Deep in the bowels of a nursing home lived my adorable little Mommie. In a bed, in a room, at the end of an eternal hallway that smelled like a nightmare. She was adorable, beautiful, delicate. She was funny. The life of the party. Full of surprises. Even in there.
Just a few years earlier, she would look at me with pleading eyes and say “Can you believe this is happening to me?” And I looked back at her. “Oh Mom!” my eyes would say, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry this is happening to you!” This was her greatest fear. This is what she’d always feared and now it was happening, and she knew it. And I couldn’t stop it.
My brother and I took her in at the start of it and tried to keep her on the surface. We knew that if she lived alone or in a home, she would slowly disappear. We had to keep her with us for as long as possible. That turned out to be over five years. They call it the Long Goodbye. It’s sort of an understatement. It’s lots of goodbyes. Little deaths. The end of things. One day she stopped crying and never cried again. No more emotion from an emotionally sensitive woman, whose mouth formed a little “beak” when she weeped. It was endearing and we loved it and it ended. There were a million of these. A million. Can you get that?
These were the last days. I knew it. I fought it, but I knew it. I would go through the maze of freeways to get to her, dreading it, longing for it, and then once there, I couldn’t wait to go home and just as intensely hated to leave. Just one more kiss. Just one more smile. Just one more cuddle. Just. One. More.
One day stands out forever. Valentine’s Day. One week after she had a seizure, she’d been sleeping ever since. Eyes squeezed shut, not a sign of them under there. Sound asleep. Sound. I stare at her—still deep in sleep. My eighty-six-year-old Mommie.
I kiss her salty face, and run my hand through her stunning white hair. I softly put my fingers into her hairline and stare at her features, lingering, memorizing them. Rosebud mouth, perfectly tiny nose, milky wrinkled skin, furrowed brow; even in sleep, her brow is frowning. Her thirsty lips purse and part, purse and part.
I could sit here forever watching every move, every twitch. I am a breath away from her. I can see her blink underneath her closed eyelids. I lean in to kiss her and put my arms underneath her, enveloping her, wanting her to feel the warmth of my body and hear my voice, my love. If I time it just right, she’ll answer my questions with an “Uh-huh” or a “Yeah,” and sometimes she’ll nod her head. Every single one of these is a treasure. I grab them and shove them deep into my memory.
And then today ...
The eyes that have been squeezed shut for weeks. Opened. Just like that. Green and full of meaning and astonishing to see again, and looking at me, actually seeing me. I took a breath—and in that moment, she smiled. Oh, my Mom knows me! She knows me! She even pursed her sweet lips together to kiss me. Oh, Mom. And then she did the most amazing thing.
She said my name.
