Loop

 

My mom hates running, but she jogs around our neighborhood anyway, usually in the evenings, or at least after the neighbor girl Allie has arrived home from a long day of elementary school. Mom noticed Allie watching her running. She has also noticed that Allie doesn’t have a lot of friends. That she has to walk home from the bus stop alone. That the neighbor kids don’t talk to her. And that shit probably reminds her of me. So one day she offered to let Allie run around Chadbourne Drive with her. And now they do just that almost every day.

 

Allie runs fast. She sprints around the 1/2 mile loop, pushing my mom, who usually tries to pace herself for loop after loop after loop.

 

 

Once, Mom and Allie passed a group of the neighbor girls, the ones who don’t ask Allie to play. “Wow, look how fast Allie is!” One of them said. And Allie smiled big.

 

 

I felt a lot of things when my mom told me that story. First I was really proud of her. She’s giving Allie confidence, igniting a passion for discipline and athletics, and something very important to the Passell family. She’s giving her friendship and revealing something about Allie for Allie. It reminds me of what she gave me when I was little. She loved me so hard I was the happiest, most confident girl alive. I see how school shootings happen—those kids don’t have a mom like mine dancing with them, letting them skip school once a year to go Christmas shopping with her, making nachos with them, polka-ing with them. She still makes me feel like a million dollars. I call her every day. She reminds me that life is good and fun, and that with her support, I can do anything and that nothing is the end of the world. Knowing that she has my back no matter what has made my life easy. All I want to do in my life is hug and kiss her all day long. You get me?

 

 

But after some more thinking, I just felt really pissed off. Allie, that lucky bitch. She gets to run with my mom whenever she wants. What a whore I hate her.

 

 

Then I remembered that my mom is a teacher. A beloved teacher. She teaches English as a Second Language to refugees in Akron, Ohio. And when I went to school with her, I thought she was going to be mauled by her students they loved her so much. She played games with them and made them laugh, sing and dance. She gave them presents. They brought her presents. She made them feel good and smart. She set two of them who were from the same small city in China on a date, and now they are inseparably in love and have been dating for a year. (They had better name their first child Cheri Junior, girl or boy.) They brought her food. One of them picked her up in a sweet embrace when she entered the classroom.

 

 

And that made me realize that my mom is the slutty one. Running with other little girls, hanging out with other people, teaching them things, giving them presents, hugging them. Goddamit Mom, move to New York City already. I want you all to myself.

 

 

Seriously. You are the best.

 

 

This week is a special one. Mother’s Day is Sunday, and because it is one of my favorite holidays I’m running six stories about mothers. How can you limit love for moms in only three stories? So please enjoy the shit out of Motherhood: Not Fucking Up, So Far by Jess Dukes, Mother Stalker by Natalie Powers, That’s What She Said by Eric Emch, The Car Ride by Alexandra Miller, Bonus Moms by Cheri Passell (my awesome mom), and Mom’s Final Words by Jim Ross. Happy Mother’s Day! Then go call your mama.

 

 

 

Love,

Lauren

 

 

 

 

 

Motherhood: Not Fucking Up, So Far

by Jess Dukes

 

 

If I ever win the 100-million-dollar lottery, here are three things that will be true. First, I’ll freak out and splurge on totally useless items. Then, I’ll start hatching plans for all the good I want to do in the world. Ultimately, I won’t fuck it up. This is also how I’ve always felt about having children.

 

 

Let’s start at the beginning. In 2006, CBGB was closing and Hilly Kristal (R.I.P.!) had a historical lineup as his swan song. For Fishbone, my friend Philthy Phil came in town from L.A. and like countless shows before, we elbowed and inched our way up to the stage. Fishbone was Red! Hot!, we were 1 shot of Cuervo away from actual brain damage, and somehow the walls that hold up that shithole didn’t buckle. I went home with bruises including one that crossed my entire rib cage, and my ears rang for days. Seeing Angelo’s bare, sweaty ass (if you don’t know, taking his pants off is a thing with him) in my face…screaming “wackadoo, wackadoo, wackadoo!”…made it all worth it.

