Night stand. Boxes. Folded sheets. I felt like I was waking up, when I realized that I was sitting there beside you, sipping sweet tea the nurse gave me. Everything was pastel blues and pinks and smelled like baby powder. I wasn't sure of the date, and the room was still, careful not to wake you. Then it returned. February 23. Night. Right. Sick. Right.
It was funny, because Ken and Naoko had been down a week or so before. He said you were hanging in there. I got regular updates while I got up, went to work, and pretended like you weren't dying, pretended like my mother wasn't dying. My show went on, and I felt helpless, Mom. It was like listening to a scary story, where there's nothing you can do, but let it be told so it can end.
Wauuuuk. Pshhhhhhhhh, the sound breathed for you, pooling like fog into the hallway. It looped like a toy factory. Moving to Mississippi, then El Paso, meeting Dad in the boarding house, back to TN, to spending your final days not one mile from where you were born at Aunt Ellen's place, to standing by Dad through his drinking and depression, and now this little trinket - smaller than a bread basket - was the only thing between you and the ned. Two boys and 3 miscarriages (that would have made five boys, what you always wanted). It seemed wrong. It should take more to keep someone like you going. I know you know what I mean.
Well, right after they returned home, it happened. I remember the facility kept cycling through sad couplets like "vacant stare," "no food," energy fading." More and more discussions were filled with strokes and heart attacks and how the hell somebody could have survived both at the same time. Thank goodness Bobbie Sue was staying with you that night. You were right all those times. You are a tough old bird. Not 24 hours after Ken and Naoko returned home, we hit the road and drove down straight through hyperspace snow and the hundred shades of southern sunset, hoping we wouldn't hit Coffee County after you left it. Shelly and I drove as fast we could in that weather hating the ping on our phones every time the facility or my brother would send an update. I remember just one "You'll want to hurry. Her lips are to turning blue." And we were still an hour out. I rolled down the window and let the air take my breath instead of screaming. A body does what it can. It holds on for closure. It bullets through the night asking favors of God. Sometimes it tries to cheat time for just one more round.
to be continued...
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