It's been sunny lately and it comes right in mom's front door so I've been taking her toilet and shoving it in the patch of winter sunlight so when I get her out of bed she can sit there and be warm without blankets.
I got Kurt a comic book called Black Fury about a wild horse and I've been reading it in installments to mom before I give it to him for Christmas. So this morning I was reading Black Fury and my mom kept kind of falling into her tray and I kept pushing her back SIT UP COME ON MAN but she was eating and drinking and finishing her poop hopefully at the same time.
I moved her toilet chair with her in it to the side to get it at the right angle so I could pull the wheelchair up and heft her from one to the other. I bent and wiped her and she kept tipping so I was shoving her up and when she was all clean I saw her eye out of the corner of my eye and it was not a human looking eye. It was the Death eye. It was all white, but then I saw she was looking off to the far right. Where Death was approaching. Through the front door I guess. Why did I leave that door open. There were so many flies but the sun was nice.
MOM! I panicked. I bent down to see what was happening. She was a little sweaty. She had eaten, had liquids, pooped, I inventoried in three half seconds what went wrong and at the same time yelled for Barry and thought oh no elvis she can't die on the toilet. Her eyes were all weird, unfocused and mute, up like now Death was above us and I grabbed her and hefted her over to the wheelchair where she acknowledged the move with a short shriek
But then I was crying and Barry came in and I half knelt next to the chair, hugged her and said I was so mean I kept shoving her up I thought she was just falling over I'm sorry mom I love you
We talked to her and tried to be there let her know we were right there, we were with her
Barry said what are all these flies
She might have overheated in the sun even though it's not that hot, she had the look the time the medication reacted with overheating in the sun a year or two ago and she sweated and eyes rolled up so it could be she will come out of it
Her eyes closed at least thankfully, it's the eyes looking scary that scares the humans doing the tending
You can't get good at death, we all get one shot at it and a few shots at being there when the best people we like are heading up death's escalator. The same reason I broke three fingers getting bucked off horses, you don't get good at getting bucked off because you don't get bucked off enough luckily to get good at it.
This time Death apparently was just rummaging through the refrigerator right next to mom. He got an Ensure and he stepped over my legs and he ambled right out past her, and me and Barry standing there flailing around. She wasn't dead. He left her closed eyes and her body and the flies and everything that had stretched and become frantic became regular and quiet again. She was resting. We took her blood pressure. It was good. I told Barry it must've been the sun, everything else I did the same, she had been drinking fluid, she had been doing her thing, she had listened to Black Fury but she hadn't looked at the pictures. I didn't even show her the pictures.
I felt different about it this time, I felt like I had jeans on made of concrete. I felt sure that I am going to be here and that instead of blocking death I am making a grassy path for barefoot tiptoeing out on, for her. I just didn't like the eyes like that. I have to learn these things are part of things I have no power to address in any way. I am just here. The arms.
I fixed her diaper so it was more tasteful and not embarrassing and straightened her pajama top and Barry and I talked about Poppa and loss of control of your own self. When Poppa had to give up driving. The loss of freedom and control.
Mom was somehow resting and alive still. Barry said there's nothing you can do better. We were quiet a minute. Like we were onboard half a boat that had almost been eaten by a 2000 pound meanass fat shark. You are like Atlas, he said.
Barry always says exactly the right things at important moments.
I don't mind death coming. Just if I can pick, I want the peaceful way with no weird facial expressions. Like with my broken horse fingers, I am picking up some skills on the woodsy path as we go. The face has nothing to do with me. The comfort I give is for me and my mom. I'm being her arms for both of us. That's why she made me. It's an unknowable at birth, perk.
I don't mind getting good at it. Wrestling with death is better than the swimming in the acid of every day longterm grief. Neither one is as good as German Chocolate Cake ice cream.
The wind is blowing today up into the stars and will blow Emma home in 31 days. In the meantime I read that every morning when you wake up you have to remember that this is your Real Life.
