Choices
This is all new. As new as I am, having been reborn into my motherless era.
I found her garden journal, the first I ever knew her to keep.
I read her stilted script in her voice from a little brocaded notebook I had given her years ago. Now half-filled with notes on weather and canning, a few about her aching back. She finally got the storeroom organized, and she found a home for the rose mums.
These were the scribblings of the woman who should have been my mother.
She lay in the hospital bed, weak and shrunken. Restrained, having extubated herself more than once. A constant institutional buzz reverberated in my head. There was no clock in her room.
Only able to see her every few hours, we did. Standing by her bed, stroking her head, or just sitting, listening to the machines that breathed for her.
My younger brother and I talked in low tones about expectations and quality of care. He thought she would get better. Go home. Get to meet his children and my husband. I knew better.
From the night I got the call from my damaged older brother, I foresaw the worst. I left for Alabama from Maryland in the small hours. I couldn’t stay. My husband was deploying and a hurricane bearing down. I didn’t know if I could even make it home. I…
