A Mother's Goodbye

A nurse comes in, checks the morphine. Smiles at me. I stay where I am, stroking Grace’s fingers, sometimes murmuring something, I don’t even know what. I just want her to hear a voice.

She opens her eyes a few times, but doesn’t seem to focus. ‘It’s all right, Grace,’ I say as I stroke her hand. ‘It’s all right.’

Then, when it feels like I’ve been sitting there forever, as if I always will be, she opens her eyes and this time she sees me. We stay suspended for a moment, staring at each other, and then her gaze moves down to our hands.

A smile curves Grace’s mouth, and lightly, so lightly, her fingers squeeze mine. She leans her head back against the pillows. ‘Thank you,’ she whispers, ‘for holding my hand.’

Those are the last words she ever says.

Death feels sudden, even when you’ve been laboring toward it for hours, days. It feels like the moment in musical chairs when the music stops, and you’re left looking around, wondering where to go.

After Grace dies I sit there for a moment, simply because I don’t want to begin the next part. But then her skin starts to cool and I don’t like seeing her so still, so I get up and tell a nurse. Half an hour later, having filled out some forms and called Stella, both of us fighting tears, I drive home.

Walking into the house feels strange, like stepping through a gauzy veil, from one reality to another. It’s four o’clock in the afternoon, and Amy and Lucy are at home; Emma is still out at the community college where she’s training to be a nursing assistant.

‘Mom?’ Lucy looks up from the TV, instantly anxious. I try to smile. Then Amy opens the door of her bedroom.

‘Is she dead?’ she asks bluntly, as only Amy can, and all I manage is a nod.

Lucy looks nonplussed and Amy goes back into her bedroom. I sit down on the sofa, feeling as if I am a hundred years old.

‘Will we ever see Isaac again?’ Lucy asks, and I turn to look at her. I can’t tell anything from her tone; she sounds merely curious.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes, I think we will.’

Later, when the girls are in bed and we are alone in our room, Kevin holds me and I cry. I didn’t realize I had so much sadness inside me as the sobs wrack my body and my breath shudders through me. Kevin strokes my hair and my back and keeps his arms around me. He doesn’t say anything; I don’t want his words. I just need his body next to mine, the thud of his heart, anchoring us to this moment.

The next morning, I wake up early, the light still grayish as I make coffee in the kitchen. I feel like I’ve been away from my normal life for a lifetime, first with Grace’s surgery, and then the trip to Cape Cod, and then the weeks after, when I took unpaid leave to help her live, and then to help her die.

I need to go to work, if not today, then tomorrow. Get back to living my own life, making money, making dinner. Life with all its little trials and errands. I can’t imagine it yet. Even just standing here feels like an effort. It’s hard.

I am just sitting down at the table with a cup of coffee when to my surprise Amy appears in the doorway. Her hair is rumpled, her face pale. I lower my coffee cup.

‘Amy…?’

‘Can I talk to you?’

‘Of course.’

She hovers in the doorway, pleating the bottom of her t-shirt with her fingers. She looks nervous, which is something Amy never is.

‘Amy…?’

‘When I told you that thing before… it wasn’t true.’ My mind is racing, trying to figure out what she means. The make-up? The boyfriend, or lack of one? ‘The pregnancy test,’ she whispers, and realization slams into me.

‘You mean you’re pregnant?’ She nods and I try to keep my expression neutral rather than shocked or appalled, both of which I feel, even though I, of all people, shouldn’t be either. I wasn’t that much older than Amy when I was pregnant with Emma. ‘How far along…?’

Amy shrugs. ‘I don’t know. A couple of months.’

I sit back, reeling. ‘And the father…?’

She doesn’t look at me as she answers. ‘I don’t know who it is.’

The words fall into the stillness like stones. I have no words. Amy. My little girl. It takes everything in me not to look horrified. Not to cry. And then Amy does.

‘I’m sorry, Mom,’ she says, her face crumpling as tears streak down her face. Amy, who never cries. Somehow this makes everything simpler; my choice is clear.

‘Oh, Amy. Amy. Come here, sweetheart.’ I fold her in my arms, hugging her for the first time in years, while she cries and trembles. I stroke her hair and tell her it’s going to be okay, even though I have no idea if it is or not. She’s fifteen years old and pregnant, no father in sight. But we can talk about all of that later. Right now all she needs to know is that I am not going to walk away from her now, or ever.