 

 

Here’s the scene one week later: I’m sitting with my head in my hands in front of an OBGYN, trying not to cry as I ask exactly how much damage uncountable shots of Cuervo can do to a fertilized egg. Turns out, not much at all! On with the baby-making! And on to see Bad Brains back at CBGB, this time demurely sipping a ginger ale, standing on a chair at a safe distance from the pit.

 

 

When my daughter was born, the first thing she did was pee on a nurse while screaming. (I thought that was very punk rock of her.) When they placed her in my arms, I looked into the face of the first person on earth for whom I would sacrifice my life. After 37 hours of labor, three failed epidurals, and a fully-unconscious C-section, I met my son – the final person I’d be willing to die for. And let’s be clear. This is not a bunch of throwaway hyperbole. If it means saving my either of my kids’ lives, I’ll dive into a tsunami wave, wrestle a gunman, vote for a Republican, or punch a shark. I might just be a mom that, when my kids are older, other kids point at me and whisper, “Don’t mess with her. She’ll swipe a leg.”

 

 

But the love! So much love and laughter! Even in the deepest, most boring black holes of grunt work, I still got this love monkey on my back. One night, when my daughter was a baby, she woke up puking. Out of a dead sleep, I leapt out of bed, held her close—puke squishing all over me—and sang “You Are My Sunshine” until she stopped crying. I cleaned her up first, got her back to sleep, and finally took a shower at three in the morning. Other than my son, there isn’t a single person alive who can get away with that shit.

 

 

Of course, motherhood is bigger than vomit and love songs. It’s certainly more common and more powerful than a tsunami. But it’s not about dying for someone else, it’s about living for someone else. This is something that once seemed as unlikely as having 100-million dollars in the bank. I didn’t think I could do it. And when I realized that my mama did it for me, I named my daughter after her.

 

 

So this Mother’s Day, make a fuss over your mama. Thank her for singing sweet songs while swimming in your puke. Thank her for loving you like no one else ever will. Thank her for just being such a badass. Oh, and hey, you know what’s badass? Getting kicked in the ribs at a Fishbone show! You know what’s badder than badass? Getting kicked in the ribs from the inside.

 

 

 

 

Mother Stalker

by Natalie Powers

 

 

When I was a senior in college, I received two dozen roses on Valentine’s Day with an unsigned note stating simply, “Black Coffee.” The only boy I was seeing at the time had recently broken things off with me, and anyway, I doubted he would have sent me roses since he had never so much as called me his girlfriend and had broken up with me by ceasing to return my phone calls. No, I was pretty sure the flowers were not from him. Then who? The possibility that they had been misdelivered crossed my mind, but then again I DID drink black coffee. Inquiries to the flower shop confirmed the roses were meant for me but were a dead end as far as the identity of the sender. At first, speculating about my secret admirer was a fun way to pass the time. My mom indulged me during telephone calls as I went through the names of possible would-be suitors, and analyzed whether or not I would be inclined to reciprocate their attentions. Yes, at first, it was all very cute and romantic.

 

 

