Hospice

"Is the nurse coming today?" she asked her sister, her face reflecting a permanent fear that would not go away for a long time. She felt like a five year old girl.1

"Yeah, at twelve," responded the younger sister, exhausted at nine in the morning.2

They sighed and looked out the window. Anticipatory grief, it was called.3

"Ally!" Their mother's raspy voice called from the back bedroom. The two girls literally jumped up from the couch and the arm chair to quickly make it back there. They both knew that she could just be hallucinating again, but wanted to believe that she needed something, that they could do something for her. Ally was proud that it was her name she had called.4

"You awake, Ma?," said Sandra, behind her sister, as they entered the semi-dark room and split up to their respective spots on each side of the bed and knelt down, each taking one of their mother's soft, heavy hands. Their mother was a skeleton of a woman, lying there, a yellow flanel sheet covering her reduced frame. Her eyes were closed, and her chest shallowly rose and fell. The girls waited there, just staring at her, Ally stroking her mother's bony arm.5

"Mom?" Ally's lower lip was quivering as she dared to speak. She lowered her head, and her shoulders and back shook with her sobs. Their mother didn't answer, just breathed.6

Sandra didn't want to cry again today, so she had taken one of her mother's ativan upon waking a few hours before. She continued staring at her mom's features, so different from only a few months ago. She superficially took in her mother's jaundiced color, her bald head, her sharp collar bones showing through the skin above the neck of her nightgown. She ignored her sister's crying; she couldn't recognize anyone else's greif but her own, if she even had the strength to do that, which she didn't.7

They stayed there, outside of the passage of time, watching and listening, saying, "I love you, mom," every once in awhile. Telling her they would be okay, and what a great mom she had been. Through their remembering and crying, and the checking of the morphine, thier mother remained silent.8

The sound of the doorbell broke the spell. Ally and Sandra looked at each other, both silently telling the other one to go get the door. Finally, Ally rose with an irritated sigh, and came back a minute later with a nurse they hadn't met before.9

The nurse greeted Sandra with a nod and a soft smile, then laid out her supplies on the dresser. "We tried to bathe her yesterday, but I don't know if we did it right," Sandra stammered. "We're worried she might get bedsores.." Ally rolled her eyes at Sandra's question that they had talked about before. Ally knew she'd have had to be in bed many months for that to happen.10

"No, I don't think so." Said the nurse, "but we'll check when I bathe her today." Smiling an 'excuse me' to Sandra, her plump body scooted by the older sister to fasten the blood pressure cuff around the thin, hanging skin on their mother's arm. Ally's serious face watched her every move, as the nurse listened and probed.11

"Her heart is still going strong..." the nurse said, sounding almost disappointed.12

The sisters stood by and watched painfully as the nurse expertly undressed their mother, exposing naked skin over bones, showing them all what the nurse had seen a thousand times; death's slow work.13

The hospice nurse washed their mother with great care, giving all her attention to her body, while quietly speaking to the girls.14

"You two have taken very good care of your mother, you should be proud", she said.15

This comment took Sandra by suprise. She thought she was doing everything wrong beacuse she couldn't keep her mother from dying. Both daughters were deeply touched by the nurse's words. They would not forget them, and they would be proud.16

That night they once again had their dinner in front of the TV with Hank, their mother's longtime companion and owner of the house. They were all always very grateful to escape for awhile, and watched the wonderful shows, hardly speaking. They took turns throughout the evening going back into the bedroom to check for any changes, any words form her lips, and reluctantly kissed her cool forehead before finally going to bed. The girls, having transplanted their lives from different parts of the globe, slept together in the guest room, and Hank in the room where he and his partner had slept for over 15 years.17

Ally hugged Sandra in bed and Sandra let her. "Goodnight, San."18

"Night, Al, I love you."19

"Girls." They were awoken by Hank's voice, disoriented. As they followed him to the bedroom, Sandra thought they were getting up to help mom to the bathroom, something they had stopped doing days ago, or was it weeks? She tried to hold on to that mind lapse, wishing they were going to hold her again while she got up fom the bed, and carry her again to the toilet, but reality was real, and before she could protest or turn around, they were looking down at their mother's lifeless body in the light of the dusty table lamp. Leaving them a tiny smile on her face, she was gone.20