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Adult Fiction A Last Conversation 3490 words K R Kreckel 3670 Placid Drive Casper, WY 82604-4984 E-mail:kreckel1@yahoo.com 1 A LAST CONVERSATION When I first saw her my breathing stopped. She looked frail, impossibly thin, and entirely too small for the oversized hospital bed. She lay motionless, surrounded by machines, her body overwhelmed by technology. These robot attendants beeped and hummed a constant reminder that the balance of her life depended on their care. In a sense they also gave reassurance, letting me know the person in the bed, the mother I had known for all of my nearly fifty years, was still there, still with me. I had not been too late. I walked closer to the bed, cautiously, nervously, as if my very presence might upset the delicate thread on which her life now hung. I could see that the person in the bed was indeed mom, an older, more tired version of her, but still mom. She appeared to be sleeping, with a peacefulness all out of context with her surroundings. I watched her lie there, trying to take in the reality, as my breathing returning to normal. There was mom, and she was dying. A voice from behind startled me slightly. “Are you a family member?” a gentle voice asked. I turned to see a nurse, a head shorter than me, with blond hair and sympathetic blue-green eyes, searching my face. “Yes, I’m her youngest son, Ken.” A look of understanding and a broad smile came over her. “Oh , you’re the one from England. Wonderful. She’s been so looking forward to seeing you. She had a good day today, and we all thought it was the anticipation of you’re coming that did it.” I felt embarrassed that my arrival would have even been noticed and I managed to stammer out a ‘Good’ before the nurse continued. “She resting now, so I would like to update you on her condition, if that’s all right.” I didn’t answer right away, somewhat taken aback at the tone of the nurse’s voice. She was speaking in a low, almost melodious way, much as a preschool teacher would approach a reluctant new student. At the same time, the tone was neither patronizing or insulting, but rather incredibly soothing. Her voice was matched by her appearance. She was attractive, a woman of perhaps forty, but not beautiful, or even pretty. Instead her attractiveness seemed to come from within, in her manner, her presence. It seemed to me that the woman positively glowed. I finally answered her, “Please, go ahead.” She didn’t seemed surprised at my slowness, perhaps being used to all types of people visiting the ICU. She started out as if we had spoken many times before, even though this was my first visit, having just arrived in my Milwaukee hometown from my job, and current home, in London. “She’s doing well, much better today than the past few days. There has been no bleeding episodes since yesterday and her condition is stable, but I did want to alert you to one thing. She’s been undergoing TIA’s, transient ischemic attacks, little strokes in layman’s terms. You may see her eyes twitch and perhaps an arm move while she sleeps. Don't be alarmed if you see her having one, they are relatively harmless and the doctor has adjusted her medication accordingly...” My mind wandered as she continued describing her treatment. I went back to the call from my sister-in-law telling me about mom’s hospitalization. My dad had awoken in the middle of the night to find mom spitting up blood. She was rushed to the emergency room, and admitted to the ICU shortly afterwards. The diagnosis was a leaking aneurysm, but her overall condition, including congestive heart failure and near kidney failure, precluded any possibility of surgery. So here she was, resting in the ICU, prognosis poor, and outlook bleak. My attention began to return to the nurse’s voice describing how the aneurysm was ‘flaking off’ pieces into her bloodstream, causing the small strokes. “So as you see, your mother is resting comfortably now and we hope to move her to a regular room in a day or two.” “What happens after that?” I asked, not quite sure that she hadn’t covered that while my mind was wandering. If she had, she didn’t say. “There are several options. There’s palliative care here at the hospital, a hospice, or she could go home to be with her family and comfortable surroundings. I know she desperately wants to go home, and I see no problem with that as long as she can get the care she needs.” Although I didn’t have a clue what 'palliative' meant, there was a note of resignation in the nurse’s tone which told me much about the ultimate outcome. Still, I had to ask. “So she will recover from this episode?” The nurse gave me a motherly, almost pleading, look. “In a manner of speaking, but your mother is old, and things are progressing along their natural path. She has a number of serious conditions, and the goal now is to make her as comfortable as possible. You