48
When I opened the door to my mother’s hospital room, I had no trace of a pulse. With the doctor behind me and a nurse in the corner, I stayed in the doorway for what could have been an eternity. There she was. Her face was bruised, cut, bandaged, mangled. I waited to make sure she wasn’t going to move. I almost expected her body to rise up out of the bed and go skyward, out of sight. And it’s true that no son should see his mother like this. The world had taken the single most beautiful thing it had ever created and destroyed it. All the rest of us were allowed to beat on. How could this be? How could everything keep moving as if nothing had happened? How could this be the plan? If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I never would have believed it to be true. My mother was gone. The angel song had finished. Ma, seeing you in that hospital bed was the worst thing I’ve ever done.
I walked toward her and stood, quiet. It was the first truth I knew that she didn’t. For the first time in my life, I had the irrefutable secret knowledge that she was never privy to. But I was too late. I could no longer share it. I couldn’t save her. If only I could have called her that night and said.
“Ma, there’s a conspiracy against you.”
The blood was gone from her face. It made me ill, beyond repair. Was this in the stars, written? Why had God taken her? I hated the red streaks, the indents across her nose and cheeks. How dare anything maim her in this way? And to think she didn’t even die with the impact.
Ma, what were your last thoughts? Who were you whispering to when it mattered most? Ma, how much pain? Did you think of me? Did you wish I was there?
I reached down and I took her lifeless hand, devoid of strength but still hers. None of her fingers were broken, somehow her whole hand was intact. If I blinked my eyes closed and prayed hard enough, would she come back? With faith like a mustard seed. Ma, how has this happened? You were your savior’s favorite, were you not? It didn’t make sense. Can we ever go back? Ma, I’d trade my life to reverse the whole order. I don’t need much, I’ll give it all up, if we could be in the waterparks together again. If we could share a lunch and I could see you laugh.
Forever.
The word was rattling around in my head like a bomb. There would be no more crosses. No more dinners and praying hands. I would have no more late-night phone calls where you checked on me softly, without Dad knowing. It’s true we were the best of friends. The best. And I loved you like I would love no other. So, forever? How could it be? Would you not be around? Where then? Where would you stay? How can I leave you, motionless in dirt?
I leaned down and I kissed her cold forehead. I drew a cross there too. There was nothing I could do, in the end, in the end. It happened. Things were dead and done.
I forgot the doctors were there. I had the idea of taking her body and running out of the hospital. I would go out to the country and bury us together. We could have that, at least. I didn’t need to move on. What was there, in that vast, empty country? Was there anything, if not your voice and spirit? Ma, where will I go? Where can I run? Even in foreign nations I’d imagine myself rallying against the all-knowing finality of your death.
I want to climb in the bed and become small. I want to curl into a ball and nestle in your arms. Hidden and crying and clutching. Bury me with my mother. The blankets she wore did nothing for her now but shield the air from her body, now turned off for all time. What a crime. What a devastated life it is, Ma.
I love you.
I take another couple steps back and am finished in a way I never knew was possible. It felt as if my ribs had ripped through my chest. I knew I could never rebuild. I could never retry. There were things that happened in life that stopped the clock. Once you lost it, there was no getting it back. It was immediate, mechanical, final.
There was nothing spinning in my heart. My soul was sinking to an oceanic rock that nobody frequented. Nobody even knew it was there. I was finally alone. It’s true that the human soul knows no bottom, not really. There is always further to go. There is, out there, a never-ending dive. I was riding that loss all the way. I felt the anguish twist in my stomach and I viciously wretched on the hospital floor, all over my shoes and the tile. In my memory, it was red. It was the love in my chest. Crashing to the ground in despair, a suicidal effort. And I think the doctor rushed the nurse to get the mop and put his arms around me but I’m not sure. I don’t remember.
I’m sorry, Ma. I failed.
I took one last look, her brown hair still shining in the white hospital light, and I hated myself, I hated all life.
“I love you Ma. I’m so sorry.”
Agonized, I tumbled out of that chamber. I gagged in the hallway. It was over. I would kill myself in the snow. Brutal and cold and slow. It’s the land of the dead, don’t you know?