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My sister wanted to postpone her wedding. We wouldn’t let her. She finally relented agreeing to move the ceremony to the backyard at Pop and Yancy’s house so that our mother could attend the nuptials. Yancy’s bed had been moved against the wall, some furniture moved to the basement and a hospital bed filled the room. A twenty-four hour nurse was hired with Doctor Winkle’s recommendation. She moved in to one of my sisters’ old bedrooms the day that Yancy came home from the hospital.
In two weeks she ingrained herself in our family. Her name was Lucy. She was younger than my mother but not by much. Her long silver hair was secured tightly at the back of her head in a clip that belied the true length of soft hair that hung nearly to her waist. She wore little make-up and round, dark glasses that made her look hip. She had a soft touch, which seemed to calm Yancy. She could administer the morphine, which was all that would keep Yancy comfortable but not pain free. My only burden now which one of my sisters shared everyday with me was to watch Yancy die.
Saturday, August 3rd, the morning of Adin’s wedding Lucy had cut back on the morphine at Yancy’s insistence. She was in agony I knew but she wanted to be coherent for the wedding. I was dressed in my maternity maid of honor gown. My sister had picked the frock. It was royal blue, my mother’s favorite color. The gown was held up by thin straps one inch thick and low cut which accentuated my super enlarged D sized breasts.
Kerry wolf whistled at me when I left our room that afternoon to check on Yancy before the ceremony began. The gown was form fitted and flowed about my ankles. I thought I looked like a beached whale but everyone insisted that the dress looked lovely on me. Instead of a tent to hide the largeness of my eight month pregnant belly Adin chose a dress that accentuated it.
Yancy was dressed in a long sleeved light pink knit dress. She was sitting in her overstuffed chair when I entered her room. She looked at me with eyes that were empty and lifeless which summoned only a sad smile that I could present to her.
“Come here,” she said removing her feet from the ottoman so that I could sit by her.
I sat on the ottoman unsure if I could get up by myself from this precarious perch. Our hands were linked together in her lap. Her thumb caressed my hand in an absent motion that was soothing to me.
“You need to have the baby soon,” she said staring out the window.
I gazed at her with questioning. What was she talking about? The baby wasn’t due for another four weeks. We were in the heat of August. What had started out as an early summer wedding, then a July or August wedding, then an outright cancellation until the sister brigade stepped in forcing Adin into action planning for August 3rd the first Saturday of the month.
“Gabrielle, you need to have the baby soon,” she repeated this time looking directly at me.
I felt tears welling up in my eyes making her appear blurry before me.
“Don’t cry. Just have the damned baby soon.”
I laid my head in her lap and she caressed my hair like she had when I was a child. She was my mother again if only for the moment until the morphine took her back to a place where she knew only the fuzziness of pain that couldn’t be masked with even the strongest drug.
“How can I live without you?” I asked her.
“You found a way in Eden,” she replied not condemning me but stating a truth.
“I could call you when I needed you.”
She urged me to sit up so that I could see her face.
“You’ll have the hardest time accepting my death,” she declared. “I know that so I want you to do something for me.”
“Now what?” I asked sniffing back the tears.
She brushed back a strand of hair from my face. “Don’t get snippy with me. Throw a party not a wake. Get drunk. Celebrate my life don’t mourn my death. Have a private funeral the day after my death and have a party at this house that same night. No wake,” she declared.
Uncertainly I gazed at my mother. She meant it. “We’ll do it but will you tell the others so that they don’t think I’m nuts?”
She chuckled. She seemed more coherent than I had seen her in weeks. She was more Yancy than the skeleton of a person that had been left behind by the destruction of the cancer in her body.
“I’ll tell them,” she promised.
Kerry came into the room then in a rush. “I’m sorry,” he said. “They want you to come down now Yancy.”
He crossed the room and gently he lifted her from the chair in his arms. “I’m trying to be gentle,” he whispered softly and with such tenderness because he knew no matter how gentle he was she suffered excruciating pain.
“I know,” she replied wrapping her arm around his neck. She laid her head against his big strong shoulder.
I hoisted myself off the ottoman with difficulty and was grateful that neither of them could see my ungraceful actions with my ass in the air trying to right myself. I followed behind Kerry. He carried Yancy to the back door and there he sat her on her feet.
She took his arm and he whispered so softly to her that I barely heard him, “I’m right here.”
Yancy dazzled him with a Yancy smile. “I’ll be fine,” she told him patting his arm.
She wore the wig that Kat had bought her for her graduation. She looked beautiful. Yancy leaned heavily on him as she made her way up the aisle to the first row. She wouldn’t have made it there without him. Adin walked up behind me. I had stayed inside waiting for the ceremony to begin but was watching them walk to the front of the row