really need to discuss this with the rest of the family and her doctors, and decide what next step is best.” “I understand, but knowing mom, I’m sure it’ll be to go home.” The nurse took my right hand in hers, patted it gently, and left to attend to her duties. Watching her leave, my eyes focused beyond her to see my family entering the ICU. My twenty-six year old niece, Jessica, strode in first, followed closely by her dad, my brother Darrell. Behind them shuffled my dad, escorting my sister-in-law Kerry, riding her motorized cart. I immediately brightened. Darrell and Jess, the mischievous ones in the family, would lighten any load. As would Kerry, who despite years of battling the debilitating onslaught of rheumatoid arthritis, retained her outgoing Irish character lit by a wonderful sense of humor. Only my dad looked different. Dad had always been a hulk of a man, immensely powerful, but tempered with an affable, phlegmatic nature. A factory worker of thirty-eight years before retirement, he was the very definition of steadfastness. This was more in evidence the past several years, as he attended to my mother’s illnesses with habitual fidelity, assisting her at-home dialysis with an incredible attention to detail. Devotion to my mother was truly his defining characteristic. However, the man entering the room now looked shorter, thinner, somehow greatly diminished physically. Had this happened just over the past year, or was I seeing clearly for the first time? I didn’t know, but the man before me had aged greatly. Dad was an old man. We joined together for a mutual party of hellos before continuing into mom’s room. Jess immediately went to the side of the bed and began stroking mom’s hair. Dad went to the other side and nudged her, whispering something in her ear. Slowly her eyes opened. She turned to dad, shot him an annoyed look, and mumbled something. Dad reached behind himself to fetch a carton of liquid from a nearby table and put it in front of mom. Jess assisted by guiding the straw to mom’s lips. After a short sip, she looked at the rest of us. Finding me, she smiled and struggled to get out a soft ‘Hello’. I went forward and bent to give her a sort of hug, very conscious of her frail condition. When I touched her it was touching a blown glass figurine, one that might come apart in my hands from the slightest pressure. We talked for a few moments, or at least I talked. She lay there listening, smiling, occasionally nodding weakly. It shortly became clear that she was very tired, and I backed off to stand again with Darrell and Kerry. When mom drifted off to sleep, they motioned me out into the corridor. Once there, I tried to form a sentence, attempting to express my shock at her feeble condition, but Kerry spoke up first. “Wow, that’s the happiest I’ve seen her in weeks. Your coming here was just the thing. She was looking forward to it all day. You could see it gave her quite a lift.” I was incredulous, this was better? I stammered “You’re kidding...,” before Darrell cut me off. “She really was better today. I think she was afraid she wouldn’t make it before Ken showed up.” I was still shocked at their comments, “You mean she’s been worse?” “Oh, yeah, much worse. When they brought her in we weren’t sure she would make it through that night. Even after they had her stabilized we weren’t too sure. But today she brightened up and....” As Kerry continued talking, filling me in on her condition, my mind again wandered. The sleepless night before, the fatigue of the crossing, and the accompanying jet lag began hitting me hard. Physically and mentally I was shutting down. My mind returned only after Kerry had finished her monologue. Darrell mumbled something. I turned to him, “What?” “There’s one that didn’t make it,” he motioned to the room behind me. I turned to look into the darkened room. On the bed about three feet away lay a bundle covered by a white sheet. With a twinge of nausea I recognized that it was a dead body, the remains of a person who had probably just died while we were in with mom. The realization made my head spin and my stomach lurch. The rest of the evening was a blur. Still on London time, I arrived at the hospital the next morning before anyone else. Mom was up and eating breakfast, or at least making the effort. She had never been one much for eating, and pursued a lifelong struggle to get up to 125 pounds. Now, of course, she was considerably less than that. We talked off and on, mostly about little things, but for much of the time we were content just to sit and be with each other. Confronted by this new reality of death, I think neither one of us knew exactly what to say anyway. Dad arrived after an hour or so. He spent much of his time fussing about mom, sometimes helping, but mostly just irritating her. As I watched him flitter about, I became more and more concerned for him. He just didn’t