Little Fire

My Mom Died

Posted by Boo , Saturday, June 4, 2011 3:53 PM

...but then, you already knew that. She died on November 23, 2003.

I am preparing to move by trying to get rid of things. It's slow going, particularly since I've been nursing a wounded heart. However, I just found something I thought was lost forever. It is a notebook containing my thoughts on my mother's death, written on 12/05/03. I would like to share them with you. Thank you for your indulgence.

This is the notebook I bought for my mother the second week she was in the hospital. That was in October. She told me several months before that she had always dreamed of being a writer. I never knew. I urged her to buy a notebook and a pen. She never did. I bought her a book on writing. She said she loved the title; something about freeing the writer within. I imagine she held it in her hands while she sat in her worn, brown recliner as the light from her hand-picked and long-coveted circus glass lamp bounced distractingly off the book's laminated cover. I imagine she looked at it absently with bemused warmth in her heart toward me, then let it drop as her thoughts skittered elsewhere and her hand eased back onto her wine glass or clutched at the remote control.

She never read it, that's certain.

She was already gone from herself, and gone from me, too, by then. When she was rushed to the hospital soon after, though, I perceived a grand opportunity to stake out a piece of my mother for my own. I bought this notebook. I located the discarded guide on writing. I wrote an earnest letter professing my desire for her to write while recovering. I offered to read the book to her.

She wasn't interested in hearing it.

I told her I needed her to fight. I told her I needed her. She cupped my face kindly, looked at me affectionately, and told me a truth.

I do not live my life for you.

The gaze, though, was more than affectionate. It was certain and self-assured. I can't remember ever seeing that particular blend of characteristics on her face before. It was profound. I do not live my life for you.

Later in her hospital stay, she acquiesced a bit, as many do under the often infuriating focus of my will. She said she would fight for me. She said she would take a piece of my liver for her birthday. She would spend 30 years being my friend. She said she was eating well. I bought stacks of vegetarian cookbooks to comfort her grizzled liver for when she went home. She thought it would be soon. She was fine.

One day, though, she was not fine. She was "hanging in there." The next morning her heart stopped and was restarted.

She was now living, but not quite alive.

I was told to hurry home from Houston, but I would likely not make it in time.

I blindly navigated the worst floods, tornadoes, and thick sheets of rain Houston had seen that year to make it to the airport. To beat the clock. I did.

I arrived to wide-open, mossy-colored and yellow-rimmed eyes and two strong hands grasping mine. The breathing machine precluded speech, so I imposed my own interpretations of the vivid expression on her face.

I'm so happy you're here

I love you.

I'm fighting.

I'm fine.

...but here's the thing. The wide eyes and clinging hands could just as easily have been saying, "You're here. Please help me! I'm hurting. I'm afraid. Make this stop."

How can I know?

Next is a haze of days and tubes and machines and sleeping in the visitors' lounge and praying and needing...something. Needing my mommy.

My mom was fading. I would read to her. At first she seemed comforted by this. Then it didn't seem to matter. I became an expert in reading her machines, and I read to myself, aloud. If she knew anything, maybe she knew we were there and we loved her

Before her once-revived heart rested, she no longer belonged with us. With the breathing machine forcing her to stay, she was a beautiful, delicate-finned fish on land, straining for home. That merciless machine would not let her go until we said so.

First the final sucking sound, then terrible silence, then peace. For her. Not me.

We emerged into a stunning lemon yellow day. Where was Houston's meteorological tumult? That would have been appropriate. We had let her go.

We didn't have a choice.

She didn't live her life for us.