Eight hours of holding my mother’s hand, calming her that she was going to be all right, waiting for a catscan, an EKG, bloodwork, chest xrays to be evaluated so that the medical profession could tell me she has cancer, emphysema, heart problems, alzheimer, COPD – something to explain why she has been so confused, stumbling around, dropping objects, vomiting, lethargic – waiting and waiting for the results till at midnight I was curled up on the hospital gurney with her, holding her, hoping for the best when the doctor – a very very handsome young man – comes back finally to sit and talk to us.
Years of alcohol abuse and smoking have caused ministrokes visible like dark spots on her brain, her blood is high octane registering a toxic level of drugs and alcohol, way beyond the legal limit – as the doc said, enough to make a strong young person stumble and drop things, her liver is going to give out, her lungs are giving out, her neuropathy in her feet is a result of chronic drinking.
And my compassionate mother, who drives an hour each day to work to help old people who piss and shit and drool all over themselves, looks at her daughter for forgiveness, but her daughter suddenly cannot muster an ounce of compassion as she watches mom lying on the gurney, on her suicide mission that started somewhere when she was 20 and had five kids (and me about to be born).
In the words of Emily Lou Harris, “Nobody knows when she started her skid, she was only 27 and she had five kids…but there won’t be a mention in the new little world of the life and the death of a red dirt girl…”