Last Day Thoughts

October 2011: My mother died early the next morning.

I’m sitting in my mother’s room at the nursing home. The breeze is cool for a San Diego afternoon and I hear buses go by outside. There is a background cacophony of electronic noises, from patient buzzers to monitoring machines to elevators to televisions. The squeak of rubber soled shoes on linoleum. The rattle of wheeled carts dispensing linens and food and medicine.

The hospice nurse sits beside Mom's bed and writes notes, her back to the window. She is large and beautiful and her compassion shines through dark eyes like a gentle fire. She has bathed and clothed and washed my mother this afternoon, spreading her two-toned hair (auburn and white, so long and silky now) on the pillow to dry.

Mom is less responsive than I’ve seen her so far. Her heart is beating rapidly but ineffectually. Her blood pressure is almost too low for the monitor to pick up. Her breath is shallow and, every now and then, she takes a deeper breath. There are involuntary tics in her neck and shoulders but her hands are relaxed against the pillows and sheets. She is clean now, clean and dressed. A big change from three weeks ago when she was lying in her own urine and stinking of it, wet and rebellious about wearing clothes or a diaper. Stuttering to form words or sentences, the meaning of them flying from her eyes like birds through a window. The confusion and doubt. The crossed wires in the brain. Now her eyes don’t even flutter, and her mouth hangs freely open, trying to pump a little air into her lungs. She’s on oxygen as well. She no longer urinates. Her legs are sticks and her arms are twigs. Like a tree. Her hair is not leaflike but rather a bird’s nest in the branches.

It is autumn now and winter approaches, the cold deep sleep beneath the snow and ice. Life and heartbeats slow...stop...sleep...

Watching this process, I am as much a spirit as she is, invisible to each other through the membrane of consciousness. I hold her hand and talk to her, but her ears are like thinly pressed shapes of pie dough, and I wonder if she hears me. I’ve tried to say what I think she needs to hear: I love you, we all love you, let go, they’re waiting.

But who is waiting, or where, I don’t really know.