Death Takes a Holiday

by Leslea Newman

DECEMBER 21, 2007        TAGS: FAMILY, FEAR, AGING, COPING         COMMENTS (2)

 

Illustrations by Clemente Botelho



Seeing Death snuggled up in bed beside my mother was more than a little frightening, to say the least. But there He was, apparent as the blue pleated respirator tube shoved into her mouth, the clear plastic feeding tube inserted into her left nostril, the drug port jabbed into her neck, and the gun-metal gray blood pressure cuff encircling her arm. Why was I so surprised to find Death in a critical care unit? Hospitals are His turf after all, so of course He was there, watching, waiting, and whispering into my mother’s ear.

My mother has never been afraid of Death. In fact, she courted him daily for 61 years with the two-pack-a-day habit she began when she was 14. Every time she lit up one of those non-filtered Chesterfield Kings — 876,000 of them, by my account — she was spitting in Death’s eye. Can’t catch me, she’d taunt each time she held her hair back with one hand, turned a knob with the other and bent over the stove to light her cigarette from the dancing blue flame. You don’t scare me, she said to Death every time she inhaled deeply and then blew out the perfectly round smoke rings that delighted my young brothers and me.

But Death is nothing if not patient. He waited. And waited. And then Death took a holiday along with my mother and father when they went on a cruise to Mexico and the Panama Canal, bringing his henchmen, Bronchitis and Emphysema, with Him to take my mother down.

She collapsed on board, and her heart stopped beating, but a quick-acting doctor started it up again, snatching her from Death’s eager hands. She stopped breathing too, but another doctor in the ship’s hospital managed to get a breathing tube down her throat, frustrating Death once more. My mother is nothing if not stubborn, and she was not going anywhere with Death until she was good and ready. And she certainly was not going anywhere until she saw her daughter again.

I flew to my mother’s side, which took an entire day since she was now in a hospital in California and I live in Massachusetts. As soon as the plane landed, I raced through the airport, caught a cab to the hospital, rode an elevator to the seventh floor and speedwalked into the critical care unit. There was my mother, hooked up to a dozen machines, sound asleep. Death was lying beside her, stroking her ashen cheek. When He heard me come into the room, He looked up and winked.

“Mom?”

The nurse who’d buzzed me into the unit had told me that my mother was heavily sedated and would not respond, but as soon as I uttered that one syllable, she opened her eyes.

“I’m here,” I assured her. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.” My mother used every ounce of strength she had to nod her head once. Then she fell back asleep.

Take that, I mouthed to Death, glaring at Him. If looks could kill, Death would have stopped planning my mother’s funeral right then and there and started planning His own. Scat, I said, as if Death were a large feral cat that had snuck indoors. Begrudgingly He climbed out of my mother’s bed and settled his gaunt frame into a plastic orange chair in the corner, the only seat in the room. Death, like my mother, wasn’t going anywhere until He was good and ready.

Being my mother’s daughter, I am nothing if not obstinate. I brought in another chair and sat beside Death 12 hours a day for an entire week, fighting for my mother. She’s mine, I whispered fiercely, as I held her hand, convinced that as long as I had her in my grasp, Death couldn’t steal her away.

Days passed and my mother didn’t get worse, but she didn’t get better, either. I tried a different tactic. I know you’ll win eventually, I told Death, but can’t I hold onto her a little while longer? He just shrugged His bony shoulders and raised His pointy chin to the clock on the wall. Was my mother running out of time?

When I arrived at the hospital on the eighth day, I found my mother sitting up in bed with Death lingering in the doorway. “She turned a corner last night,” the nurse told me. “We’re taking her off the respirator now.” Death’s ears perked up; He knew this was His final chance. He stood beside me as the breathing tube was pulled from my mother’s throat. Immediately she started panting like a wounded animal, but before Death could move in for the kill, she was handed an oxygen mask and soon her breathing slowed to normal.

Show’s over. Scram, I ordered Death. But He didn’t go far. As I sat there in the CCU with my mother, I heard a terrible commotion outside her door. A man who had fallen asleep behind the wheel and crashed his truck into a telephone pole was brought in, trailed by dozens of relatives, weeping and wailing. I felt terrible for the man and his family, but being only human, I also felt a guilt-ridden relief as Death left my mother’s room and found somewhere else to go. As she and I sat there listening to a priest deliver the man’s last rites, I silently thanked Death for the reprieve He’d given us, grateful for whatever time remained before I had to deliver my precious mother into his greedy arms.

 





Lesléa Newman, the poet laureate of Northampton, Ma., writes frequently for Obit.

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