seem like dad. At the midmorning doctor visit, dad felt that every question to mom had to be answered by him as well, but frequently his answers were the complete opposite of hers. The doctor went on outlining her condition, gently but unmistakably telling them that she was dying, and laying out the possible options. Mom replied that she wanted to go home, she didn’t want to remain in the hospital, and had even signed a living will to that end. The doctor agreed, but seemed concerned about her care at home, and wasn’t entirely satisfied with my dad’s assurances that he could handle it. After the doctor left, dad went on and on about when mom would be better. At first I thought he was trying to buoy mom’s spirits but as he continued it seemed to be more for his benefit than hers. As the lunch trays were taken away, and a nurse attended to mom, another doctor asked us for a moment’s time. This doctor, taking a much more clinical approach than the first, carefully explained mom’s condition. He pointedly stated that she was suffering with several conditions, each of which was terminal. He further expressed the opinion that the end could come at any time, but certainly not any longer than a few weeks. We both acknowledged that we understood. As the doctor turned to leave, dad grasped my arm, turned to me, and looked straight into my eyes. “I didn’t know it was that bad,” he said earnestly. I was speechless. I couldn’t have been more surprised if had grown a tail! ‘Didn’t know?’ Where had he been all this time? The woman was undergoing multiple organ failures, small strokes were anticipating the inevitable fatal one, and an inoperable aneurysm threatened to kill her at any moment. What did he think was going to happen? As these thoughts flooded my mind I searched his face. Surely this was a feeble attempt at a joke, but his expression denied it. I looked into his eyes. There was fear, and something else, something worse. As I took his arm and led him to a chair it came to me. Desperation! That something in his eyes was a desperate fear that she really was leaving him. In that brief instant he had to confront it. She was dying. He began talking again after we sat down in the hallway chairs. “We’ll have to get the house ready for when she gets out of here,” he began, using his most authoritative voice. I nodded but he wasn’t looking at me. “We need to arrange for that palliative care, and get some supplies, perhaps a hospital style bed.” “I can help while I’m here.” He took no notice as he continued, “We’ll need a nurse, one of those nurses who just stop by for a few hours each day.” “Absolutely,” I replied. Then turning to me, he again looked directly at me, “It’ll just be for this time, just until she gets back on her feet. Probably take a few weeks or maybe a month. Then we’ll get back to normal...” He looked away as he continued in the same vein. I thought about contradicting him, reason with him, but when I looked into his eyes, I thought better of it. This time in those gentle blue eyes, the fear had gone. In its place, however, was something much worse, something much more frightening to me, something that left a cold dull feeling in the depths of my being. In its place I had seen nothing, nothing at all. That afternoon several visitors came to see mom. Dad greeted each with a detailed account of her condition, a version composed of equal measures of fact and fiction. In many of the descriptions, mistakes by doctors played a prominent role. If only they had recognized the cause of her problems earlier, surely she’d be healthy now, he’d explain to people. I couldn’t tell if he was just trying to convince himself, or if he just needed someone to blame. There was one truly surreal incident. Standing by the foot of the bed, holding forth again on her condition, he suddenly reached behind him and pulled the covers off the lower portion of the bed, revealing her feet. Everyone looked aghast at the sight. My mother’s feet were grotesque, dark things. With black toes, and blue-grey soles, they gave irrefutable evidence that she was dying, little by little, but inexorably. I, and the rest of the immediate family were horrified. Mom, my proud and very private mother, would never have wanted such a thing to happen. This woman who always dressed appropriately, who practically gift-wrapped her garbage, would surely be mortified. As Jess quickly got up to replace the covers, I could see that mom now lay unmoving, eyes half shut. She had drifted back out of reality, as she was doing more and more often this day. Thankfully she had been spared knowledge of the latest indignity. In time the visitors had gone, the family was taking a break, and I was left alone with mom. She mumbled something so I had went to the bedside. “What was that, mom?” She turned to me, eyes open, lit again by her essence. She had drifted back in. “I wanted to talk to you.” “Sure.” Are