I though Dad might get angry at that, but instead he said, “It does feel that way. You just have to remember that the way things feel isn’t always the way things are. Mom’s treatments were more painful than helpful. And when she dies her misery will finally be over.”
“I know,” I whispered. “I just don’t really understand any of it.”
“Neither do I,” said Dad.
“The new pain stuff is helping her, though, isn’t it?”
“A little, yes. It buys her time. And there are some things she wants to do.”
My heart leaped. “You mean like places she wants to visit?”
“Oh, honey, no,” said Dad quickly. “The pain medication does nothing more than what you saw it do this afternoon. Take away her pain long enough for her to have conversations or visits with people, or to write a bit. There are a few things she wants to put in order before she dies.”
“Like what?”
“I’m not entirely sure. She has shared some things with me, and she’s chosen to keep others private for now.”
“Is she saying good-bye to people?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.
“Yes.”
“Did she say good-bye to Anne this afternoon?”
“Yes.”
“And to Grandma and Grandad?”
“Yes.”
I nodded. “I thought so.” And somehow I knew, I just knew, that she had not said good-bye to Dawn, even though Dawn had been awfully upset when she left Mom.
“You know, we should be preparing our own good-byes,” said Dad.
“No.”
“I don’t like to think about it either, but I know Mom is preparing her good-byes to us.”
My eyes filled with tears. “No,” I said again.
Dad sighed. “Sunny, I wish I could say to you, ‘Okay, we’ll think about it another time,’ but the truth is that we really don’t have very much time.”
“How much do we have?”
“A day or two, probably. Maybe three.”
Three days is actually more time than I thought we had.
“This is undoubtedly the hardest thing you will ever have to do, Sunny,” said Dad.
I waited for him to say, “But I know it will be fine.” He didn’t, though. He just looked at me.
“How do we prepare our good-byes?” I asked him.
Dad was silent for several moments. “Well, I don’t know exactly,” he said finally. “I guess we think about the things we don’t want left unsaid.”
The things we don’t want left unsaid. What are those? What on earth are those? Mom knows I love her, but I guess I should say so, tell her. What else?
This is what I’m thinking now, but not what I thought as I sat across the table from Dad. I just felt numb then. I don’t think I thought anything. My mind couldn’t even wrap itself around any words. I stared at Dad. Then I stood up and ran out of the kitchen.
I know Dad thought I was mad at him, but I wasn’t. I was consumed by that numbness and didn’t know what to do. I didn’t even know where to go when I left the kitchen. I stepped into the living room, then back out, then into the bathroom, feeling sick, then back out, went to my room, got out the journal, put it back. Finally I returned to the kitchen.
Dad was sitting at the table, in exactly the same position in which I’d left him.
“You’re right,” I said.
6:38 A.M.
Mom is awake downstairs. I can hear Dad and Aunt Morgan moving around, doing morning things. I can smell coffee brewing, the chink of dishes. Another day is starting. This sounds so melodramatic, but I have to ask, Is this Mom’s last day? I wonder: If I knew a particular day were going to be my last day, how would I want that day to go? What would I want to do, see, eat, feel, hear, remember? Mom doesn’t have a lot of choices, but we could still try to make her last days as special as possible.
Last night when I returned to the kitchen I walked around behind Dad’s chair and gave him an awkward hug. Then I said, “I think I’ll sit with Mom now for awhile.”
“Maybe I’ll join you,” said Dad.
Dad and Aunt Morgan and I have been trying to sit with Mom one at a time so as not to overwhelm her, but when Dad and I both entered Mom’s room Aunt Morgan just moved over and made room for me on the bed. Dad sat in the armchair next to the bed.
“How nice,” whispered Mom. “You’re all here.”
“The nurse gave your mom an injection,” Aunt Morgan said to me. “She should be feeling better in a few minutes.”
Sure enough, Mom began to rally, and twenty minutes later the four of us were chatting away.
“Morgan,” said Mom, “tell Sunny what you felt would be an appropriate baby gift when she was born.”
Aunt Morgan and Dad began to laugh. “Oh, no! That was deranged!” cried Aunt Morgan.
“Tell me,” I said. I couldn’t imagine what they were laughing about.
“No!” said Aunt Morgan.
“Okay, then I’ll tell,” said Mom. “Sunny, two days after you were born, your aunt Morgan flew out here and showed up at our house bearing a huge bottle of vodka. A pink ribbon was tied around its neck.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Vodka for a baby?” I said.
“No, for your parents!” exclaimed Aunt Morgan. “I couldn’t think of a better gift for two adults who were about to have their entire lives turned upside down.”
At first I was speechless. Was that all a baby meant to Aunt Morgan? But then I began to laugh too. My stiff aunt Morgan had done that? I couldn’t believe it. It put her in a whole new light.
“Of course, half an hour later,” Mom went on in her raspy voice, “Morgan disappeared into the spare bedroom and emerged with a shopping bag full of the most wonderful presents for you. Italian baby clothes, a collection of picture books, and Baba.”
“Baba? Baba came from Aunt Morgan? I didn’t know that,” I said.
