1992, Baylor Hospital in Dallas, Texas

By Blake Kimzey

When we got in the car, my dad immediately turned on the radio. He had to find a station that wasn’t at a commercial break. Oldies. He needed to hear oldies. Mom loved oldies. He tuned the dial to 96.3, and one of his favorite songs was in midverse.

His eyes were slick, heavy membranes trying to hold back a flood of tears, like a rain tarp protecting a baseball infield. But he had to be Dad: invincible.

He adjusted his rearview mirror, hoping, maybe, that it would have been cockeyed, an adjustment my mother made the last time she drove the SUV.

But Mom hadn’t driven in months. A year, even. The seat, the rearview mirror, and the radio dial were all adjusted and tuned to my Dad’s liking. Nothing was different. Mom hadn’t been here.

I sat in the backseat, holding a box of things. Stuff. Frames. A bottle of the sweetest-smelling perfume. A Bible. Some cassettes, Christian music. A dark wig. Slippers. And a journal filled cover to cover with love letters to me and my three brothers, penned in the arching cursive stroke I recognized from a thousand notes stuffed into my sack lunches.

My mother fit tidily in my lap, easily arranged in a brown box. Her life, her struggle, her illness, her death - it all fit into a tidy single box. A single box.

My brother sat in the front passenger seat, fiddling with the strap of his seatbelt, looking down toward the gray floor mat. My dad hit the Seek button.

I fingered through the box, touching and smelling, hoping to find my mother in there. Anything - a scent, a touch - to cue a million memories of her.

I thought of her closet at home. Her robe. The nightstand that fit a dozen devotional books and thank-you notes. What would become of them? A garage sale, perhaps. A life pawned a month later for quarters on the dollar.

Just two hours ago, I sat facing her, watching her chest grow tired of breathing. Her eyes were glazed like a pair of glass doll eyes. She blinked less and less. The cancer had even taken the refreshing wash of closed lids from her.

The room smelled like wax, and it was filled with people - standing-room only. It was quiet. People were gathered to watch my mother conquer her struggle with a last breath, when it came. A heavy exhale would be the period on the final sentence of a beautiful life.

I sat and watched. I didn’t take my eyes off her face. I didn’t want to miss out on the rest of her life. Her precious life.

I touched her jaundiced hand. It felt like plastic. There was not a reciprocal squeeze. Her neck was tight, unable to acknowledge me or my adolescent plea for a motherly glance - an affectionate, loving moment.

I wanted it to be one last mama’s boy moment, but her mind was too numb from drugs and cancer and fatigue, and dreams of what she would be missing when her boys grew up, to register my desire for conscious interaction. One last time. But she had too much to think about.

I wouldn’t cry. Not here, not in front of all these people.

She had too little life left, all but she had a lifetime of dying to commence in the following minutes. The rest of her life was a commercial break, over in an instant.

I noticed the absence of a wet humidity on the inside of her breathing mask. The mask grew dry, lifeless. Her chest hardened. Her life fled. The oxygen tank was still sending air to a broken pump, fresh air spilling out the sides of the mask, now resting on her face, with muscles frozen into place. It was now waiting for a mortician’s hands to craft a final expression.

Life gone. A hauntingly quiet room. Still. All eyes were on us, the family, the grieving.

My dad turned the key in the ignition. There was a muted jingle when the other keys clanged together. Having checked the rearview mirror, he pulled the car out of the parking garage’s special floor for families with terminally ill loved ones.

Outside, the traffic light blinked red. We waited for our turn to cross the intersection safely. Always safe. Life is always safe. We are safe. In the shadows of hospitals, people are always safe.

It was our turn to go. My Dad veered left through the light. Our car was headed home, where my two other brothers awaited word. They’d get a personally delivered message, a telegram without words. Sadness streaked across our faces in red splotches, sunburned with sorrow.

We had more things to box up. A closet to clean out, dresser drawers to empty. A single solitary woman to bury. We needed to save one outfit. A final outfit. An entire wardrobe whittled down to a final blouse. A pretty dress. Her best wig. Rosy makeup. Shoes.

She sat like a bloated beauty queen in her casket, a bit of cushion under her back to prop her up. People would want to see her one last time.

I know I did. I got her hazel eyes. My Mom had beautiful eyes. Hazel.

Blake Kimzey is a writer living in Dallas.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Thursday, September 6th, 2007 | Email This Post

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