Her room is dark when I enter.
Mom?
I reach for the lamp, feel with one hand along the cord and with the other I fumble with the wall switch. Flip, click, light.
Mom?
She hears me. Her eyes struggle to adjust and I watch her swim through the change, search for me. I put my face close to hers, so close I smell her breath. Metallic, like oysters.
I smell her leaving. I see her searching.
Right here Mom. I'm right here. Can you see me?
No words from her mouth but her eyes circle and dip, rise and drift, and then find focus on me.
I kiss her forehead.
Then I bring out the fruit. I feed her strawberries and blueberries and raspberries. She opens her mouth wide and desperate. I put the fruit in her mouth and she grabs it, chews with a purpose. Not taste or pleasure, it seems, but purpose. A frail bird, she is.
There is much more I could write here, but really there's nothing more to say but this: In my life today, I am hand feeding the baby bird that is my Mom. In her life, she is being fed. And loved.
3 comments:
nothing more needs to be said, alison. i hope i can be as strong as you if i ever have to face this sort of hell.
You not only nourish her body, you are nourishing her soul, she is in there.
On the few occasions when I met your mother, she impressed me as a woman of confidence and "purpose"--a woman who knew what she wanted and how to go about getting it. It doesn't surprise me that she would show purpose even at this most vulnerable time in her life. She and your father were good role models for you, Alison, and it shows in the kind of woman you've grown up to be.
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