What a fascinating piece of information. My beloved blanket had been a gift from Aunt Morgan. She was becoming more interesting by the moment.
“Hey, Aunt Morgan,” I said. “This afternoon Mom told me about the time she let the chickens loose in her first-grade classroom. Tell me about something naughty that you did…. No, wait. Mom, you tell me about something naughty that Aunt Morgan did.”
“Oh, you are a stinker,” said my aunt.
Mom had closed her eyes. At first I thought she had suddenly dropped off to sleep, but then I realized she was thinking. “Well, there was the time she gave both of us haircuts. She told me she could make my hair look exactly like Marlo Thomas’s on That Girl. Have you ever seen the reruns of that show, honey?” Mom asked me.
I nodded. Then I asked. “How old were you guys then?”
“Why, that was just last year,” Dad spoke up, and we all laughed.
“No, I was about ten,” said Aunt Morgan, “and your mother was about eight. Why she fell for a line like that, I’ll never know.”
“You were my big sister. I believed everything you said,” said Mom.
“Not everything,” said Aunt Morgan.
“Almost everything.”
“Well, anyway, I had absolutely no idea how to give someone’s hair a trim, let alone style it like Marlo Thomas’s,” said my aunt. “But I felt I could experiment on my little sister. I thought that if I did a good job I could open up a beauty business in our basement and style hair for all the neighborhood kids. It seemed like a gold mine.”
“And what happened?” I asked.
“I wound up nearly bald — looking a lot like I do right now,” said Mom.
There was this big embarrassed silence in the room and then we all started laughing again.
“Did you get in trouble, Morgan?” Dad wanted to know.
“Plenty,” she replied. “Grounded, fined, the works.”
“Fined?” I repeated.
“My allowance was docked. That was what our parents called being fined.”
Mom smiled wanly at that. “Morga
n got fined a lot more often than I did,” she said weakly.
I looked at my watch. We’d only been talking for fifteen minutes or so, but I was pretty sure that already that injection was wearing off. I looked helplessly at my aunt. I think she knew what I was thinking, which was, Can Mom have another injection now?
Aunt Morgan shook her head slightly.
Then I had a thought. I remembered what Dad had said at dinner.
“Mom, do you want to write anything down?” I asked her.
Mom couldn’t answer. She started to cough.
Dad lurched for the bed and I jumped aside to give him room. He sat with her, holding her gently until the coughing stopped.
8:21 A.M.
Mom is having a really bad morning. I wonder whether she can hold out for two more days. I wonder whether she can even last until the end of this day. A nurse and the doctor are downstairs right now, and they’re in Mom’s room, along with Dad and Aunt Morgan. I peeked in a while ago, but no one noticed me. Mom seemed awfully groggy, so I’m back up here.
Last night, after the coughing stopped, Dad and Aunt Morgan and I sat with Mom until she fell asleep. Then we tiptoed into the living room and sat there for a long time. I am looking at Aunt Morgan with new eyes. So she was a troublemaker when she was a kid. And she had a sense of humor. I’d never have guessed it. She seems so stodgy and stiff and controlling. Then again, since she lives in Atlanta and we’ve lived in California all my life, how often have I seen her? Six or seven times? And two of those times have been since Mom got sick. Maybe this is just how Aunt Morgan deals with stress. Maybe she’s really a very nice, funny person after all.
Maybe I should get to know her better.
9:17 A.M.
Dad knocked on my door a little while ago, after the doctor left.
“Come in,” I called.
“Sweetie, can I talk to you?” he asked. He sat on the bed.
(Oh, boy. Pounding heart, cold hands. That fear.)
“Sure,” I said in a tiny little voice.
“The doctor thinks Mom won’t last the day.”
I didn’t know what to say. All I could think was, Yesterday you said she might have three more days. But I knew that was a foolish, childish thought. Nobody knows anything for sure, not even the doctor. I stared out my window. At last I said, “Then I guess I should come downstairs.”
“Whenever you want.” Dad paused. “And Sunny, you don’t have to come downstairs. You don’t have to see Mom. You don’t even have to say good-bye to her—although I know she wants to say good-bye to you.”
“No, I’m coming.”
“Okay.” Dad left my room.
I looked at my journal. I want to record EVERYTHING in it. That means I want to have it with me at all times. I wonder if Aunt Morgan will understand.
9:29 A.M.
I think she will understand.
10:16 A.M.
Mom is in the worst shape I have ever seen her in, and that’s saying a lot. She’s in SO MUCH pain. Usually when the pain becomes too great, she tries to find a way to fall asleep, but now she’s trying to stay awake. She keeps thinking of things she wants to tell us, things she wants to say. Also, I have a feeling that she doesn’t want to miss anything, doesn’t want to sleep through a single second of the time she has left.
10:42 A.M.
Dad and I are in Mom’s room. A funny thing. She just asked us to open the curtains. It’s a very bright and sunny day today, the kind of light that ordinarily hurts Mom’s eyes. But Mom said, “I want to see outside.”
