A Mother's Goodbye

‘How are you feeling, Grace?’

‘Is this it?’ I just want to know. ‘Am I going to leave the hospital? Ever?’

‘That’s up to you.’

That doesn’t sound good. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘We’ve done some tests, Grace, and the cancer is continuing to spread. Your organs can’t take much more stress, I’m afraid.’

This shouldn’t be a surprise, and yet it is. Every bit of bad news shocks me all over again. ‘So…?’

‘So we can arrange for you to go home, and be as comfortable as possible. Or you can stay here, if you’d feel safer with the hospital staff nearby.’

Safer? What is safe about death? It’s the most dangerous, frightening thing ever, and yet it’s coming for me. I shake my head, at a loss, trying not to cry, because the truth is I’m scared. I’m scared to die, and die alone; I’m scared about what it will feel like, and I’m also scared for Isaac, for the pain I know he’ll feel, the pain I can’t spare him from. ‘I want to see my son.’

‘I know, and I believe Heather is going to get him for you.’

This can’t be it, I keep thinking. I don’t want this to be it. It feels so sudden, so pedestrian. A hospital bed, anonymous nurses, that awful beeping of machines. What if I die alone? I am suddenly seized by a choking terror. I don’t want my last moments on earth to be alone. I’ve been lonely for so long, but God knows, I need someone now.

I try to focus on Dr. Stein even though I am screaming, shrieking inside, everything resisting. ‘I’ll stay here,’ I say. If I went back home I’d need someone, most likely Heather, to stay with me twenty-four hours a day, and I can’t ask that of her, not after everything she’s already done. I also don’t want Isaac to see me at the end. He’s too young to bear the weight of that memory.

‘How much longer?’ I ask Dr. Stein, as if she could tell me the date and time, as if she knows.

‘I don’t know.’ She draws a quick, ragged breath and pats my hand. ‘A few days, maybe a week.’

I nod slowly. So now I know. And strangely, that brings its own sorrowful peace. There will be no more striving, no more savoring, no more eking out another precious moment. Now is the time for goodbyes, and amazingly, my body relaxes. The screaming inside me stops, forever silenced.

Heather brings Isaac to me that night. I am doped up on a morphine drip, the world going hazy at the edges. But I see my son in full clarity. It will be the last time I see him. I want his memories of me to be good ones, strong ones, building sandcastles on Cape Cod, not withering away here.

His face is pale, his eyes huge and dark as he stands by my bed. Heather quietly leaves the room, and I try to smile. ‘Hey, bud.’

‘Mom.’ His voice wobbles, and his lips tremble. I reach for his hand.

‘It’s all right,’ I say, stroking his fingers, memorizing the feel of him. His skin is so soft. ‘You can cry. It will always be all right to cry.’

And he does, the tears spilling down his cheeks, and strangely I’m glad. Now is my chance to comfort him, to give him the last of my strength. I reach my arms up, scrawny, skeletal arms, bone-white, that don’t look as if they belong to me, and I hold my son.

I press my cheek against his and close my eyes as I breathe him in, the smell of sun and soap and little boy sweat. In my mind he is a newborn, squalling and perfect, a baby, chubby and red-cheeked, a toddler, a gap-toothed six-year-old.

And then, with my cheek pressed to his and my eyes tightly closed, he is a cocky ten-year-old, a moody teenager. He is learning to drive, graduating, going to college. I see him as an adult, comfortable in his own skin, finding his place. I see his arm around his wife’s shoulders as they laugh together. I see my grandchildren, a whole handful, boys and girls, grinning and laughing, the family I never got to have. My family.

I see it all in that hug, I feel it and I believe it with everything I have left, and I hold onto it even as I let Isaac go.

Thirty

HEATHER

For three days and nights I stay by Grace’s bed. Isaac is at Stella’s, which is where he should be. And I know, with every instinct I’ve ever possessed, that this is where I need to be.

I’ve never seen someone die. I hope I’ll be strong enough. I sit by Grace’s bed as I watch her sleep. I watch her eyelids flicker open; sometimes the world comes into focus and sometimes it doesn’t. Nurses come and go quietly; they up the morphine, check her vitals. Dr. Stein visits and gives me sympathetic smiles, talks to Grace if she’s awake and lucid, which isn’t very often.

But sometimes she is. Sometimes her eyes open and she smiles at me, and a memory comes to her, unbidden, spilling from her lips.

‘My dad was just in here,’ she says with a shake of the head. ‘By the door. He had a fishing rod. He loved to go fishing. I always pretended I didn’t mind the worms.’ And then she closes her eyes, murmuring about how strange it is to see him again. A few minutes later she opens her eyes again. ‘I thought my dad was here. It’s so odd… I can’t tell what’s real any more.’

‘Maybe it’s all real,’ I offer, and she smiles.

‘That would be nice. I think I’d like that, although…’ Her eyes close as a faint smile curves her mouth. ‘A little while ago I thought I saw spiders scuttling all over the floor. Like Raiders of the Lost Ark. I hope that’s not real.’