Category: Duct Tape and Prayers

We thought her consciousness had passed beyond us. Hoped, really. It would be easier, the essence gone, the body needing to catch up.

We were wrong. She’s still in there, she’s still struggling to communicate. It started last night, when Tracy told her she was going to sleep in another room – she began to twist and move, make faces. Today, when hospice was here, the nurse asked her if she was in pain, could she squeeze her fingers?

Nothing.

The nurse switched hands. “Can you squeeze my fingers if you’re hurting?”

Nothing.

“Can you squeeze my fingers if you are not hurting?”

Nothing.

The nurse repeated this with blinking, with raising eyebrows. Nothing, save the one time she felt the most gentle of squeezes.

I stood in my corner thinking she was gone, she was gone, it’s just the shell of the body remaining… and then the nurse asked Mom to stick out her tongue if she was hurting. And Mom did.

The nurse asked Mom to stick out her tongue if she wasn’t hurting.

Nothing.

Maybe it was a fluke. Timing. Random movement. The nurse asked again, and again, Mom stuck her tongue out, firmly, with force.

She is still here, she is still trying to communicate. She opened her eyes, deliberately and focused, for the first time in 48 hours.

When the nurse swabbed her mouth with a sponge (for hydration and relief of dry tissues), Mom sucked on the sponge fiercely, with determination to get water.

How much of this is reflex, and how much is it my mother is trapped in a body that won’t let her communicate, won’t let her tell us anything, trapped in pain? That, that is the most horrible thought for me – locked in, aware but unable to communicate that awareness. It terrifies me, it fills me with anguish and fear – to not be able to say I’m in pain, I hurt, I want to move, or anything else. Thank you, I love you.

Mom has slipped further away. Her breathing is more apnea than oxygen, and we have spent the evening upstairs, the three of us talking, giving her space. Following after Tracy, I pick up a photo album to flip through, to select pictures for the memorial/reception. The first two photos in this album are Dad, sanding a white crib in a backyard that looks familiar. The clothes scream the 70s, and my eyes drift down the page to the third photo, a photo of my mother.

A photo of my mother, very pregnant. Very pregnant with me.

We’ve circled around Mom, the chaplain leaning over her whispering words of comfort and encouragement. Words of God, eternalness, the something after that we cannot define but attempt to anyhow, that we all believe in, in our obscure ways. We carry on. We continue.

I am across from him, Tracy and my father at the foot of the bed. Tracy is standing; Dad is sitting in the family-carved rocking chair, watching. The air is thick, palpable with Others. We don’t know who her visitors are, but they’re there. Molly, my sister’s cat, sees them. She’s clearly seeing people, responding to people we cannot see.

The chaplain finishes his prayers with a soft song, and Mom is smiling. She’s reached out, several times, and Tracy and I have taken her hands. But after a minute, she withdraws from us, and holds out again – holds out to someone else. I wonder who she’s seeing?

We sit, quietly around her. In order to sit down, I shift to the end of the bed, in a small rocking chair. I am directly in line with her (and if you take the cat’s reaction as gospel, sitting on someone we can’t see), and can see her chest rise and fall as she barely breathes. I find myself unconsciously mimicking her apnea, matching my breathing to her own, holding my breath without meaning to. I take a breath through my mouth, as she does, and hold, hold, hold, until my breath flows out of me. Hers does not – she stays, not breathing, for another few seconds, and there is that pause, that wonder, if this is it.

Tracy and I firmly believe she will die when we are not in the room. We’re turning off the baby monitors, and no longer spending our time around her bedside. We’re giving her space, as part of our permission, our love, our letting go.

Today Tracy and I told stories over Mom – somehow, we got to talking about Christmas, and I told her stories she didn’t remember, about Christmas in Arizona before the drought, with giant geese chasing me around the pond, Grandpa taking me out at night to hold newly hatched baby ducklings, my brother and his bad eyesight mistaking a cactus for my grandfather, with disasterous results.

Mom smiled and held our hands.

I don’t know what’s harder – talking to her when she starts talking about needing to get up and leave, to walk, or saying she can’t go and telling her she can, or saying goodnight to her in the evening, knowing this might be the last night I hold her hands between mine, feel them pressed against my cheek, smell her scent – still so strongly her, even through all of this – the last time I will kiss her cheek, run my hands through her hair, say “I love you” and see the small twitch of smile of her lips, the most she can muster in acknowledging hearing me.

This afternoon she told Tracy and I we needed to help her get up, she had to walk away, and Tracy told her we couldn’t help her with that, she had to do it on her own. Mom asked where she was going, and Tracy told her somewhere better, that she would be in heaven watching over us. Mom was straining to lean forward, grasping hard to both of our hands, and Tracy just kept reassuring her that it was okay, we would be okay, Mom would be okay, and it was fine to go. That Mom needs to do what’s best for her, we all want her to be comfortable, and we know she’ll be there, always watching over us.

I took over running my spare hand through Mom’s hair and told her Tracy was right, and it was okay to go if she wanted to, and we would be okay, and take care of each other, and that Tracy and I had already made a pact to make sure we both remember to eat. And I told her that since she’ll be watching over us, that my house will be cleaner than it’s ever been – I’ll even have to scrub behind the toilet, since she’ll be able to see it all. And my clothes will always be washed and folded. Once more, I was rewarded – she gave me a beautiful smile, a smile that might very well be the last I ever receive.