Last Rites

I don’t remember the fog that morning.  I remember being happy to be called.  Reluctantly, I’d left her bedside to find a hotel and to give Jen time alone with our dying mother.  But my sister texted me early:  when can you get here?  I can throw on clothes and be right down.  That’s what I did.  When I arrived, the aides had just turned her and she was trying to settle down after what my sister later told me was a difficult night.  The food and drink cart with pots of cold coffee and packs of peanut butter crackers was still there, but I noticed very little.  All my focus was on her.  Jennifer left.  It was peaceful and I remember a light feeling as if today was the day we would set off on our journey.  Me and Mom.  I was always her ticket out of that “prison,” and I wonder if she was waiting for me for that reason.  Why didn’t she slip off during the night?  It was possible, I suppose, that she needed me.  I was her first born.  She wanted me badly and always told how she’d cry in the months after she married but got her period.  No baby.  Not this month.  Then, she had me, and I’ve been her baby ever since.  I tried my best to talk, to monologue, despite knowing that too much talk annoyed her.  I lay my torso on her.  I stroked her head, swabbed her mouth.  Her breathing was labored and I watched the plateau of her tongue rise again and again toward the roof of her mouth.  I told her about my life … things she might not want to hear.  I tried to let my feelings flow (as I never quite could when she was healthy and we played our roles).  It’s all about flow.  Just the day before, when I’d first arrived, I sped up the highway, through the corridors, and to her bedside.  I took her face in my hands, and she cried, “OHHHH.”  “Oh, Mama,” I said, “it’s just another journey.  It’s just a trip, Mama.  It’s going to be wonderful.”  She settled down.  Here I was the morning of the next day, ready to set off.  I think I even told her the memory of sitting in the kitchen, being so afraid to go to Turkey, watching her turn French fries in oil, and feeling so stuck, attached, frozen in my position at the table, being there for her after Pop died.  “But you encouraged me to take the leap.  You gave me the push.  It’s like that for you now, Mom.  Leaving always feels scary like you are jumping off the edge of the world, but there will be lots of people there to catch you.  You won’t fall.”  I kept flowing, talking, singing.  My brother arrived and left the echo of his male voice in the room.  I imagine that to her his voice sounded both like Joe (Mom’s husband) and Bud (Mom’s brother).  I spoke about New Jersey and the many trips she imagined taking all winter long—back home to her mother’s bed.  She raised her head and looked at me with total trust in her blue eyes.  She coughed heavily, brown ooze dripped out of the corner of her mouth.  I wiped it with a cool washcloth.  She seemed to stop breathing.  My own heart stopped or seemed to.  She started to breath again, and I smiled, “Oh, there you go, Mom!”  She coughed again.  Again, the brown ooze.  Her eyes opened, looked at me, and then all was still.  Face to face.  Mother and daughter.  Did my river of words carry her somewhere far away?  Did she commend her spirit to me, to God, or to the journey?  The bond that was there all along, too powerful to be spoken or even acknowledged eye to eye, was finally and fully affirmed.  She looked at me.  I didn’t turn away.  In her eyes, I became a full person, a Mary Jo, her daughter.  I loved her through the change.  Mother, the car is here.  Mother, I’ll leave the light on.  Oh, Mother, it’s just Mary Jo.  The early petal fall is past.  Shall I scoop them up?  Shall I hold on futilely to the beauty that rains under the arms of your crabapple tree?  In the end, I left the pink tears in the blades of grass on the dark and windy night when I had to sit at your table one last time.  I loved you, Mama.  I love you still.  You grew me, bore me, raised me.  I raised you, too.  And now, in some weird way, we deliver each other:  you give me my life again, and I give you to a fullness of life I feel but cannot put into words.  I was the desperately wanted first, and I have desperately wanted you all my life.  You slipped through my grasp.  You refused to be known in words.  But in the last moment of life, I was with you—just the midwife, the old countrywoman, the girl who helped with the wheelchair.  “Mary Jo, it’s just your mother.”  Just.  You were humble in all your human dealings.  I promise to follow your example.  Wherever you are, here I am.

You are loved!