Ungrieving You

Acceptance

You are going to die, Mom. I watch you pull breath in through your mouth, the way someone would pull a bucket from a well, but for all your vigorous sucking, we both know you’re going to die.

You've been lying on your back for a week now; soon you will rub up bedsores. But you’ve grown used to wounds, be they inside or out. This colitis will soon let you close them one by one, shed the pain—and me—like a worthless layer of skin.

I won’t cry when you go. I swore to myself back when you went into the hospital that I’d let your spirit float away and not weigh it back down to earth with my sobs. I’m going to keep my promise this time, Mom.

I draw water from the tap, you can’t stand the mineral stuff, and I take four pills from the orange plastic jars. There are nine such jars on your bathroom counter. I can smell each of the kinds of medicine leak out of your sweat with a distinct aroma. You perspire all the time now; the pillow is hot with your fever.

“Wake up, baby,” I say, very somber, not wanting you to pull and jerk out of sleep. “I know,” I murmur when you moan, “but it’s time.”

I lift you by the back of your thin, wrinkled neck, holding you up just enough to let the pill slide on your tongue and take a sip. We do this four times and my arm shakes a little, because you shake a little. “That’s a good girl,” I say, letting you back down.

I talk to you as if you were a kid. It soothes you, makes you think you’ve got your mother here. Your mother is here. I’ve been taking care of you for years before you got sick; I’ve been pregnant with you all my life. You’re the one dying, and it’s like I’m in labor. Now you’re about to be born into a world where I can’t follow, and I’m going to let you go, Mom, and I’m not going to cry.

The little bit of water you’ve had runs right through you and I have to wrap my arms around you and carry you to the john. We make it this time, and you are so happy you didn’t mess yourself. I tear up, but you’re holding on to me and I’m holding on to you, and you’re not crying for my sake, so I won’t cry, for yours. You are going to die. But I won’t let it happen like this. We don’t have to accept this.

Depression

Do you remember when I was six and we went out on the front lawn of our old house on Christmas Eve and built snowmen? And my nose would run like a river, and you’d just take the back of your sleeve and wipe the snot right off. We have always been like that. You could walk in on me, naked, in my teens, and I’d never turn from your eyes; I can rub your back now while your shit comes out like piss, and you don’t have to bury your face in your hands. There’s no hiding from one another; we’ve always been one.

As you lie there, I remember so many things that I had pushed out of my mind since we moved here. I remember the way you would read to me every night, and trace your forefinger over my eyebrow until I got sleepy. You used to tuck my hair behind my ear and then plant a kiss there every morning before pre-school. You stuck notes in my lunchbox for five straight years. I never said thank you for that, Mom.

“Thank you,” I whisper, but you just lick your lips.

I get a grape-flavored freezypop and slide it over your mouth, until you can nurse a bit of the juice.

“Brush my hair,” you croak out. “We’ll be late for church and I look like a wreck.”

I go to the bathroom and get a brush—your favorite one, with the marbleized handle and soft bristles. You think we’re going to church. You don’t have to dress up for God, I want to say. But that’s always been your way. You insisted I put curlers in your hair and line your lips before the ambulance came for you that day; you’re so vain, baby, it makes me giggle.

But the giggle turns into something darker and thicker and I have to wad up some toilet paper and stuff it in my mouth because there’s no need for you to hear that. When I can breathe and my face isn’t too splotched, I head back into the bedroom and brush your hair. You love it when I do this. So I brush until you fall asleep and I know I’ve got another two hours before your next dose.

I’m so empty, Mom. You’re still in the room but not all of you is here. And it’s lonely. The sun is setting but I don’t have the energy to turn on the lights. I should get up and feed the cats, clean up a little, but my arms feel like sacks of wet sand. Besides, I’ve got to use all my strength to carry you now; I’ll worry about the house and everything else later. After you go. . .

I dash to the bathroom and puke up all of my sadness as quietly as I can.

Bargaining

I think you might be getting a little better. It’s been a few hours and you’ve been able to hold down that chicken soup. It’s the boxed kind, Lipton’s, like you used to make me when I had a cold. Chicken soup and tapioca could cure anything, I believed, until I reached double-digits and my friends’ grandparents started to die.

I’ve got to do something; I can’t just stand by your bed all day again. So I go up to the loft and run my fingertips over the books on your shelves. Their spines are so elegant; you’ve taken such care with all the classics. I don’t think I’m up to Homer or Faulker just now, so I pick up a copy of Lord of the Rings because it’s in the theatres this week.

