Just months ago after receiving the news, my mother held me in her arms and softly sang, “I Don’t Want to Cry Anymore.” Now, her voice chokes with pain and all the tears in the world are ours.
“Remember, sanctuary is in your mind,” she says.
As she begins her final descent into death, she continues, “Oh, my little love, it IS a real place. Look at me! Where else can I go? I have to believe.”
“But how can I believe?”
“When I get there, I’ll let you know.”
“How?”
“I’ll find a way, I’ll send a sign and let you know. Trust me.”
“What kind of a sign?”
“You’ll know when you receive it.”
Her arms fall to her sides with her hands cupped to heaven. She cries some more. I can’t hug her, crawl next to her, lie on top of her; she is all wrapped up, lymph nodes removed from her armpits, neck, chest—one giant, open wound of a body. I stroke her thin hair as she curses my father and curses my brother for being my father’s son.
“Oh, my little love,” she looks at me with her yellow eyes, “don’t develop any more than you have and don’t listen to male doctors. They know nothing about women and you want to believe they do. They’ll race to take from you what they cannot have themselves. Don’t grow up. Stay a girl, always. Just … stay a girl.”
When the pain crawls back into her, she grimaces and says, “Here we go again.”
In the haze of her morphine personality she says, “It’s like the rain when it freezes and turns to sleet. Nobody likes the rain, but nobody wants the sleet.”
I ask her about snow, if she thought people would prefer snow and she says, “Let’s hope for rain.”
Then, with her bent thumb on the trigger of her relief, she calls out to the ceiling, “I will miss my daughter.”
Slipping into her sanctuary, she looks at what is left of me kneeling at the foot of her hospice bed, “Anna, I won’t miss you always saying, ‘No’ to everything. Always saying, ‘No.’”
I don’t recall ever saying “No” to her about anything, but there is no argument in me.
“I won’t say ‘No’ to you Momma. I will never say ‘No’ to you. I will wait for a sign, hope for rain, never grow up, and never say ‘No’ to you. I promise.”
Then a series of rapid exhalations escape from her lungs. She empties of air and I fall into what’s left of her.
“Momma, no, please … Momma. No!”
Brian P. Katz is a writer, poet, and filmmaker responsible for writing and directing the award winning long-form art film “Roman Buildings,” (https://vimeo.com/105131360). His recent novella, “Underwater Eyes,” was published by Running Wild Press.
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