A gentle knock, father’s hum, this was the sign, it was time. The house held its
breath as I made my way out of the boy’s arms and childhood bed, marble stairs
chilling my soles, stairs that bruised shins and braved nightmares, now led to
death. Steps in between worlds. Trying to make sense at
eleven days from nineteen. Not a child, not an adult,
forever the daughter who would say, “I was 18 when my mother died.”
Grasping, yearning for structure, for a step-by-step guide for life.
How to deal with a mother withering away when your life
is meant to start, wanting predictability, sense, ABC, 123, at this premature
juncture not meant for a teenager to wash her mother’s pale body,
kissing her curled-up hands. Hoping for two plus two is four, not dry
lips cracking, pee-pads filling, straws exhausting. Life, give me a map not
morphine dripping into her veins. Is there a recipe for death as I
numbed and soothed the pain that will take years to fade. Calendula cream
on sore elbows that held my childhood. Silence. Breath rasping like torn
paper. Gone. Too late. There, a last gasp, raw, defiant, and then forever
quiet. Life over. Mother. Silence surely eternal. But no. Life kept on lifing,
radios played, bread was baked, cars drove to work, a new life ahead of
step-moms and years of grasping for handed-down wisdom only a mother can
teach. Hours at the edge of the bed speaking to her cooling body. Reciting the
unwritten agreement: “I shall eat, I shall survive, honor life, despite the ache, the
void where a mother should be, through years: 20, 25, 32, 41, 52 hours of labor,
witnessing initiations without you. Life shall continue to birth itself, rainbow
xylophone sounds shall ring as your granddaughter finds her rhythm,
You, Mom, her Oma, alive in every story I shall pass on.” I sat starting at
zero by her silent lungs and I shall forever live wildly and loudly in her name:
Anita.
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