In the weeks following the B-cell, non-Hodgkins Lymphoma diagnosis, Mom sat up in the adjustable hospital bed, lucid, and chipper. Except on shower days. She was distraught about contending with her freshly permed hair. Beside herself on how unnatural kinks following a shower and shampoo would spoil her look.

“I should have my hair straight like yours. It would be much easier to take care of.” You did not just say that. After all those humiliating home perms you inflicted on me? After a lifetime of imitating your burden of having splendidly coiffed hair? Obsessing over split-ends, cowlicks, curl flattening humidity, chemically over-processed frizz, butchered cuts, and mismatched dyes from color blind stylists?

I dried her hair and shaped it with the curling iron, watching out so I didn’t brand her neck or singe my fingers. Every day had become Mother’s Day. From the first part of May, when she was admitted to the hospital, to the middle of the month when she transferred to hospice, through the end of June when the night-shift nurse telephoned with the conclusive update, and into July when I picked up her ashes from the funeral home. More than any other, those months were all about her.

~ ~ ~ ~

Mom’s emergency plea came when I was working late at a gallery. It was the first Saturday of the month, earmarked as Art Walk night. The tire kickers who were “only looking” while wolfing snacks and guzzling beverages, were, nevertheless, a priority over incoming personal calls. Once home, I dumped the shoes, changed into non-binding clothes, and listened to her message.

“It’s me. Please call. I need you.”

Shitfuckshit. The desperation and ominous tremor contrasted the unvaried, chirpy voicemail I was anticipating — “Hi, it’s me. Call when you can. Nothing important.” Although past her bedtime, I phoned back, anxious for the details, a little nervous, and intrigued as to why I was needed.

Mom had fallen and couldn’t get up. Same as the awful commercial hawking a dog tag for notifying a rescue provider. I couldn’t stop thinking about a snow-suited Randy in Christmas Story, rocking like a topsy-turvy beetle.

“I’m so weak.”

“Do you want me to come down there?”

“No, it’s late. I’m all right. The neighbor came over and her husband got me up.”

“Are you sure?”

“No, I’ll be all right. I don’t understand why I’m so weak.”

I asked three more times. Seemed like if I was needed a few hours ago my assistance would still be in demand. “Well, call me when you wake up tomorrow. I don’t have to be at work until noon.”

The next morning, I sat around for her impending what’s what. She would have had her toast and juice and I was still waiting. Jittery from the suspense and too much caffeine, I scrolled to her number, pressed the green button, and sucked in a gulp of oxygen. She answered on the fourth ring.

“Why didn’t you call? How long have you been up?” I was irked.

“Oh, I got up to go to the bathroom around eight and fell again. I’m so weak.” It was close to ten-thirty. I was now all irked out with no one to strangle.

“Where are you now?”

“Sitting on the floor. Waiting for the ambulance.”

“YOU’VE BEEN SITTING ON THE FLOOR FOR TWO HOURS? Why didn’t you
call?”

A quick summons to the gallery manager on the drive to Mom’s house freed me from present and future shifts with an obliging, “Take all the time you need.” I now had the flexibility I needed to sit at Mom’s side.

I returned to my house and shoved randomly selected clothes into a suitcase, closed the window blinds, and turned up the AC thermostat to 85. I grouped houseplants on the car floor, in the trunk, and across the backseat. Said farewell to the outside garden plants condemned to death row. Coaxed the tabby out from under the bed with kitty-candy bribes. Wrangled, juggled, and shoved the disgruntled cat into the jumbo pet carrier and moved kit and kaboodle back to my mother’s house.

She’d entered the hospital oncology unit five days before her scheduled journey to Michigan for the summer. Since the demise of her big yellow dog, she was now flying back and forth between Arizona and Michigan. Her airline ticket needed to be cancelled and a refund negotiated. The electric, water, cable, and landline telephone companies had to be notified and advised to close out the vacation rate adjustments and reinstate the basic charges. Before they complied, I jumped through bureaucratic hoops and had my name added to Mom’s accounts as an authorized stand-in. It was imperative to alert the post office to reverse the mail forwarding order. For myself, I created an electronic banking account and online payment capabilities for my credit card and utility bills. Hard telling how long I would be away from home.

