By Annie Sheppard
Monday Evening, Room 204
My mother, Pat, went down, we are told, like a tree. Amy, the med-tech, said “face-plant” and now face-plant is in my head, stuck. According to the hospice doctor, the bruising around her eyes—called raccooning— indicates a skull fracture in addition to the broken nose. If so, there’s probably bleeding inside her head somewhere. Later tonight I’ll Google “raccooning, skull fracture” and learn the terms “basilar fracture” and “cerebrospinal fluid,” but that hasn’t happened yet so I’m sitting here now in the memory care facility with face-plant on repeat inside my head. My sister Celia has gone home, finally.
Do I stay the night? Sleep in my mother’s old blue recliner, the one that won’t stay reclined? Celia, who has twice lived in her Chevy Aveo, would stay the night. She would sleep in this shitty chair and call herself lucky.
Tuesday Morning, Home
The answer is no—I didn’t stay the night. Other than asking Amy to increase the safety checks, I left my mother to her fate, which may include rolling out of bed. Poor old Pat, victim of dementia and gravity, abandoned by her supposed loved ones once again, left in the care of an overworked staff and a fall mat—and, okay, God, maybe.
As I left, I imagined a bubble of light around her body, and let me just say that it is not contradictory to cast an imaginary light-bubble around my mother to keep her safe and to simultaneously hope with a grave and earnest ferocity that she will die, the sooner the better.
Eighty-seven years old, high on morphine, she kissed my hand. Raccoon eyes, crumbs of dried blood lingering on her nostrils, upper lip swollen like Marge Simpson, my mother is suddenly loving. My father did the same, a few days before he died: kissed my hand. It’s my regal bearing, I guess. My queenly presence.
Or, dying, it’s all they have: a small but potent symbol of a larger affection, withheld but real, so I take their kisses for the gems they are, their last gifts to me, and in turn I hug my own children and tell them maybe too often that I love them, not wishing them to live uncertain.
Wednesday Afternoon, Room 204
Celia’s daughter Kate flew in this morning from Irvine. I picture her flapping and soaring. Now she sits by my mother’s bed, leans in, and says loudly, “You can go now, Grandma. You are free to go.” She has issues with my sister that I’m not privy to, as all the daughters I’ve ever known have issues with their mothers.
My mother’s condition remains uncertain. She sleeps most of the time. When offered food, she shakes her head no. When open, her eyes are glassy; pale blue lakes with contracted pupils. She communicates in nods and blinks mostly, though sometimes she says “Yeah” agreeably, like she’s answering someone off camera who’s just suggested a day trip to the coast.
She smells yeasty, like there’s infection brewing. This is promising. On hospice, infection often equals exit.
Twice since her fall, though, just to keep us guessing, she’s popped up out of bed unassisted and strolled down to the dining room. So says Amy, anyway; I haven’t witnessed it. I’ve seen a lot of sleeping. I’ve seen a frail old woman with a mangled face wearing Depends and a T-shirt who, during rare moments of wakefulness, struggles to rise from prone to standing, cannot walk without support, and wants to sit down again ASAP. If she’s popping up and tooling around, that’s an on/off switch I haven’t seen tripped.
On the first day after the fall, we asked the hospice doctor, “Is she dying?” and he said, “Yeah, it’s likely. This could be the, um, terminal event.” Today, the fourth day, when we asked, “Is she dying?” the nurse said, “Maybe?”
We both took the week off, Celia and I. But we can’t take another week off, and another, indefinitely. Neither of us holds that kind of job.
I fish my cool depths for compassion. My mother did not consciously choose to face-plant, but this is too familiar, too like crises past, real or manufactured, employed like shiny lures; Celia in those years living distant and fragile, scraping by or on the streets. I felt hooked, obligated. If not me, who?
Pat created her own loneliness, then failed to acknowledge it. She did not call to say I’ve somehow alienated all my friends, all my husbands and lovers, all my family. Please come, I’m lonely.
No, it was My Christmas tree fell over. I have a flat tire. My heart is racing. I think I’m having a heart attack.
And now this: I fell and broke my face. Stay with me while I think about dying. Stay, while I make up my mind.
