Wow Mom almost died.
Like I had her ushered right up to the front, I was on the pebbly shore of the dark river Styx (not the band) and Death was reaching out a bony hand to help her into the boat
And then this tireless work of breathing treatments and misty fog in a cup over her face, and the crushed up pills mixed with applesauce where I had to pry her teeth open to fit in, and the cough so darkly stuck like hard molasses at the bottom of her body, her face turning all red with effort to cough and not one piece of molasses loosening, the squirting foul tasting pink expectorant which she swirled in her mouth and threatened to spit back out til I distracted her encouraged her crazily like a monkey until she swallowed
Then nothing had happened, all this work nothing was working. All the pills weren't working so at night I climbed in her bed and watched bad 70's kid caper movies so I could be a kid again and Jodie Foster was leading me into the cave with her tomboy haircut and saying it's okay man, if we can just find this treasure maybe I'll wear a dress in one of these movies but I applied the 70's familiar folklore to this inflatable topped hospital bed, with one of the icons of my life suffering in it next to me, and how do you reconcile yourself to imminent death? Why do we kick it away with all our force
Because you have never known life on earth without this supremely annoying human, you wouldn't be on this earth without this immaculate ridiculous determined nurse dog lover vacuumer cream of wheat maker christmas tree scout giver of baths to you when you were tiny
This person using up her life and body like a punch card these last few years, it can't feel good in there and yet she smiles at the boys and the dogs and the flowers and takes my hand and puts it to her hot cheek
So I lie there crumpled on the crappy half side of the fully tilted up bed to help her not drown in her maple syrup lungs and we share the time with her eyes getting unfocused and breathing like a strangled rooster and I'm happy someone is there for her who actually cares about her, I would want someone who loved me there where I could touch them if I was trying to exit the planet, this is not a time for cautious protecting of others, this is the last of your time, this is the time, take it
After days and days and beating the beast out of her with a flaming broom every two hours and every dosage of every pill possible, her eyes refocused. She breathed shaggily. She turned her eyes over to see me and straggled back to our shores here
So Bob Fosse sits at the foot of the bed holding my feet. We're going to see another brief summer, and fuck you, death's canoe
but we know the path to the river now really well
She used to melt old crayons in the kitchen in little tin caps and let us paint with hot melted wax using q-tips. The wax would lump up so fast as it dried, but it smelled so good and made such fat colory swirls on white paper. It didn't matter what you drew, it was the danger of the hot wax and the precision of playing with something unusual and melty and bright before it slowly lost its ability to be fluid. We wouldn't stop until the last drop of hot crayon, all the q-tips hard and shredded.
Always, we'd hold up our smeary drawings and no matter what battered creations, she'd say ohhhhh Eyes shining That's perfect.
