On the refrigerator is some notice from
Hospice informing caretakers to attempt no
resuscitation should she stop breathing.
Drove up to the house, where my father sits holding the hand of my
wheelchair confined mother. Her nails are painted a garish pink, looking grotesque on her thin and mottled hands. My hands.
I see her greet my aunt with confusion. She sees me, she smiles. Absolute
recognition. She flings her arms out to hug me. "Did you bring me lunch"? she asks. Confusion. She has no appetite.
The radiation treatment caused hair loss, so she shaved her head rather than suffer the trauma of waking to a hair-caked pillow.
A
Buddhist woman asks me, "does she know you love her?" while I'm in a hospital hundreds of miles away.
And, do you feel so unworthy of his love?
For the first three months I was away, she called me weekly. Beyond, she wondered where I was, and why I wasn't home.
She lies on her bed in the livingroom, and says tangentially, "You're a
brat." Then she smiles. And says she loves me.
who are those people? ...
aren't my flowers so pretty?
...
how could you ...
she's my best friend.
how could you? she's my daughter. (she says to my father, and we inform her his never, would never happen.)
I can't go, I have to take care of my little girls.
All this
fire. fire. no no why no no no
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
Her last spoken words were, "love you, love you all. come to you with thankfullness as I depart from this world."
She was as vain as a girl with recently formed
breasts when she started losing weight.
Confusion.
She had stage IV
melanoma. Eleven years before her death, she had many surgeries and
chemotherapy for the melanoma tumor on her arm. Success. She had said that she needed ten more years to finish raising her children. She got 11 years.
I keep forgetting that she's dead, whether that's because I think she's still alive or that she never existed.
Soon after her
death I acquired the
Christian perversion of
guilt. I do not understand.