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Four Months Later
After a quiet summer that eventually turns into a beautiful fall in Maine, my mother passes away on her birthday without any assistance. I’m coming back from my morning adjustment and personal growth class on Stonemore’s campus when I get the text from my father, asking me to hurry home.
Professor Garrett, a wiry woman who wears Bohemian style dresses and an opaque quartz crystal on a cord around her neck, stops me as I rush past. “Everything okay, Fiona? You almost left without turning in your exam.”
Biting my lip, I clutch my backpack tighter against my shoulder, not realizing until this second that I’d crumpled the packet against my chest in my escape. “Oh, right. Sorry.”
She takes the paper when I hold it out, then offers me a soft smile, the wrinkles around her lips disappearing with the gesture. “Is it your mother?”
Nodding, I ignore the pang that shoots across my stomach—the curse of small-town living. Someone’s always watching, waiting, especially when you’re one of us.
I’ve lost track of how many times the local papers have compared my mother’s declining health to that of Murphy’s descension into insanity, posing questions about our family’s karma and wondering if our reign in town is coming to an end.
Professor Garrett lets me pass, and I bolt from the classroom and out of the building, doing my best to keep some of her mantras in mind as I make my way to the parking lot.
Climbing behind the wheel of my Jeep, I push down the flare of guilt that attempts to crawl up my throat—that I’ve somehow failed my mom by not getting to her before this point, even though this was the date we had planned all along.
The feeling that I’ve prolonged her suffering in exchange for a little extra time prods at the back of my skull, a white-hot brand I can’t erase as I leave campus.
I don’t stop for a chocolate shake this time, shucking the ritual as I bypass the little cafe that popped up on the border between King’s Trace and Stonemore, speeding my way down the cobblestone streets to make sure I’m exactly where I should be.
I might miss the ritual later, might have to come back for a shake all the same, but that doesn’t matter at this moment.
Pulling up outside of the Ivers mansion, a place I haven’t lived in since the beginning of the summer, I park just outside the front steps and bound up them, throwing the front doors open; they crash into the walls, the sound echoing through the empty, haunted house.
Kieran moved out around the same time I did, shacking up with his girlfriend-recently-turned-fiancée, leaving our parents to spend the remainder of their marriage in this house, alone.
My father’s hope was to spend as much time with my mother as possible while he still could, but as she fell into the late stages of her disease and became a hollow husk of the woman she once was, I think it forced him to face reality.
We don’t talk about Chelsea, but I can see in the slump of his shoulders and the anguish on his tired, aging face that he’s never regretted anything more in his life. And I guess I just have to make my peace with that, even if I’m still not quite over it.
I hadn’t been expecting anyone else to be here when I showed up, half planning on once again being the only one my mother can count on. But when I push into her bedroom and find her lying in the hospital bed that hospice moved in a week ago, my father and brother flank her on both sides, holding her hands.
She’s barely recognizable after all this time—her sallow skin hangs from her bones like a haphazard sheet that’s been draped over her body. In the last few weeks, she’d opted to stop eating, refusing everything—and since she’d signed a form early-on declining to be tube-fed if that time ever came, we’d been forced to just watch her wither away deliberately.
When she stopped taking the medication, though, that’s when things went downhill, and they progressed quickly.
My father noted that she’d been sleeping more and more, her cognitive function dwindling as the days dragged on. She’d occasionally fill the silence with a sentence or two, but the rest of the time she’d succumbed to making simple noises, unintelligible sounds that really only let us know when she was in pain.
A knot lodges in my throat when I cross the threshold into the bedroom; the air shifts immediately, turning cold against me even though the heat’s on high to keep her comfortable.
Anxiety scratches beneath the surface of my skin, desperate to break free as I approach the bed, keeping my gaze trained on her unconscious form. My hands shake as I reach for her foot through the quilt stretched over her—an ancient number with floral patterns and frayed edges, made by her mother when mine was a kid.
Surrounded by the things that give her comfort, as if that makes the transition easier.
I suck in a deep breath, trying to remember the breathing exercises we learned from Professor Garrett. Grounding myself in the moment, pushing through the unease before it can take root.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, I reach out, running my fingers over the wooden rosary tucked beneath the hand my father’s holding. My face grows hot as we sit in silence, listening to the sounds of her labored, sporadic breathing, holding our own while we wait for hers to stop.
Eventually, like everything else in this life, hers comes to an end.
It’s nearly twelve hours after I arrive home, and it’s not particularly peaceful; she vacillates between shaking, her body seizing up, and occasional gasps that rip from her lungs, each time giving us false hope that it’s really the end.
My chest is tight, emotion clogging the cavity and making it hard to exist in the room, when she finally slips from sleep to permanence.
We let out a collective sigh—of relief, sadness, I can’t really be sure.
My throat burns as I gaze down at her lifeless form, trying to etch the pieces of her that matter beyond the scars of her disease—the red hair we share, the freckles on her nose, the soft curve of her lips that suggest a life full of kindness and contentment.