A little background about my living situation at the time: In my junior year, six of us girls moved into an off-campus house, with high expectations of communal dinners, house parties, and camaraderie. By senior year, relations had deteriorated to the point that two of the girls had moved out. Two new roommates were procured, one a girl I had known since freshman year and the other a “townie” guy who worked at the local Rent-a-Center. I spent the first semester of senior year in Italy, and sublet my room to a friend of one of the remaining roommates, who seemed decent enough the one time I met her. Apparently, however, the townie roommate had a temper and a drug habit, and he spent his days nursing 30-racks of cheap beer and his nights carousing with local friends who often ended up back at our place where they continued to party, got into physical altercations with one another, and aggressively hit on any of the female roommates stupid enough to walk in. Meanwhile, my subletter had a drug problem of her own, along with an obnoxious boyfriend and a propensity to forego bathing for weeks at a time, and tensions between her and the other roommates culminated when she clogged the downstairs toilet in a truly disgusting fashion then refused to plunge it or contact a plumber. Enter Natalie back from Italy. By this point, the other girls in the house had wisely begun to use it mainly as a repository for out-of-season clothes and last semester’s schoolbooks, while actually living with their boyfriends elsewhere. So it was me, the townie, and his friends. Thank goodness the door to my bedroom had a lock (because the house did not—or at least, you got yelled at by the non-co-habiting roommates for using it—really, who wanted to be bothered carrying around a key for a house they didn’t even live in just to maybe protect the people who still had to sleep there). Oh, also, a series of burglaries happened around town about that time, though at least they involved laptop theft and were nonviolent. Less reassuring was the murder that had occurred about a year ago in the town’s bad neighborhood, which was about six blocks from the good neighborhood in which our house was located.

 

 

Apologies for the long digression, but I think the foregoing background information makes it somewhat understandable that a couple of days after I received the roses, they began to seem less cute and romantic, and more sinister and creepy. My pleasant game of “who has a crush on me” devolved into one played for survival, seeking to answer “who wants to hunt me down and kill me and is probably watching me at this very moment?” And “black coffee?” Really, what was that?!? Why was I being taunted with my coffee order? Was my stalker a barista?

 

 

Family and friends told me I should take this seriously, and suggested various traps I might set around the house to alert me if someone was trying to get in. The only one who didn’t seem concerned was my mom. So willing to listen when I was happily ticking off guesses as to the identity of my secret admirer, she seemed genuinely uncomfortable and ticked off now that my safety was at stake. Whenever I would bring it up, she would make some impatient, noncommittal response, then change the subject.

 

 

A week or so after the roses first arrived, my aunt telephoned. She had heard about the mysterious delivery, and she had some advice: stop messing around and go to the police; they’ll make the florist divulge the name of this sick pervert. Well, that seemed extreme to me, so I wasn’t sure what to do. Even though my mom had hardly seemed interested in discussing the topic with me up to this point, I decided to make one last attempt to engage her by running this new idea by her. As soon as I explained what my aunt wanted me to do, my mom blurted out, “It was me! I sent the roses!” She went on to explain that she had felt bad for me, being jilted right before Valentine’s Day and all, and she had decided to send me the flowers to distract me and lift my spirits and self-esteem. Black coffee? Well, she never really managed to explain to my satisfaction what drove her decision regarding the content of the note, except that it sounded like a mysterious clue. I can only imagine her range of emotions, as at first, her plan seemed to work, and I was intrigued and tickled, and later, everything went horribly awry, and I was scared and paranoid. She had been trying to do something nice for me, and ungrateful daughter that I was, I repaid her by making her feel like a creep! Of course, she seemed able to bear up okay while I only feared for my life—“I was just waiting for it to blow over.” What got her to confess, in the end, was the prospect of the cops pressing charges against her for stalking. Never mind. The bottom line is, whether he was a secret admirer or a stalker, that rose-sending coffee enthusiast was the invention of a caring and creative mother, who, it should be noted, was more than successful in getting my mind off being single on Valentine’s Day.

 

 

That’s What She Said

 by Eric Emch

 

 

My mother is woman of style and grace. In her lifetime, she has started her own business and been featured as an expert on local television; she has raised three fully-functioning children and given them the skills to survive on their own; she has water-skied, played tennis and golf with impressive skill and finesse. But most of all, she says the funniest shit.

 

 

No one would ever accuse my mother of being unintelligent, but every once in a while her common sense and street smarts are put on hold to create a gold nugget of mom-nonsense. For your pleasure, I have outlined some of her thoughts on a variety of subjects below. Please laugh heartily but judge seldomly. And always remember that her name is Cindy Joy Emch. Not that her name is pertinent to any of this, but I just think that kind of adds to the humor.

