“But—” I argue, thinking of Mom, sitting there in the room in a chair. Mom, more energetic than I’ve seen for weeks. Mom, making what looks to me like a speedy recovery. There’s a spark to her eye, just a dot of light that wasn’t there the last time I looked, days ago when she last opened her eyes. She’d been comatose for days like that; she couldn’t swallow, she couldn’t eat. The doctor said it wouldn’t be long. And now here she is. Clearly he was wrong. Through the doorway I see Mom reach a hand out to nurse Carrie, rub at her throat. She can’t speak. But she’s asking for more ice chips, for a drink. “Look at her. See for yourself. She looks fine.”
“She looks better. But the cancer. The cancer is still there. This happens, Jessie. A death rally, we call it. She will relapse, honey, and likely soon. Maybe hours, maybe days. There’s no way to know for sure, but her body is still deteriorating. The cancer isn’t cured. It’s metastasized to the lungs, the bones. It’s getting worse.”
Which I know. Of course I know. I’ve heard this all before, many times. But looking at Mom now, it can’t be true. It’s like she’s had this surge of brain power and awareness. Like she’s come back from the dead.
And then I understand.
Terminal lucidity. As imminent a sign of death as any. The final blessing I’d been hoping for. Five more lucid moments with Mom. That’s all I asked for. And here they are.
*
The nurse graciously turns off the machine as it flatlines. I wonder if she always does that, if her hand shoots there automatically the moment a patient dies so their beloved family members don’t have to hear the damn thing scream. The ping from my dream has finally gone silent.
Mom’s doctor presses the end of his stethoscope to her chest and we all look to him for guidance, for him to tell us she’s dead, though we already know that she is. Her body lies peacefully on the bed, skin going white, blood draining from it. Already she’s colder and more synthetic feeling than she was before. Her hands and toes unclench; her body goes lax. The doctor speaks. “Time of death,” he says, “Two forty-two.”
And with it comes great relief.
Mom’s battle with cancer is done.
Mom’s death rally lasted a total of three hours and fourteen minutes. For some of it she sat up with me in the chair, while Aaron watched from the corner of the room. He thought he should leave, that Mom and I should have this time together, but I asked him to stay. I did most of the talking. Mom could talk once she warmed up to it, but talking didn’t come with ease.
I spent the time trying not to cry. But then, when I couldn’t hold it in any longer, I sobbed, gulping down air and choking on it. Because there were things that needed to be said and I didn’t have much time left. If I didn’t say them, I’d regret it forever, for the rest of my life. “I don’t know who I am without you,” I confessed. “I’m no one without you.” And though I didn’t say it aloud, I thought to myself that I’m vapor without Mom around. I’m nothing. A nonentity. A rock, a clock, a can of baked beans.
Mom stroked my hand as she did the day she told me she was dying. Caressed my fingers one at a time, and forced a smile that was as sad as mine.
“You’re you,” she said. “The one and only Jessie Sloane,” as she stroked my arm with an anemic hand, the white flesh darkened here and there with bruise-like marks.
I squeezed into the same chair beside her, as if I was still a little girl. I don’t know how we fit, but somehow we did. We sat like that for a while. As we did, one of my earliest memories returned to me, one of the few that hadn’t been lost to time. In it, I’m about five years old. It’s the middle of the night when Mom comes to me in my room. I’m sound asleep when she kneels on the floor beside my bed, whispering into an ear, Jessie, honey. Wake up.
And I do.
She helps me get dressed. Not fully dressed, but instead we slip a sweater over my nightgown, a pair of leggings beneath its hem. Socks and shoes. I follow her out the front door and into the blackness of night, asking at least a gazillion times where we’re going, though all she ever says is You’ll see. We walk hand and hand down the street.
There’s a rare giddiness about Mom in that moment. A frivolity. She isn’t restrained as she often is, but instead is playful and bright. We only walk as far as the home next door, but for me it seems an incredible adventure, some sort of magical, midnight escapade. We have to walk to the far side of the Hendersons’ home where the gate is, cutting through their lawn as we go. Mom stands on tiptoes—her feet, I realize only then, are bare—to unlatch the gate, pushing it slowly open so it doesn’t squeak.
Where are we going? I ask, and she says, You’ll see.
We creep through the grass to a tree at the center of the backyard. A tall tree, sky-high, as high as my five-year-old eyes can see. Though it’s too dark to see, I’m pretty sure the crown of the tree stretches clear into the clouds. There’s a swing hanging there from one of the tree’s branches, just a slab of wood with a thick rope that’s looped through holes on each side. Mom tells me to hop on and at first I resist, thinking we can’t possibly ride on the Hendersons’ tree swing without asking. But Mom’s face is radiant, her smile wide.
She sits down on the wood herself, pats the thighs of her pants. She tells me again to hop on, only this time she means on her lap. And I do.
I scramble awkwardly on, Mom hitching an arm around my stomach to help hoist me up. I sit on her lap, leaning back and into her as she gets set to launch us from the ground. Mom holds onto the rope with a single hand, the other folded around my belly. She walks backward as far as her bare feet can reach and then all at once, she lifts her feet from the earth and, just like that, we fly.
“Do you remember,” I asked, snuggled there beside her on the hospital chair, “the time we broke into the Hendersons’ backyard and snuck a ride on their tree swing?”
For as long as I live, I’ll never forget the smile that bloomed on her face right then. She closed her eyes, reveling in the moment. The memory of the two of us nestled together on that tree swing. “It was the best night of my life,” I said.
Shortly after the memory left, Mom got tired. The nurses and I helped her back to bed. Minutes later, Mom fell asleep. She drifted back into some sort of minimally conscious state and passed away two hours later with me there at her side.
*
It’s only after the funeral director comes to collect Mom’s body that I finally rise from the chair. The room is remarkably quiet. No music playing, no familiar sound of the EKG.
The only sounds I hear now come from down the hall where other people lie dying.
Before he leaves, Aaron asks if I’ll be all right and I tell him that I will. “I may not be your father,” he says, “but it would mean the world to me if I could be your friend,” and I tell him that I’d like that very much. He goes, and after he does, I see the nurse has already begun to strip the sheets from Mom’s bed. Soon another patient will be here, another family surrounding them, watching as they die.
“Where are you going to go?” she asks, and I shrug and say stupidly, “Coffee,” because nothing else comes to mind.
Beyond that, I have no idea where to go, what to do with my life.
But there’s a part of me that thinks I can figure this out in time.
I try to reconstruct the dream. As I move down the bright, buzzing hospital halls, I try to piece it back together. But dreams have a way of fading fast, the mind a habit of deleting nonessential things. It’s as if there’s a fifty-piece puzzle before me and I’m missing all but five pieces. I’ve lost forty-five and only some of them connect. I remember only squirrels. Hot dogs. A hippopotamus. But I don’t know what any of it means.
It’s only as I cut through the hospital lobby, passing by the cafeteria, that I’m struck with the sudden sense that something is missing. Something that makes it harder to breathe. I come to a sudden stop and as I do, a body plows into me from behind, making my bag drop to the ground, contents spilling across the hospital floor. Mom’s stuff—her lotion, her ChapStick, her journal—as well as mine. My driver’s license, my credit card, dollar bills.