19. Meredith
MEREDITH
I know before I know.
It’s not dramatic. There’s no collapse, no frantic screaming, no cinematic fall to the floor.
It’s quieter than that, slower than that, something subtle that takes shape at the edge of my awareness without my really wanting to acknowledge its existence.
Then suddenly, it’s sitting right in front of me. Unignorable. Immovable.
Mom doesn’t wake up easily.
She always wakes. Even on bad days, I can coax a smile, a muttered complaint, a joke about my hair, or a mention of how thirsty she is. Often, she asks after Richard. Sometimes, she asks after June and Sophie. Some days, she wonders what I’m doing there. She wonders who I am.
Today, when I say her name, her eyes flutter like moth wings against glass. Her breath is thin, blowing in and out in fragile little sips.
“Mom?” I try again, softer. “Hey. It’s morning.”
I touch her hand. It’s warm, but her fingers don’t curl around mine as they usually do. I wait for the delayed recognition, the slow smile that sometimes comes when her brain finally catches up with her body, but nothing happens.
Just breathing.
I don’t panic, because this thing is still subtle and quiet, still floating around the edges of my subconscious.
I call for Richard.
And it’s funny because he usually has a few barbed comments for me when I ask for his help during my shifts. Not because he doesn’t want to care for Mom, but because he needs an outlet for his grief, and my incompetence is an easy target.
He’s not a complicated guy, truth be told. My tolerance for him is only as encompassing as it is because we both know this truce has an expiry date. But it is funny, by which I mean it’s not funny at all, that when he enters the room, he has nothing to say to me for once.
“We should call the doctor.”
I think he probably knew. I think he knew in a way I hadn’t let myself understand yet.
And I agree, because why wouldn’t I, when he sounds so sure. When Mom’s breathing is what it is.
He makes the call. I sit on the edge of her bed and hold her hand gently, even though her fingers haven’t curled around mine. The living room is quiet and too bright with morning light. The blankets she always insists are too warm are now tucked around her like a cocoon.
Vaguely, I wonder if it’s pneumonia again. I wonder if it’s any other number of things besides what it is. And maybe I do know what’s happening because I find myself brushing her hair back, whispering nonsense.
“I’m here,” I murmur. “We’re okay. You’re okay.”
The paramedics arrive with kind, gentle, and unbearably calm voices. Richard talks to them. I can’t quite bring myself to move, to stand, to let go of her hand. Someone touches my shoulder. I nod without knowing what I’m nodding to.
And then somehow, we’re at the hospital.
Dr. Callahan greets us briefly before turning her attention to her patient. I barely acknowledge her, too focused on taking in every last detail of my mother as she lies in the hospital bed.
I cling to what I can count. The wrinkles around her mouth. The small scar on her knuckle from when she cut herself while slicing a pie when I was a kid. The pattern on Richard’s shirt. The slow, steady beep of the monitor.
Finally, the doctor explains things. But my brain only catches pieces.
The true magnitude of her words only lands when Richard’s hand finds mine.
I didn’t realize I was shaking.
“This happens,” he murmurs to himself more than to me. “This is what they warned us about.”
And suddenly, I remember that conversation. The way the doctor’s voice softened when she spoke about the beginning of the end. I’d nodded. I’d planned. I’d thought I’d prepared.
I hadn’t.
I don’t think you can.
I text my sisters.
June arrives first, breathless as she bursts into the hospital room. I relinquish my seat closest to Mom’s bedside so June can speak with her alone. But as I try to leave, her hand snaps to my wrist in a silent plea for me to stay.
I don’t manage to leave until Sophie arrives with a sullen, pale Trent in tow. It’s almost a relief to step into the corridor to stretch my legs and find some coffee. June follows me like a shadow. For whatever reason, she can’t let me out of her sight.
Eddie arrives at some point, meeting us in the canteen and offering long embraces. There’s no overzealous sympathy from him, just a reliable, practical presence that takes the form of regular food, water, and clothing changes. I would probably be clinging to him if June weren’t clinging to me.
Luckily, his arms are wide enough for both of us.
Roland appears when Eddie returns with extra sweatpants, and it’s the only time all my siblings leave the room en masse. There’s a vague plan for sleeping arrangements and shifts. But that means June and I take a nap in the back of her car, not quite able to face the drive home.
Richard never once leaves the room.
Time bends. We stay. We rotate. We drink bad coffee.
We try to make Trent leave at one point, but he ignores us.
Sometimes Mom stirs. Sometimes her eyes open just enough to see. Sometimes she makes a soft sound that might be a word or might be nothing at all.
Sometimes I swear she knows we’re here.
Conversations fall to whispers. Even laughter, because somehow there is laughter, from muscle memory, from shared history, from that strange instinct to live around death, sounds reverent.
We each say our things.
I don’t do mine right away, not like June, who seems to know it’s there, sitting right in front of her, from the moment she enters the room. She almost crushes the bones in my hand as she does it.
Sophie takes a little longer, and she asks for space to do it. A near-catatonic Richard was her only other witness.
Richard… Richard waits until everyone else is pretending not to listen.
“My girl,” he whispers, voice shaking for the first time. “My brave, stubborn, extraordinary girl.” He presses his forehead to hers.
It’s the first time I’ve truly understood the depth of their love. The years I resented him feel small and irrelevant beside this.
Eventually, it’s just me.
I sit. I take her hand. I breathe with her.
“I was so stupid for so long,” I tell her quietly.
“I left. I built a life and convinced myself I didn’t need this one.
I missed so much. I missed you.” My chest aches.
“But I’m here now. And I’m staying. You don’t have to hold it together anymore.
I’ve got them. I promise.” I place a kiss against her knuckles. “You can rest, Mom.”
The hours after that are softer somehow.
Her breaths slow even further. The lighting shifts toward evening. The world quiets outside the window, the sky softening into pink and blue, then into darker shades.
And then?—
We leave the room together. All of us.
As one, we walk down the corridor, through the building, and out the door. We step into the cool Nantucket air and breathe it deep into our lungs.
There’s nothing in the sky tonight, clouds blotting out the stars and the comfort that comes from phrases like “they’re smiling down at you.” But that’s all right. I’ve always found comfort in that kind of darkness anyway.
The void is never something for us to be scared of, not when we have each other.
For the first time since this started, tears finally come, slow and hot and steady.
June links her arm through mine on one side, and Sophie on the other. Trent is attached to her. We stand together in the parking lot as the night deepens around us, and I realize something that hurts and heals at the same time.
We loved her all the way to the end.