My friend Pam’s mother died, and Pam dreamed that her mother reached back from the other side, hand through a portal, grabbed Pam, and pulled her through. We performed a ritual against this, Pam and I and our friend Polly, a trio of temporary witches. Closed the portal.
Thursday Afternoon, Room 204
Tara, today’s hospice nurse, says, “You should be prepared. She hasn’t eaten in five days. She won’t last without eating.”
Remember that loving moment when she kissed my hand? That was nothing. She just did the same to Tara, kiss-kiss on the hand. “Oh, that’s sweet,” Tara said, but it’s not sweet. It’s just Pat’s MO: kisses or barbs, the gestures independent of the receiver. Anyone is as good as anyone else. There is no cherished being on the other end, only someone who will meet her needs or someone who will not, and you, both bitter and hungry for affection, are either a resource or you’re selfish.
“You can walk away,” my niece says, as if I’m a child. “Just leave it to her. She’ll pass whether you’re here or not.”
They’re parked here, Kate and Celia; a mother/daughter vortex, emoting away. I suggest they take turns. They could take breaks, grab a nap or a meal. They agree it’s a good idea but don’t act on it. They’ll stay put, turning memories like compost, making deathbed speeches.
I tell them I want time alone with Pat tonight, knowing they can’t say no. I’m invoking a sacred privilege: loving daughter, private farewell. In truth I have nothing to say to my mother. I just want them to leave.
Thursday Evening, Room 204
They’re gone. The room is quiet if you don’t count the sound of Family Feud in the lounge and the call signal, boinging every few minutes, button pushed by a resident across the hall who forgets he’s pushed the button twenty times already.
My mother snores gently. I open my notebook and sketch her sleeping. I skim emails, scan the news feed on my phone, play Happy Color. My back hurts.
When we moved her in two years ago, Pat owned a table lamp—ornate and heavy, a fancy lamp freely chosen by an elderly but independent woman who also owned sofas and appliances, a home and a car. We sold her condo and car to finance this last residence, but we kept some things too: Pat arrived in memory care with books and art, the lamp and chair, her own clothing and bedding.
That’s all gone now, victim of Pat herself. She’s a “shopper.” It’s a dementia thing. They fixate on objects, the shoppers, gathering stuff as wind gathers leaves, then swirling them on, hither and yon. Until last Saturday, Pat spent hours each day shifting objects around in her room, roaming other rooms and helping herself to other belongings, then back to her own room again to arrange her haul. An hour or day might pass in stasis, then she’d move it all out again, like she’d changed her mind or had somewhere better to be. Her art and books, her lamp, most of her clothing, her photo of Stu—fourth husband, deceased—vanished. Unfamiliar books appeared, sitting flat on the windowsill. Photos of a stranger’s family might hang on the wall for a few days then disappear again. Unfamiliar sheets and throw pillows appeared on her bed, stolen blankets piled on like she lived in an Arctic cabin instead of a centrally heated care facility in Western Oregon. On any given day she might be wearing her own black yoga pants, a stranger’s sparkly disco pants, or oversized sweats worn inside-out; these items either swiped from other rooms or supplied by the staff out of their bottomless communal closet. At first, we tried to return stolen belongings, track down missing paintings, find our mother’s own pants and sheets, but after awhile we got the message: no one here really owns anything. Everything in memory care belongs to the community. It just swirls around, drifting from room to room.
She’s got nothing left, Pat. She’s a passenger now, waiting for the train, on her way to somewhere else.
Anyway, having shopped away her only lamp, the light in Room 204 had devolved. It was all or nothing, either full dark or blazing down from a painfully bright ceiling fixture. But light is important, right? In our most significant moments, while making love or enduring illness, while birthing or nursing or dying, light should be kind. What light there is should shine low and loving from the gentlest of sources. Firelight is excellent and not possible here. Candles are risky, too, so today I brought a lamp from home, an old gooseneck with a 15-watt bulb. It’s on the shelf behind me now, light pointed downward, low and warm. Tomorrow I’ll bring a candle, too; one of those battery-powered fake ones so I don’t burn the facility down. I’ll bring a photo of Pat when she was young; ripe and fresh, a fuckable melon, trading her beauty for safety. What traps she walked into, unknowing.