~ ~ ~ ~

“I thought this was supposed to be quick.” Mom wasn’t endowed with the virtue for tolerating delays. “I guess I should learn to be more patient.”

Better hurry up, cuz contrary to what you’re thinking, you don’t have a lotta time. I stifled my largely unappreciated offbeat humor in favor of courteousness, civility, and inoffensiveness. At the start, from hospital to hospice, I wrestled my brash tongue, pinned it to the mat and moderated my frustrations.

“You don’t know what it’s like. How scary it is to fall and not be able to do anything about it. Being helpless and stuck in bed.”

Oh yes, I do.

Mom couldn’t equate her current situation to my over-and-done calamity. I was better equipped for summoning empathy, intimate with the crushing frustrations zeroing in on fatigue, weakening stamina, draining resolve, and testing patience. I didn’t remind her of my injuries that left me practically bedridden for six months.

Mom’s declining days progressively outnumbered her better days. As she faded away, I emerged. If I wanted any idea of what she felt, what was going on, what she confronted, I had to cowgirl up and ask. She didn’t offer any information, wouldn’t open up without prodding, and there were things I wanted to know. And I believed there were things she needed to say. Her Ativan-induced relief spoke volumes.

I asked the hospice social worker to intervene and have their clergy attempt to break through the barricade holding in her worry and fright. She wouldn’t have anything to do with the nondenominational vicar.

“I heard you had a visitor today. Was he helpful?”

“Oh, he was nice enough but he’s not my pastor. He doesn’t know me.” Jumpin’ Jesus, like your guy knows you from the other 700 people in the converted grocery store church you go to. The guy who’s shown up once to read a canned prayer to the woman he only knows as the lady in the thirty-third pew on the left. Intimate wasn’t about to become my mother’s thing any more than patience.

Congenitally stubborn, her obstinacy got worse. She refused morphine, the magical mystery tour capable of whisking you away from the bludgeoning of physical suffering and smothering sensation as advancing cancer makes breathing difficult. Hospice advocates comfort for terminally ill patients. Mom, an anesthesiology professional well aware of better living through chemistry, refused to ease the agony. She saw the nurses with pills and syringes of painkillers as Dark Angels of Death.

“I always felt your grandfather was given a morphine overdose by his hospice nurse.”

She groaned and yelped, “Ow, ow, ow,” and panted a modified Lamaze breathing technique as a wave of pain cramped her abdomen.

“Guess what. When you surrender, the bombing stops.” She didn’t say anything. “What are you afraid of?”

“Oh…that you’ll think I gave up.”

“Mom, you’re at the finish line. The race is over. Now’s the time to throw in the towel.”

“Who’ll take care of you?”

“Whoever took care of me?” I snapped. “Sure wasn’t any husband who picked up the loose ends of my life.” We sat in charged silence. The measures of worth she depended on made me feel like a disappointment.

“I’ve done all right. Husbands and dollars aren’t the only way to size up success,” I said. “I used to think I was a loser because my whole life I’ve eked paycheck to paycheck. It took a friend who said, ‘You have such an adventurous life’ for my perspective to change. Look at all I’ve done. I started and ran businesses. Bought and sold a house. And traveled. I’ve been to Mexico, Costa Rica, Switzerland, and Paris. Twice. I’ve sailed on the ocean, kayaked on fast water rivers, hiked the Grand Canyon, top to bottom to top. I lived on an island in the Florida Keys and now, in a mountainous region of Arizona.” It would have been impossible for me to do what I did, encumbered with a crushing corporate career, wifely duties, and juvenile delinquents.

Mom fell asleep and I reflected on obligation. In my brattiest stretch, I squawked about having to go to a funeral for a family friend, more hers and Dad’s than someone I would miss and want to say goodbye to.

“Whether you like it or not, there’s going to be times in life you have to do what you don’t want to.” Mom’s pacification panned out, and yet, I still hate being expected to do something; being told I have to do anything. In that way, I am selfish and intolerant.

Why, I even hate cautionary ding-ding-dings telling me to fasten my seat belt. And those cars with automatic conveyors that move the shoulder strap? I’d disconnect the fuse after blowing mine.

