A raspy voice calls my name – my mother’s, yet not. She calls me by my English name, not my Greek one as she always did. Pain meds have changed her. I leap from my pretzel position in the hospital chair, fearful and anxious at the sound. The iPad on my lap clatters to the floor. I had fallen asleep watching Netflix, something to numb my mind, to stop the repetitive thought: “My mother is going to die.”
Outside, it is still dark, but dawn is near. I scramble to her hospital bed, worried. “What is it?” I ask in Greek, keeping my voice hopeful and positive. She can’t hear any worry. I hold my breath, avoiding the stench from her bile bag. I don’t want the smell of death and sickness to linger in my mind later. I grasp her hands, soothing them. These hands once soothed my forehead during splitting headaches, rolled spanakopita into small triangles at Christmas, cut and styled hair for forty years.
“I’m dying,” my mother says.
“No, don’t say that. You’ll get better,” I reply, swallowing hard my tears. The voice in my head knows it’s a lie, but I push it to the back of my mind. I stroke her bald head, its stubble prickly. Surely, if her hair is growing back, it must mean something. I cling to that shredded rope of hope, that last thread. It doesn’t matter that her face is sheet-white and gaunt, the cancer face, as I’ve come to know it. The face of a walking skeleton. Maybe a miracle will happen.
A week later, they’ve moved her into hospice. The last stage. Her raspy voice is gone. She can’t speak, just stares into space. I think she can hear me when I say I’ll be back later. Stupidly, I still cling to hope. Maybe a miracle will happen.
Later, the call comes as I’m putting my boys to bed. “She’s gone,” my father says over the phone. At the hospital, I visit her one last time before they take her to the morgue. She lies in bed; hands folded on her belly. I place my warm hands over hers and pull them away quickly. I don’t want to remember the cold feeling of death.
At the funeral home, I stand alone over her casket. Her hands are folded over her belly again. I reach out and touch them. They aren’t cold now, but hard. Filled with formaldehyde. They are no longer my mother’s hands. I know what death feels like for the first time.
Four years later, another raspy voice, a different hospital, another chair. Summer sun casts light into the room. I barely notice. Needing to numb myself, I’m slumped over, playing a game on my iPhone. It’s a decorating game; somehow, making things look pretty gives me relief. I choose marble tile for the bathroom, then a black rug. Add hints of gold. A modern look. I hit submit and wait for votes to tally, to see how many liked my style. I choose another room to style. It keeps the tears at bay.
This time it’s my father’s voice. Raspy. Cancer has a way of doing that. “This is where my road ends,” he says in Greek. I look up from my phone, wordless. I can’t find the reassurances I gave my mother. There’s no hope to cling to that rope. It has snapped.
I give him a slight nod, biting my lip. I can’t speak. I just stare, unblinking, not wanting to break down in front of him. I look back down at my game and begin to decorate again as he closes his eyes and sleeps.
The hospital walls feel like they are closing in. My chest is tight, and I can’t breathe and it’s not because of the mask I wear. I can’t do this again. I get up to leave and go to his bed. I glance over my shoulder – no nurse to scold me about COVID protocol – so I kiss him on the forehead and touch his hands one last time. These are the hands that made me big kaiser bun sandwiches for lunch, hands that cleaned garbage from city streets. The voice in the back of my mind whispers this is the last time you will see him alive.
A few days later, I get the call from my cousin. “He is gone,” he says.
At the funeral wake, I touch his hands one final time. They are cold, hard, like dead tree branches. They are no longer my father’s hands. I know what death feels like a second time.
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