 

 

Cindy Joy Emch on common sayings:

One evening while preparing dinner, my mom wanted my younger sister to help her cook some garlic bread and requested “Lauren, come spread the butter.” After no reply from Lauren, she repeated “Come spread it!” My older sister, Betsy, quickly replied with “That’s what she said.” My mother, who has never claimed to be the hippest gal in town, did not understand the joke. Betsy explained that accidental sexual innuendos were often met with the aforementioned quip. After visibly thinking on this for a solid four minutes, my mom loudly and proudly proclaimed “Hey Lauren, come spread the butter SHE SAID!” So close, Cindy Joy. So close.

 

 

Cindy Joy Emch on Helena Bonham Carter:

“I just loved Alice in Wonderland. That Helen Connor Bottom is so talented.”

 

 

Cindy Joy Emch on adult romancing:

When I first moved to New York City, I lived with three college friends in a three bedroom railroad-style apartment. I shared a room with one of my apartment-mates and needless to say, there was not an abundance of privacy. My mother, upon hearing of my tricky living situation, earnestly asked me “But what if you want to have a boy over?” Surprised at her forwardness and concern for my prospective sexual encounters, I asked her if she was condoning my engagement in adult-style sleepovers. She explained that she wasn’t encouraging boys to spend the night, she just wanted to know what the logistics would be of me having a boy over to “listen to music on [my] bed”. Thanks for looking out, mom.

 

 

Cindy Joy Emch on Shia Lebeouf:

“Who was that actor from the movie Holes? Labida Bush? No. LeDouche?”

 

 

Cindy Joy Emch on fine dining:

My mother takes pride in her appearance. She watches her weight and exercises frequently. However, she has on many occasions proved that over all else she is a fat kid at heart. One instance of this is when she was working at her home office one day, and saw a bit of a candy cane on the keyboard. She quickly grabbed the delicious holiday sweet and popped it in her mouth. Except it wasn’t a piece of a candy cane. It was some lint. Also, it was February.

 

 

The second example of her inappropriate interaction with food was one day in the car while running some errands. She popped in the car and noticed a piece of stray chocolate on the front passenger seat (you can see where this is going). Without hesitation, she grabbed the chocolate and brought it to her mouth. Without letting go of the chocolate, she sensed something was off about her new-found cocoa treat and pulled it out of her mouth. Turns out, the chocolate was actually a fly. And it was still alive. Break-it-down-moment: she must have so quickly and desperately grabbed that “chocolate” that a living fly didn’t even have a chance of escape.

 

 

While my mother clearly has some occasional lapses in judgment, she’s a pretty stellar broad. She may not know who Tim Burton is married to or what dating twenty-somethings do when alone in a bedroom, but in my opinion, she is the best (and hungriest) mom there ever was.

 

 

 

The Car Ride

by Alexandra Miller

 

 

I was not going home yet, nosireebob. I was prepared to stay at the bar and drink all night. So I told my brother to leave without me, “tell mom I’ll find a ride home.” Five vodka and cranberry shots later brother came scurrying back to my bar stool with a scared look in his eyes and said, “you need to tell mom yourself.” Okay, sure whatever I didn’t care. I walked outside to the parking lot where a group of old friends and schoolmates stood smoking and I strolled up to my mom’s car window. “Hi mom I’m not going home yet. No.” I was just about to spin around and sprint back inside when suddenly my mom looked up at me with exorcist eyes and said, “YES. YOU.ARE.” Nope, I shook my head. Being home right then just didn’t sound like fun. After all, it was only 2am. The next thing I knew my mom was standing next to me on the parking lot in her bathrobe. I glanced back at the group of smokers and thought—embarrassing. She opened the back door and threw me in, slamming the door behind me. I now looked at the smokers from behind the car window and thought—EMBARRASSING.

 

 

While I was sitting there feeling sorry for myself I suddenly heard the other back door open … what now? It was Jon Korn! The guy I had a crush on for most of high school! A miracle? He sat next to me and smiled drunkenly. “What are you doing in here?” I asked. He burped out, “aren’t we going to a party?” At this point my mom was turning the key in the ignition. She was white knuckling the steering wheel and looking crazier than ever. She slammed down on the gas pedal and I knew this wouldn’t be good.