I’ve come to experience that having expectations premeditates resentments. Sitting in the recliner at the side of Mom’s bed with the protective rail, I realized resentment breeds from expectations in both directions.

In her serpentine route, averting direct communication, Mom alluded to the birthday letter and the testimonies from friends and family I gave Dad when he was dying. I sensed she wanted the same. Wanted reassurance she meant something to me and to others. I couldn’t do it. That was my gift to Dad. My gift to her was presence and implementing the doing-ness skills I acquired from her.

I dealt with mind-numbing corporate policies and rearranged her accounts. When she could no longer shower and had to have sponge baths in bed, I arbitrated a way for her hair to be washed and carried on as her stylist. Adding to what she already had, I bought extra nightgowns so she would always have something fresh to wear. Kept her looking rosy and feeling attractive, under the circumstances.

We watched Dancing With The Stars and ate gooey slices from a take-n-bake pizza I cooked in the hospice kitchen. I stepped and fetched ice chips, chocolates, and nurses. Posed as handmaiden to her Princess Babby demands. Watered the sympathy flower arrangements, opened the window blinds, shut the blinds, turned on the bedside light, answered her ringing phone. Brought a family portrait and her bible from the house. Took a picture of the pearl necklace and showed it to her so she would stop inexplicably obsessing about its existence.

A longtime friend of Mom’s — from nurses’ training, bridesmaids in weddings, raising families in the same neighborhood, career upgrades to nurse anesthetists, and snowbird retirement in Arizona — offered to pitch in any way she could. I asked if she’d field the telephone calls, keep everyone posted, and tell the well-wishers to send cards.

“Look at all these get well cards. How am I ever going to thank all these people?” “You don’t have to Mom. It’s their way of thanking you.” My mother mailed

thoughtful birthday, sympathy, anniversary, and holiday greetings to friends, family, and random acquaintances, taking the time to choose the perfect prewritten sentiments that conveyed what she couldn’t express herself. It was now her turn to feel important.

I conspired with the nurses and a player in one of her bridge game foursomes. The staff set up a card table in a small meeting room, made certain Mom was comfortable in her wheelchair, and disguised the catheter bag. The bridge club ladies spent an entertaining day engrossed in a complicated card game I never cottoned to.

There were no heartfelt testimonies of admiration and appreciation between us, only polite “Love you” and “Love you back” performances. Mom couldn’t thank me for what I did. As long as she held on to what she wanted from me, a written list like Dad’s, she couldn’t see I was giving her the very thing she desired. I cared for her and she wasn’t alone. And my need to be recognized for being considerate, for doing the right thing, for outside validation, was becoming less important. There was nothing to prove to anyone anymore. Did I act from love or out of duty? Isn’t it the same on an elementary scale? It’s what she did for me.

Watching and waiting, drawn into the dying process tacitly brought trueness to light from other life lessons.

Strong and in control is exhausting.

Don’t waste a short existence with self-pity. Make each day worthwhile, one at a time.

Acceptance is not settling. It’s preferring what occurs.

Contentment is not the fulfillment of what I want. It comes from the realization of what I already have.

Bestow goodwill generously, and receive freely. By pardoning, come to be pardoned.

Forgiveness does not require the forgiven be sober, conscious, present, or alive.

Don’t argue with a demented patient. The wacky things they see, and say, are moments of truth from a misfiring brain. Who am I to question their reality and add to the confusion? When Mom said, “I feel like a bag of tumbleweeds,” I nodded like I knew exactly what she meant.

Withholding information to divert worry conversely causes worriment. Better the devil I’m aware of than whistling in the dark.

Walking in someone else’s shoes gives you blisters. A healthy emotional connection negates neediness. A mother is only as happy as her saddest child.

~ ~ ~ ~

I transported a slow-growing Lignum vitae tree, planted in a clay pot, from Florida to Arizona. With close attention, nurturing, safekeeping, and mindfulness, the dwarf tree branched out in the harsh environment. The roots took hold and it was maturing. Lignum vitae is Latin for “wood of life.” I moved the bonsai tree to Mom’s, and as she weakened, the leaves withered and fell from the slender boughs. The tree known for having an extraordinary combination of strength, durability, and density, perished as my mother died.

– Karen Bowers