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I sit at her bedside, she sleeps heavy and open-mouthed. Around us the hospital beeps and chimes. Voices, certain and smart, bark commands over the intercom. Everyone, it seems, has something to do. It recalls an airport with its purposeful action, the people it serves like so much inventory that must be moved.
I hold her hand and know she is on the precipice of the end.
It has never seemed so sharply drawn before, so vividly obvious that my mom and I are now living in two starkly different landscapes of the human condition.
I am there to see her off, to make her leaving easier, as are all of my siblings. She is leaving on a journey none of us really knows much about, and we are to usher her there. It is a sorrow-filled good-bye for us but when someone you love is in unassuageable pain, you willingly agree to release them.
You love them so you tell them they can go, in fact, you wish for them that they can. And in that wish to end their pain, you don’t entirely realize it, but you are creating a lasting ache for yourself.
And so you soothe and you temper as much as you can, whispering, “It’s ok, Mom, it’s ok to let go. We’ll look out for each other” and you mean it, but you really have no idea what you are saying.
Because when she goes…