 

 

“Um Jon you gotta get out… my mom is going nuts and taking me home.” Too late. My mom was peeling out of the parking lot. “HE FIGURED OUT HOW TO GET INTO THIS CAR, NOW HE CAN FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET HIMSELF OUT!” my mom cackled. She had really lost it.

 

 

Normally I’m a fairly well behaved daughter, but the toxic vibrations in the car that night took over me. I looked over at Jon as we zoomed down Main Street and thought about how much I wanted to make out with him and how many more beers I would have to drink to accomplish that. As soon as we got to the first stop sign I grab Jon’s hand, opened my car door and we ran back to the bar. Laughing and hiding behind trees along the way. We ended up getting even drunker, making out and going home at 5am. It was a really fun night.

 

 

The moral of this story is: My mom really loves me and just wants me to be home at a decent hour. Regardless of that fact, I still got to have a really fun night—Thanks mom!

 

 

 

Bonus Moms

by Cheri Passell

 

 

I don’t really know if it takes a village to raise a child but I think that most of the time parents just say that to get out of taking responsibility for their kids’ bad behavior.

 

 

It’s more likely that parents think that no one but them is capable to guide or teach their kids anything. They brag about their kids never having had a babysitter, they homeschool, and they ban even aunts, uncles and grandparents from disciplining their kids.

 

 

My parents gave me and my sisters everything kids need—love, security, and lots of fun—but every Mother’s Day I think of the women that gave me the bonus advantages. If my parents had been like many modern parents and had wanted to keep me to themselves, I would have missed out on Aunt Jean, Grandma Hockenberry, and Mrs. Himes. When I married, I may not have had the confidence to get close to my mother-in-law, Joyce.

 

 

Mrs. Himes probably has no idea that I still think about her; she was a piano teacher and sat next to hundreds of ungrateful kids on the piano bench in her little flat roofed stucco house, but I was different. I was grateful.

 

 

I don’t know if I ever gave her any clue how much I looked forward to my afternoon lessons, every Friday for 9 years. I wasn’t very good, so she probably wasn’t thinking that she’d influenced me greatly. But when I hear classical music I know the composer because she taught me. When I hear Chopin and cry I remember loving it when I was 10 and begging her to for me at the end of my lessons.

 

 

Most of all I remember being really impressed that this ordinary mother of three in our dinky little town in the middle of nowhere could be so talented, and know so much about music. And when she talked about how important music was to her, I realized that it was to me, too. Even though I can’t play the piano very well. I loved trying to. And I really loved it when she was teaching me.

 

 

My Aunt Jean had a lot to do with the mother I am today, and I can clearly remember being very little and wanting to be like her if I ever had kids. Don’t misunderstand me; my mom was great, but Aunt Jean was fun on speed, and I couldn’t get enough of her. In the summer she’d pick me up and take me to her church’s bible school, where she was the teacher that all the kids wanted, the one that put blankets on the floor and gave us magic carpet rides to Bible times. We’d fly over our houses, waving to our moms, out of our town, out of our states, back in time and we’d watch David fight Goliath. It couldn’t have seemed more exciting if it had been actually happening.

 

 

Thinking back, I wonder how Grandma Hockenberry ever put up with me; I followed her everywhere. She was a dairy farmer, and her job started every morning at 4:30 am, so how she still had the energy to have tea parties with me and help me build secret forts in the woods is baffling. I’m quite sure I would have sent me home once in awhile. We made perfume from her roses, pies for my dolls from leftover piecrust, and shelled peas on the side porch. She rarely raised her voice, though sometimes my grandpa got an earful. I remember hearing her swear at him once and I said, “Grandma!” We looked at each other and started to laugh so hard we cried. My biggest regret is that I will never be the woman that she was.

