Mom

By Bill Gottlieb

Mom collapses in a kind of crumble motion, not a flat smack on the floor. Then I’m looking down at her lying on her back, in her housedress, eyes closed. Fingers of her left hand are wrapped around the stem of one of the good martini glasses, tipped over, with two little cocktail onions still stuck up inside (that’s a Gibson). If I had to guess, I’d say the problem is mitral valve stenosis – that’s what the cardiac surgeon said. She’s put off getting it fixed for years because she’s scared of dying on the operating table.

Her color is now a ghastly white, like a death mask.

It occurs to me that I might try to lift her up. But the thought turns my stomach. I don’t want to feel her fleshy arms and thighs. A shoe would fall off and I’d have to retrieve it. I’d have to take off her glasses and set them aside in a safe place. If I slipped, I’d go face down on the carpet.

The carpet is white, wall to wall. Mom has lived here 40 years,10 by herself, and the carpet still has the toxic chemical smell it had on installation. A gentle hill that rises behind the house makes water pool outside at the base of the living room picture window. Water seeps into the room and soaks the carpet, adding mildew to its chemical aroma.

Looking own, I see that the body hasn’t moved, but I detect some respiration. I make a call.The doorbell rings. Having called the healing power, I open the gates and in they come, cold wind behind them. Black slacks and oversized caps tipped to the side, wheeling an immense yellow and black iron gurney. They power it down to the ground. She looks shrunken as they transfer her to the gurney, about half normal size, like she’s doubled over, barely conscious.

“What’s your name? Do you know where you are? We are EMT. Do you know what day it is? Do you know what month it is?Do you know what year it is?” Tone of dominant aliens, broadcast to the cowering population of earth.

The gurney powers up. They hand me a paper. The siren begins, disturbing serenity the neighborhood strains to project – lawns, plantings, a strip of trees, another boasted acre. I’ll call the hospital tomorrow. They left a number.

My mother was conscious,but it was a confused consciousness. At my first visit the day after admission, she knew who I was, but didn’t know where she was or why. In answer to basic questions about orientation, she’d pretend to brighten slightly and give short cryptic responses, making the impression, she thought, that she was in her right mind. Maybe this is what gravely ill people do, disguising incapacity. But I think she was pretending because she was afraid of me. I held the medical proxy and it was understood almost immediately on the hospital floor that she could not direct her own care.

She had a large single room on the top floor of the new building overlooking the East River. It was grey and wet outside. The room had a couch and a fully reclining chair. They tacitly encouraged the well-behaved relatives to stay. I went all the way to mom’s house and cleaned myself up during the busiest time of the day. I returned in the evening,staying the night.For which I was accounted a dutiful son.

It was a charming spot, really. At a certain hour the bright lights in the room and on the floor were lowered. The reclining chair was turned and extended facing the window. It was quiet. I could watch the lights across the river in Williamsburg and along the water in Manhattan. Ferries arrived at the 36th St. dock from the outer boroughs, fewer of them as it got later.

The dim hospital lights, and the sensation of being unobserved, was a setting like one I remembered from my mother’s house, growing up. In my image of the house, it’s nighttime. The kitchen runs along the front, illuminated by a fixture over the kitchen table, tucked in a nook. The light overhead is fitted with yellowish low power bulbs, so the rest of the room stays dark.

The whole house isa stretched out one story. As you walk down the halls, from the parents’ bedroom at the far end, past my room in the middle, thenon to the kitchen, the lights along the way have the same quality: dim, soft, like night lights. Out the windows it’s black.Flowering bushes and trees line the far edge of the lawn, so the road beyond is completely obscured. The houseson these spacious lotshave been built so no house is within sight of another.

I think I was 12 when Mom explained it to me: that in the little town in the Midwest where she grew up, people were driven by religion to hate themselves and their natural feelings. They were ashamed of their bodies. But people here in New York, right by the city, weren’t small minded like that. That’s why she didn’t cover herself or wear anything to bed when it was just me or my father around.

Our meetings began when she’d get up at night tomix a drink. I’d hear her go by and follow her down the hallway and we’d sit at the kitchen table. Stripped to the waist, in summer, or wearing a short open jacket, she would turn to me or reach for something on the table, pulling her body close against my arm and upper body. She’d pretend to ignore the contact, move away a little, and then move closer again. I didn’t know if she wanted me to touch her or if she was relying on me not to.

When an encounter was over, and I was back in my room, I was aroused to a level I couldn’t allay short of exhaustion. And I was repulsed by myself. Anyone would say it was her fault, baiting her childlike that. But I was complicit. I was the one who chose to join her when she got up at night. I let her touch me. I was the one who kept it a secret.

At the hospital, when the sky lightened in the morning, there was a roll call of troops, a full table of ranks going through Mom’s room, each one with their distinctive uniform and a duty to perform: garbagecollector, cleaner, food service, Nurse, medical students, intern, resident,MD/PhD, Attending, Anesthesiologist, Surgeon.Self-identifying, deferential, with planned redundancy, they were tending to her before replacementof her defective heart valve, scheduled for the afternoon.

For years my mother had obstinately refusedreadily available heart surgery. She had become profoundly weak and debilitated.Now, the surgeon did what should have been done long before, successfully replacing her heart valve. But the lapse of time had taken its toll. After surgery the patient’s condition declined.Medicationsused to keep blood flowing to vital organs limited circulation to the extremities. The night after surgery, she developednecrosis, cell death, in her toes. I OK’d the amputations.

After loss of her toes, necrosis wentinto her feet. I was asked for permission to do a second round of amputations. Afteran appropriate show of sadness,deferring to medical necessity, I gave my approval.Now she returned from surgery with stumps on both legs. She was propped up in bed and was coming around.

 

She opened her eyes and recognized me and said, “I don’t think I’m going to make it.” I responded by mouthinga platitude. I didn’t have enough good will for authentic consolation.

Pieces of my mother were being sliced off. Mom couldn’t escape the things I permitted the doctors to do. I saw no reason to prematurely halt the process. Within another 24 hours, cell death had progressed through her legs. There was a possibility it might be stopped if another amputation were made high enough up. I authorized this last resort procedure, appearing as the disconsolate close family member, grimacing and shaking his head. When she came back from surgery this time, she had almost no legs at all.

 

I imagine she had enough consciousness to know what had happened to her. At night she spiked a fever and died.

I put a notice in the Times. There was a burial that only I attended. Condolence letters came from a few of the neighbors. I suppose I’ll get her money now. But getting it won’t be worth the effort of making the final dispositions. For one, I’ll have to go through her possessions. I can’t believe there’ll be anything in that house worth keeping. Maybe she had some jewelry that could be given away, but I wouldn’t know who to give it to. She never had a close circle of friends, and neither did I.

 

Bill Gottlieb from US represented persons with disabilities in court. Before that he was a union organizer and New York City bus driver. He has published work in Brilliant Flash Fiction and other literary journals.