For Connie: Part 1
There is no time that feels right to write this.
Mom, I don’t know when I can write about you. So this is a start for me… and also for you.
Ours was a complex and nuanced relationship. Growing up as your middle child, I was (whether appropriately or not) often the sounding board and confidant for you. This is nothing I blame you for now — merely an avenue by which I first discovered interpersonal dynamics, and, when I consider, an alternate route by which to know my father and siblings.
My last two texts to you went unanswered. You were already caught up in morphine and organ failure, but I’d like to think you received and read them. Just tell me you read them.
what is happening
Your hand is already cold when I reach to hold it, though the machines are beeping along merrily. My brother has on a nice navy cardigan, and my dad has been there for several hours. I lost control of my bladder when I entered your ICU room — honestly, Mom, all the tubes and the colour of your face and the COVID gowns and the tears in Dad’s eyes threw me. I am wearing black pants, don’t worry. J is bringing me a change of clothes.
what is happening
A very nice internal medicine specialist has come in to explain your situation. His hands make comforting shapes as he explains how your heart is struggling to cope with everything else that is going on inside your body. He is so NICE, but the Chaplin whom my Dad requests soon afterwards is so PATRONIZING. I know everyone is just doing their job — hopefully doing their best — but I feel like I am on the the comic end of some real-life skit gone wrong.
what is happening
Dad and P dip out for lunch. I am alone with you, Mom, and I feel at once empty and unworthy. Stupidly, blindly reminiscing, all I can think about is a craft I made at Brownies over twenty years ago: a bland wooden cutout, painted and decorated to resemble each of our respective Moms, with the caption: “If mothers were flowers, I would pick you.” This is all I can say right now to my mother lying unresponsive in front of me. That wooden craft still hangs in my parents’ kitchen.
what is happening