 

 

And just when I thought I was too grown up for a bonus mom, I met Joyce, my husband’s mom. Joyce is a one of a kind and I don’t know what I ever did to deserve her. When other women are complaining about their mothers-in-law I can’t even feign agreement; my mother-in law is COOL. She’s funny and warm, and she treats me like a daughter; plus, she usually takes my side over my husbands’. She’s made me feel like I belonged since before I was married.

 

 

If I’d had only the one mom, great as she was, my life has been richer with the bonus moms. Happy Mother’s Day bonus moms; you know who you are. Or maybe you don’t.

 

 

 

Mom’s Final Words

by Jim Ross

 

 

I inherited mom after dad died. Dad said he had to work both ends of the street to take care of her after a long series of small infarcs was followed by a bigger one that left her confused and with limited mobility. Whether due to the infarcs or the medications they gave her so she would be less confused, she came to believe that her deceased sister and father visited her on a regular basis. Her father had walked out on the family when she was 5 and her sister was 7. As a result, for about 6 years, she and her sister lived with a succession of foster parents. She had fond memories of only one. She complained that they were required to provide them with milk, but most watered it down. Her delusions about visits by her father and sister drove dad crazy. He told her, “Your father never visited you or did anything decent while he was alive. Why do you think he’d visit you now?” But that was precisely why she needed to imagine that he was finally coming to see her. She imagined her sister was coming to visit because they spent those years together being shuttled among foster parents so their mother and grandmother could work 80 to 100 hour weeks as Irish washer women, doing ironing, seeing them only on Sundays.

 

 

Dad died of heart failure trying to get mom into the car to go see a psychiatrist about her harmless delusions. He wanted stronger drugs for her so she would stop being deluded. The reality is, he was the one who needed anti-anxiety meds to tolerate her harmless delusions. After he died, we got her off most of her meds, and in many ways she returned to normal. She still had the delusions, and sometimes was upset when her father or sister didn’t show up as promised, but mostly she was happy. We had to put her in an assisted living facility to care for her 24/7. In many ways, this probably felt like going back in time and living with foster parents. Now and then, she reported that my father snuck in during the night and left before sunrise. I never asked what they did together while he was there, though she probably would have told me. Like nearly all the old ladies, she had recurrent and inescapable problems with urinary tract infections. The best way to detect one was that her thinking became bizarre and distorted when she got one.

 

 

She lasted nearly three years in assisted living, until she was struck with a severe pneumonia. Somehow, she survived the pneumonia. After that, we had to put her in the adjoining nursing home. She not only returned to herself, she became more motivated than ever to re-learn how to walk so she would be able to walk for dad when he returned from his long trip. She said she could hear a train whistle every evening and wondered whether that was dad’s train. One day, she said she thought she saw her parents walking down the hallway together. “Do you think,” she asked me, with an excitement she’d kept under wraps for decades, “that they might finally get back together?”

 

 

One day, she told me that she knew her thinking was bizarre and distorted, and she put her hands down over her crotch to say she needed antibiotics. I told the nurse who left a message that mom needed to be tested, but the nursing home tested the wrong old lady instead of mom. Mom got worse and they finally tested her four days later. They put her on antibiotics, but they were ones to which they knew she was allergic. They also were the wrong kind for this type of infection. A few days later, she was vomiting. They assumed she’d come down with the flu like many of the other people on the unit. In reality, she’d developed a systemic infection, which cascaded into a massive heart attack, but they didn’t figure that out. They monitoring her vitals for two days and claimed they were normal. Then, my nurse daughter and the chief doctor for the nursing home visited her, and her respiration rate was more than twice normal. Immediately, they shipped her to the ER of the nearest hospital. Within a couple of days, I was told there was no chance of recovery, the damage to a heart that had been strong a week ago was too great.