At first it was horrible. When Dad pulled back the curtains Mom had to hold her hands over her eyes. But very, very slowly she opened her fingers a crack, like when she used to play peekaboo with me, and then very, very slowly she pulled her hands away from her face. Mom could see a tree outside and the house across the way, a couple of cars in the street. Not a whole lot more, but it was enough to make her smile.
“I always love when the sky turns that color,” she managed to say. “That’s the best blue. The best blue in the world.”
“Do you want me to close the curtains now?” Dad asked after a few moments.
“No. Leave them open,” said Mom. But not more than ten minutes later she said weakly, “Okay, could you close them, please?” She had put her hands to her face again.
I jumped up. “I’ll do it,” I said.
11:25 A.M.
The phone started ringing a little while ago. One call after another.
“Honey,” Dad said to me, “could you be on phone duty for awhile?”
I was glad to be on phone duty. Aunt Morgan and Dad were sitting with Mom, and I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. Still…
“What do I tell people?” I asked Dad.
He looked at me for a few moments. “The truth, honey. That she doesn’t have more than a day or two.”
“And what if people want to come by to see her?”
“If you think they are people she’d want to say good-bye to, then tell them to come as soon as they can, and to be prepared to stay for only a few minutes.”
“What about the others?”
Dad frowned. “Tell them…I guess…. Tell them that we’ll call them when there’s any news.”
“Okay. I’ll keep a list of who calls.”
“Thank you, Sunny.”
Dad disappeared into Mom’s room, and now I’m sitting by the phone with my journal and a pad of legal paper. We have two other pads of paper going too. One is a list of things people have sent — flowers and food. The other is a list of cards and letters. We’re not answering them now. Even Aunt Morgan said we don’t have to do that. But after Mom dies we will send a note to each and every person who wrote to Mom. And we will thank people for anything they sent.
11:49 A.M.
Suddenly these lists have become the focus of my being. I am obsessed with making sure they’re accurate, complete, up-to-date. Are the lists easier to focus on than Mom right now?
High Noon
Speaking of High Noon, boy would I like to watch an old movie right now. Just kick back with Dawn and an enormous bowl of popcorn, sit up for hours laughing and crying and imagining.
12:04 P.M.
I can’t believe I’m fantasizing about watching movies with Dawn at a time like this. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?
12:14 P.M.
The phone just rang and it was Rebecca from Mom’s cancer support group.
“How’s she doing?” Rebecca asked me.
I told her the truth. “Not well. The doctor said she probably only has until today or tomorrow.”
“Could I come see her?”
A tough decision. Rebecca is certainly not one of Mom’s older friends; she’s a very new friend. But she’s also a very close friend.
I could feel my chest tightening. First I had told Dad I wanted this telephone job. I had even felt excited about it. Now the second I had to make a tough decision I started feeling mad. And I had to be mad at somebody, so I chose Dad, since he asked me if I wanted the job.
Is Rebecca one of the people who gets to come over or not? I couldn’t decide. Then I thought of a different question, and suddenly everything became clear to me and I stopped being mad at Dad. Would Mom want to say good-bye to Rebecca? That was what Dad had asked me to think about earlier.
Yes, I decided.
“Yes,” I said to Rebecca. “Can you come over right away?”
“Of course.”
“And Dad says visitors can only stay for a few minutes.”
“Okay. I’ll be right there.”
I have to say that I am kind of proud of myself for how I am handling this task that Dad trusted me with.
12:38 P.M.
Oh god. Once again I have to ask WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME? How can I be thinking about what kind of job I’m doing while Mom is in the next room dying? There must be something vastly wrong with me. I’m some kind of aberration.
12:44 P.M.
Another thought. Dad didn
’t say anything about this, but there are a few people I should probably call and tell to come over quickly. It would be awful if someone wanted to say good-bye to Mom, someone Mom would have wanted to say good-bye to, and the person called too late.
I started a new list. People I should call right now. I tried to keep the list as short as possible. At the top I wrote Dawn and under that Carol and Jack. They could all stop by when Dawn came home from school. No, that won’t work. Carol and Jack will still be at work. Besides, what if Mom dies while Dawn is at school? Should I call her at school? Right now? Should I call Carol and Jack at work?
This is getting out of hand.
I don’t know what to do.
12:56 P.M.
What I should do is forget the stupid lists and go sit with Mom myself.
1:10 P.M.
She’s getting weaker. She’s hardly with us anymore. I just held her hand for a bit, then left.
1:29 P.M.
Rebecca’s here. Dad let her into Mom’s room, and he and Aunt Morgan and the nurse came out. They sat down in the kitchen and Aunt Morgan realized that none of us had done anything about lunch. Even Aunt Morgan forgot this time.
“Does anyone want lunch?” she asked. (A first.)
“No,” Dad and I said at the same time. (It isn’t like we never eat. The thing is, people keep coming by with food. There’s stuff everywhere, and we sort of nibble on it from time to time all day long. Not the most healthy way to eat, but at least we’re eating.)
So Dad and Aunt Morgan and I sat in the kitchen and didn’t say anything. This time, though, the silence didn’t feel uncomfortable. I know Dad and Aunt Morgan feel just the way I do. Drained.