yarn on top of and around her head. I had given her a blue-jean-overall skirt. That was the best I could do and had to rely on my mom to sew in the blue eyes, small nose, and little lips that looked like a perfect bow. It had been one of the first things I had ever really sewn and Mom made me feel like it had been worthy of awards. I recognized this doll as the only real thing left in the room.