The embellishments are for me. She won’t notice.
To buy this solitude, I misled my family, implying final words. Do I have final words? Any wishes or regrets? I do not. I’ve been practicing what to say if someone asks me how I’m doing: twenty percent grief, eighty percent relief, but that’s only a script. I don’t feel relief or grief. I don’t feel anything.
Later, at Home
I review the drawing I made of my mother, sleeping and/or dying in her new bed. Years ago, I volunteered for the same hospice whose team now cares for Pat. I was too shy to ask back then, but I longed to draw the dying, to paint their portraits: Lucy on Her Deathbed. Wallace on His Deathbed.
Pat on Her Deathbed. I intend to draw her again. In my first attempt, she looks younger than she is, as if superimposed upon by a younger version of herself.
Sunday Evening, Room 204
Pat’s still with us, no end in sight. Kate left today and Celia, exhausted, has gone home to bed. I’m tired too. I had a full day. I washed clothes and dishes, soaked beans for soup, discussed Meaning of Life with my husband Henry, exchanged texts with Celia regarding State of Mother, caught the Sussex hen and murdered her, and went for a walk in the falling leaves and drizzle.
Okay, about the hen. She was old and no longer laying. She suffered a persistent case of fowl lice that defied our remedies. She was an escape artist too—always out, scratching up the neighbor’s garden, leading the other hens astray. She led the entire flock out last week. We shooed them back into the run and blocked the gap under the gate, but the Sussex continued to slip out daily through some mysterious chicken portal. We’d discussed culling two or three of the older hens anyway but of course we don’t relish murdering hens, so had been passive and indecisive while also complaining bitterly about what a pain in the ass the Sussex had become. Finally we agreed that if we laid our hands on her, we would do the deed. This morning I did lay my hands on her as she exited the coop, but I was still in my pajamas and wasn’t psyched up yet for a killing. Later, though, I went outside and there she was, escaped again. Enough. We netted her. I held her upside-down, which usually puts a hen into a hypnotic state, but she wouldn’t go under. She kept stretching her neck, flapping and squawking. Henry looked unhappy holding the ax and the hen seemed upset by my vibe, so I said, “Do you want to switch?” and Henry said, “Yeah.” I took the ax and he took the hen. She settled instantly. Henry laid her on the chopping block and I swung the ax. It’s always quick. Her body twitched and her beak opened and closed a couple of times but that is only the ebbing of the life force, not a living thing still living.
We don’t like killing and we have to do it sometimes. Recently I had to kill a wasp that got in the path of the paintbrush while I was repainting my writing shed. The wasp, body and wings coated in wet gray paint, fell out of sight. Later, I accidentally leaned against it and it stung my leg. I didn’t kill it because it stung me, though. It would have died anyway, too slowly. I was being merciful.
Now my mother lies in limbo, neither living nor dying. She hasn’t eaten in over a week. I don’t know what she’s living on. Fat reserves, I guess, and stubbornness.
Midnight, Room 204
And—she’s awake. She sits at the edge of the bed. She touches her eyelid and twitches her hand away, touches and twitches away, again and again, there in a borrowed or stolen Nirvana T-shirt and adult diaper, looking blue-eyed and bewildered, so simple and small. I take her photo for the portrait I will paint someday and her ancient beauty shines through the old bruised skin. I sit beside her. “You are a beautiful woman, Pat,” I say, and she lays her head on my shoulder. I hold her hand. I forget about the time she predicted she would outlive me, the time she said my house looked dreary, the times she feigned ignorance while her second husband, my father, chased little girls.
It’s not forgiveness; it’s something else. She’s lost all the false skins and faces, and if she had them to hand she would no longer use them, the self stripped bare and honest. “I’m afraid,” she says, and I say, “I know.” She squeezes my hand. She tilts over sideways and lays her head on the pillow and I tuck her in like a child and as she goes to sleep, I think Oh. It looks like I might have to feel something, after all.