 

 

Mom could never tell a joke. She tended to get to the punch line and lose track of how to bring the joke home. One of our favorite family jokes was about a brother who calls another brother to say that the dog died. The brother hearing this sad news says, “You need to prepare people better for such news. You should have said to me, ‘the dog’s on the roof and we can’t get him down,’ so when you finally told me the dog died, I’d be prepared. Time passes, and the first brother calls the second brother and says, “mom’s on the roof and we can’t get her down” On mom’s second day in the hospital, the nurse asked her their five standard questions to establish that patients are of sound mind. She said mom got four of them, a couple of which most patients don’t answer correctly, but she answered the easiest question incorrectly. When asked, “Where are you?” her answer was, “I’m on the roof.” Mom finally got a punch line right!

 

 

Mom told us it was her time. Rather than send her back to the nursing home, on Valentine’s Day, we brought her home to die. As a result of her heart attack, we knew she likely would die of congestive heart failure. The day we had to bring her home, the area was hit with a monster snow storm that came to be known the St. Valentine’s Day Blizzard. The entire area was immobilized for a week. It took three days for us to get a hospital bed delivered and mom fell out of the bed at least once. It took five hospice five days to get out to our house.

 

 

Spending mom’s last three weeks with her at home, and traveling with her all the way to that moment between life and death, was like nothing I had ever known before. Over and over, she displayed the extraordinary wonder of a child. I heard from an old friend from childhood and she asked, “Why hasn’t he been over to the house lately?” I told her that dad was waiting for her in Bermuda and, after she dies, he’ll be meeting her on the dock. She asked, “How did you swing that?”

 

 

We stayed with mom almost 24/7. I stayed up late and Ginger got up early. We paid attention to her every word and want. She loved it when I put my cold hands on her forehead or behind her neck. One day, she got to see a fox jumping through the snow out the window. At one point, the fox pounced, but either what he was after got away, or wasn’t real. She was excited beyond belief at watching a fox in snow.

 

 

We paid particular attention to what she said. For me, it was important to be aware of whatever became her last words. One day, out of a deep silence, she burst out with, “I don’t even know what a hay is.” I thought about this and realized this outburst was preceded in her mind by the repeated thought, “I don’t give a hay.” She was expressing her resignation, but also acknowledging she didn’t exactly know what she was resigning herself to.

 

 

One night, it was clear that she was smothering due to the congestive heart failure. It is monstrously difficult to watch someone you love more than life dying of congestive heart failure. Mom’s eyes said she wanted me to rescue her, that she wasn’t ready to go this way, or not yet. I called hospice, and told them I wanted to give her some morphine to help her breathe. They asked, “Are you sure? Can’t you just let her go?” and I said no, and gave her the morphine. As the morphine was starting to have an effect, I flipped through the TV channels and by coincidence came to the scene in On Golden Pond in which Henry Fonda’s character is talking about death with his grandson while they are fishing on the pond. Mom waved her arms frantically at the TV to get me to change the damn channel. I turned off the TV. Mom’s breathing normalized and she relaxed. It was 4 a.m. and I got myself a bowl of cereal. I came back into her room and she asked, “What are you eating?” I told her. She asked, “Is the coffee on?” It seemed those would stand as her last words.

 

 

The next day, Ginger and I went out, and left mom with our nurse daughter Emily. They had a good time watching Big Fat Greek Wedding. Mom laughed. Then, she went into another deep silence. Very late Sunday night, in a state of extreme anxiety, she announced, “I am finished.” Those appropriately would have stood as her last words. They reminded me of Jesus’s last words on the cross, though I gather what he actually said was, “it is finished,’ meaning my work is done, not my life.

 

 

The next day, she remained in deep silence all day long. Late that night, I was with her and said, “I don’t know where you are or what you’re doing.” I didn’t expect a response, but suddenly mom’s eyes opened. She had zombie eyes, surrounded on all sides by gray. It looked as if she had returned from the dead. She looked right at me and said, “I am here. I love you.”

 

 

Those stood as mom’s final words. She died two days later. But those last words have stayed with me every moment since. “I am here. I love you” was who she was, as a mother, always here, always ready to love. She’s still here.