Leslie’s Blog

“She’s in the hospital.”

My sister picked me up at Newark Airport. I wanted to talk to her…I always wanted to talk to her…and suggested a quiet few moments in the airport lounge before we went to the house.

“I don’t have time for that. I’m doing Daddy a favor by getting you. I don’t know why he couldn’t do it himself.”

The news of my reluctance to be there must have been the big news, and she was openly hostile.

******

Mom looked terrible. Her IV kept falling out of her arm and making wet spots on the bed. She was in a shared room with a young man with a large demonstrative family that liked the TV. The room was decorated in institutional turquoise and orange colors, like a bad Howard Johnson’s dream.

Mom was slow in her movements, painfully slow, but she was in there, and cracked a joke about her arm being too svelte to keep the needle anchored.

The oncologist talked to my father in the hallway. They wanted to do another CAT scan to see how far the cancer had progressed.

They boosted my mother on to a gurney and wheeled her into the hall to wait in a line up of gurneys to be CAT scanned,  as if it were LaGuardia Airport , waiting for clearance for takeoff.

My poor mother was visibly, to me, uncomfortable. She was willing to be cooperative, because the doctor was in charge, but after an hour of waiting, and no movement on the tarmac, I had lost patience.

“Why does she need another CAT scan?”, I asked a nurse that brushed by.

“I’ll get the doctor,” she said.

“Why does she need another CAT scan? I asked when the doctor arrived.

“To see how far the cancer has progressed,” he said.

Something twitched in my head. Was I the only one seeing my mother as a dying person? Was I the only one thinking that a CAT scan wasn’t going to cure her? Was I the only one who knew she needed to be far more comfortable in her dying days than she presently was?

Visiting hours ended before my mother was taken to be scanned.

******

My father and I were at the hospital every time there were visitng hours. It was difficult at best for all involved. People came to visit my mother. She had always been the hostess with the mostess, the person throwing the party, and I could see it embarrassed her to not be vivacious for her company.

I watched my father and mother exchange tearful intimacies. I watched her strain to sign her name to documents that were necessary to run her business. I watched her try to swallow liquid protein drinks that hurt her mouth filled with thrush.

And I saw that she wanted to go home.

******

“I probably need to eat,” my father said. We were driving the slow road back from the hospital.

We sat at a table in an empty restaurant.  My father ordered Shrimp Scampi. He always ordered Shrimp Scampi. I didn’t order anything. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t eat.

The Scampi sizzled in it’s baking dish. My father didn’t touch it. It may have been the first time in his life that he couldn’t eat.

We both put our heads on the table and wept. The restaurant owner was distressed, but understood when I explained.  There was no one else in the place, so he left us alone.

“I don’t want to wake up to a phone call in the middle of the night telling me my bride is dead!”, my father blurted out between sobs.

“Let’s bring her home,” I said.

“We can’t do that!” my father recoiled, horrified.

“Why not!?” I asked. “She’s my mother, and just because she’s in the hospital doesn’t mean somebody else owns  her all of a sudden!”

I was now on a mission.

My father sat up a bit. He stopped sobbing. He leaned far back in his chair as I had so often seen him do when he was “thinking”. He stared off into the near distance.

After a long quiet time, he reached out for his wine glass that had been sitting  full, untouched, on the table. He took a large gulp.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said to me in a conspiratorial manner. He pulled out his wallet, threw down way too much money as a thank you for our time there, and we headed for the door.