Alone in a Crowded Room

After waiting about ten minutes to ensure that our Hospice nurse’s assessment of my mother was accurate, we dialed 911 and told them of my mother’s death at home. Everyone else seemed to find something to occupy themselves in the minutes before the paramedics arrived:  my sister started making phone calls, my father started picking [...]

Gone

February 13, 1993 My mother shifted under the blankets we had wrapped around her lap and shoulders, a sign that the morphine was wearing off and that she was coming out of that drug induced haze that gave her the only relief from her struggle for air.  I looked over to my sister, who picked [...]

The Will To Live

The look on Paul’s face said everything that I knew but had not allowed myself to think about over the last three days. Paul, the husband of my friend Jewel, was standing at my front door.  It was Friday evening, the darkness spreading early in the cold February night.  My house was loud and bright; [...]

Signs

Febraury 12, 1993 It was the middle of the night. My mother was seated semi upright on the sofa. She couldn’t lay flat any more without the fluids in her lungs overwhelming her into a coughing fit. She sounded asleep; her breathing was now quieter, and more regular than it had been earlier. Her eyes [...]

We Just…Knew

February 11, 1993 I went to work the next day, a Thursday, when my mother had slept through the night uneventfully.  She’d been in good spirits considering the addition of the hospital bed and table and commode. I went to school and waited for the phone call that never came. My old choir teacher (now [...]

Downhill

February 10, 1993 It was four or five in the morning. Dark. Quiet except for the whirr of the oxygen machine in the corner. All of a sudden, I heard my mother rustling on the sofa across the room. She was trying to get up. I popped off of the loveseat where I’d been half [...]

Calla Lilies

“It’s morbid and I really, really don’t want to talk about this,” my brother stated from his perch on the floor of our living room. The Hospice social worker and counselor had both come to our house this evening to meet with my mother and all three of us kids with one goal in mind:  [...]

Movies and Popcorn

Zachary was upstairs for his nap.  It was a quiet, gray Saturday in January, as most of them are in southeastern Michigan. My mother and I were happily curled up on the sofa together, chatting our way through an afternoon of movies in cable.  I’d popped some microwave popcorn and we were sharing the bowl [...]

What In Home Care Looks Like

They set up the oxygen machine near the sofa where my mother always sat.  It was a big, brown behemoth that generated pure oxygen from the regular room air.  The technicians showed me how to change the filter on the back, which needed to be done once a week.  They showed me where the settings [...]