This book always fascinated me as a child; it’s bound in red leather, with blue and green sparkly designs on the front. Prettier than our bible. I wet my finger and peel back one of the gold-edged pages. Several hours later, I’m wondering why Aragorn never realized that Legolas was in love with him, and then I think that I might go to hell for having thoughts like that. You would just laugh at me, but I don’t want to piss God off. Not when your life hangs in the balance.

When you were well, we used to talk at the dinner table about what kind of God our God would be. But now, I fear that God is the angry and jealous one that ugly bible talks about, and I don’t want him to look down on my impure—or at least out-of-canon—thoughts and strike at me by taking you.

Putting the book down, I get on my knees, as I haven’t done since Sunday school, and I whisper, “Please, God, don’t let her die. Don’t leave me here in this big house, all alone. I need her. So you take something else. Take my car. Take my college fund. You go ahead and make me sick. But don’t take her. I need her more than you do.”

God doesn’t answer. So I go downstairs to check on you, and I pray more seriously in my head. Take me, take me, let her live. I barter myself. She’s the special one of us; I’ve got nothing in me. Please, God.

Please.

You’re awake and you want me to read to you.

“The bible?” I ask.

“No,” you say. “Something with a happy ending.”

Anger

You are taking days to die. Sometimes I think you might pull through, but then new hives appear, or you mumble incoherently, or you spit up on yourself. Two steps forward, three steps back. I’m getting dizzy, riding this emotional tilt-a-whirl.

You’ve gone totally blind in your right eye. I try and joke that you’re like the Norse god Odin now, that you can see things with a different sort of sight. You don’t say anything; I think you are giving up.

I can’t tell Nana how sick you are because she’ll just go to pieces on me; she’ll wilt like a spaghetti noodle in water. So I call her everyday and say you’re getting better.

I hate lying.

And if you have to leave, I wish that you would just leave. Just go ahead. You leave me here with the unpaid bills and the yard to mow and the stocks to manage and the taxes due. You go ahead and jump ship; I’ll be fine. I’ll remember to get up each day and cook and clean and go back to work. I’ll figure out how to fix the fuse box, how to sew on a button, and how to make the secret family recipes without you. I don’t need you.

I’m a young woman. I should be out dancing, hanging out with my friends. It’s not fair that I’m stuck here in this little room watching my mother fade away. It’s bullshit. Fuck you, God. And fuck you too, Mom. Just fuck you.

You’re getting off so damn easy. There’s still shit you have to answer for. What about all those nights you’d drink and cut me with glass? What about how you used to call me a whore, call me a monster like my father, and then you’d walk out on me? How about all those years I spent after school scrubbing the floors, when I should have been out at parties? I’m tired of cleaning up your messes.

Don’t you fucking leave me. You stay here and finish what you started. You said we were soul mates. You said we would go forth into the world like spirit warriors. Well, I can’t fight these battles alone. You said you’d always be there for me. I could smack your face until your cheeks blister with peregrine bruises, I’m so mad. You’re breaking yet another promise to me and I won’t let you.

I go to the bathroom and pick up all your pills. I flush them down the john. You’re going to live, or you’re going to die, but you’re going to make up your mind soon, you bitch.

Denial

Once you stop taking the medicine, things change. Your eye is still useless, the nerves in it are probably dead, but the hives are gone and you can hold down soup and bread. You can even lift the food to your mouth all by yourself, so I just leave it on the nightstand. You’re awake more often now, and I read Lord of the Rings to you. I do all the voices. You smile, your lips stretching like taffy when I do Gimli.

Sun-spray comes through the lace curtains. It makes patterns on your bedspread. The summer storms are winding down; soon it will be fall. By then you should be up and about. I’ve shouldered you through the worst of this; you just have to be diligent about your rest from now on. Maybe tomorrow I’ll help you to the shower and we can wash you off. I know you’d like that; you used to stand in that damn thing and lather Miss Dior gel all over your skin until you were pink and the entire upstairs smelled like Paris. When I walk into your closet and smell that perfume, I know I’m sniffing out our life together; it’s your stamp on my sense memory.

I turn back from the window and open my mouth to say I love you. But you’re not breathing. Funny; I can’t hear that you’ve stopped.

The silence drowns that out.