things going good for you in London?” she asked. “Pretty well. The company is offering an early retirement and we’re trying to decide to take it or not. If we do, it will be good to get back to the States.” She nodded wearily. “ I suppose you’ll be moving out to Wyoming?” I didn’t answer at first, unsure of the correct answer. Would she be disappointed if I said I would not be coming home, or would she be happy that I would be returning to the place my wife and I had learned to love? At this time should I be answering to keep her happy, and if so, which answer would do that? Mulling this over, the right answer suddenly popped into my brain. This was no time to lie. “Yes, we always planned to settle down there.” She smiled. “I always loved Wyoming. When you lived there I always looked forward to our visits out there. I’m glad for you.” Relieved, I smiled back at her, but she turned away, the smile fading. “Have you ever seen someone die?” she asked, in an unexpectedly strong voice. I again didn’t answer. What was she asking? Did she want to talk about death? Was she asking if she was going to die? What did she want to hear, and why was she asking me? I was dumbfounded, speechless. I stood there for perhaps a full minute, frantically trying to come up with an answer, all the while desperately hoping someone, anyone, would enter the room and get me off the hook. No one did. I finally managed to croak, “No.” “Oh,” she whispered, and again drifted out of the present. That was my last conversation with mom. Later that night I was sitting in Seat 2A on British Airways Flight 6, somewhere over the North Atlantic. The cabin lights were dim, outside the window only blackness. The flight attendants and my fellow passengers were all asleep, and no sound save for the muted roar of the plane’s engines reached my ears. I couldn’t sleep. I thought about my dad. I couldn’t believe what he was doing. He had changed. The gentle but strong realist of my youth had become an angry, delusional old man. He simply couldn’t accept her dying. Rather than help her he seemed to be concentrating on his loss, his feelings. His behavior in the hospital--bringing in unwanted visitors, displaying her dying body--was just bizarre. Why had he done that? Was it anger, anger at her dying, or was he just losing it? Perhaps it was early signs of Alzheimer's'? I didn’t know, nor would I ever really know. Perhaps I was losing both of them, one to death, one to dementia. All I really knew was that he had failed her in the end. But what about me? Who was I to talk? Mostly I was away, an ocean away. When I finally get there I do nothing to really help. There were no meaningful talks, no poignant farewells. I hadn’t provided any real comfort. I hadn’t even said good bye. Mostly I was just inadequate. The one time she tried to talk about death I just shut down, unable to speak. Great son I was, I had failed her as well. I mused like this for some time, staring out into the night, its blackness matching the feeling in my soul. I felt utterly wretched. Mom was dying, and I had fumbled my one opportunity to help her. Over and over I ran it through my mind, disgusted with myself. This went on for what seemed like hours, but gradually a glimmer of light appeared on the horizon. I recalled my last look at mom. A priest had come in, and he sat on the edge of her bed, whispering the last rites. During his visit, mom had come out of her sleep for a few minutes, listening to the priest. When he left, she again drifted away, but she had changed. A look of peace had come over her countenance. A strange smile lit her slumbering face. She seemed to actually glow. She was ready. The light now filled a quarter of the approaching sky, indigo blue with hints of pink. Inside the plane, the flight attendants had come to life, banging trays and drawers in the galley. A few passengers around me stirred, one getting up and heading for the lavatory. The aroma of brewing coffee filled the cabin. Returning to the window, I could see the approaching outline of the Irish coast, an impossibly intense green against an azure sea, separated by a narrow ribbon of white froth. In countless towns and picturesque little villages down there, families would be waking, children preparing for school, workers wearily going to their jobs. Teachers would be opening their classrooms, bakers would be preparing their wares, and mothers would be attending to their babes. All of these would be waking to an indescribably beautiful world. I suddenly understood the meaning of our last words. She wasn’t looking for comfort, understanding, or anything from me. She was looking to comfort me! At the very end she was still a mother, a mother doing her best to console her son. Nothing else was necessary. We were together at the end and all was right between us. We were at peace. |
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