So, we moved. My mother cried the first night I stayed. “You shouldn’t have to do this,” she said. “You have your own life.”
“You are my life,” I told her.
The next year was a blur of casseroles, pills, and the slow humiliations of illness. I learned how to time nausea meds and which soups she could tolerate. I learned how to smile for her and then sit in the garage with my hands over my mouth so she wouldn’t hear me breaking apart.
Scott came and went like an angry tenant. He complained about the drive, the shower pressure, and the smell of the house. He wanted dinner waiting and the remote in his hand, free of the “impolite” sadness I was tracking in on my shoes.
His parents were worse. They visited twice and acted like they were inspecting a cheap motel. His mother touched a curtain and said, “I suppose it’s roomy.” His father stood in the kitchen and said, “No resale value. You could never stay here long term.”
My mother was sitting right there. Scott said nothing.
Every night, I’d sit at the table and write in a legal pad: medication times, bills, grocery lists. Once, I wrote in the margin: I am alone in my marriage. I tore that page off and threw it away. But it was the truth.
During that final winter, my mother deteriorated. Her voice thinned; her hands became as light as birds. She apologized for being “trouble.” I told her she was my mother and to stop apologizing for needing me. Once, she gripped my wrist and whispered, “Don’t let anyone make you small just because you know how to endure.” At the time, I thought it was the meds. Later, I realized she had never been clearer.
She died five days after going into the hospital. I was with her. My brother, my children, and Scott were there, too—though Scott was absent in every way that mattered.
At the funeral home, while I was trying to pick a casket, Scott and his parents stood in a corner laughing at a phone. He didn’t help with a single arrangement. At the visitation, I asked him to sit with the family. He refused, saying, “I’m not blood.” His mother chimed in, saying it was “more appropriate” for him to sit with the relatives.
