On January 28, 2018 my mom dies for fourteen minutes.
My sister and I are first told it’s twenty, but the doctors will later correct themselves, pleased with that extra six minutes they spared her. We aren’t sure what difference that makes. But it seems important and so we catalogue it in our minds with all of the other small accomplishments and nods of gratitude. They don’t care about the rubble they’ve made of her rib cage or the purple kiss on her sternum from the six adrenaline shots they planted straight into her heart. She’s alive and that’s all that matters.
No one talks about the fact that it might have been their fault in the first place. That, having extubated her from a ventilator too soon, while her pulse was surging above 150 and her blood pressure was rising and dropping in epic peaks and deep valleys, the doctors may have caused her heart to work itself into a frenzy it couldn’t sustain. Instead, we’re expected to be grateful, and we are, and so we thank them instead of questioning them. My sister and I nod our forty-something heads, our eyes wide and brimming with tears, and we thank them. I’ll say upfront, she’s fine. In fact, she has no permanent damage, physically or mentally, from her prolonged time on the other side. She also has zero recollection – there was no walking into the bright light, no beckoning from dead relatives – just a long and vividly detailed dream in which she was quite convinced upon waking up in the ICU days later that she had taken a vacation to California with family members who are most definitely alive and well.
Mom is not a sickly person. At age seventy-one, she works full time as an attorney, exercises regularly and recently climbed Machu Picchu with her best friend from college. But she came to the hospital, after dialing 9-1-1 for the first time in her life, alone and ill with a particularly aggressive flu she’d let linger too long. And the doctors saw her as frail, too thin, elderly. I’m sure they noticed her twisted teeth and the gap in the back where she’s still struggling to decide if the cost of the implant is worth it or if she should put that money towards a trip to see the Great Wall of China. They had no way of knowing that she was a single mother who put herself through law school and formed her own legal practice, helped her daughters pay for college, and was only recently financially stable enough to start taking proper vacations for the first time in her life. We would fill in these details later, but I know what they must have thought when they saw her and I know that affected their judgment on how to treat her. Their initial questions were a giveaway, like, Does she have health insurance? Within a matter of hours of entering the ER, her flu formed sepsis and when the doctors gave her fluids for that, her lungs filled and her heart could not pump them clear and so she also formed pneumonia and went into respiratory failure, landing herself on life support and in an induced coma.
There is a lot of confusion among the doctor team about the sequencing of this, which is of continual annoyance as we try to puzzle together a timeline of her illness. Two days before coming to the ER, she had power-walked six miles with my aunt; the night before, she and I had texted about vintage pie plates. During none of this was there any mention of not feeling well, but once we crack into her phone, we find many text exchanges with her assistant where she lays out quite clearly just how awful she’s feeling. I feel selfish for my own messages to her. My last one sits unread, Hey, everything okay? It’s from Monday morning, when I hadn’t heard from her in a day and I think about how a small ripple of concern had weaved into my mind, but I had swept it away, figured her phone was broken or she was busy. It’s not unlike her to hide issues from us. She doesn’t like to come off as fussy. A year before, she informed us weeks later about a fall while taking down Christmas decorations that busted up her arm and shoulder, landing her in surgery to install several metal rods. No big deal, she said.
But there is a lingering confusion around the pneumonia, and it’s only after she dies and comes back to life five days into this ordeal that the resident allows us a coveted peak at her digital chart. Finally, we’re able to see the series of ethereal chest x-rays taken each day, the bloom of her lungs clear in the first when she arrived to the hospital, a cloud in the last. The doctors insist she must have a pre-existing heart condition. We stare blankly at each other. Does she? We don’t know. For days, her mouth twists around a respirator tube, her arms pinned to her sides, balloons of IVs circling her from above. And we can’t help but wonder, how did this get so bad? And then we can’t help but wonder, what weren’t you telling us?
I’m at work in New York City when the initial phone call comes. I almost send it to voicemail, being unsure of its origin and about to enter a meeting. But a nudge in my stomach makes me swipe up to hear a frantic doctor in Macomb, Michigan, tell me my mother is on life support – for two days now. Did I know? she asks, and I yell in response, How would I know that? I take notes of what the doctor is saying on a notepad shoved into my hands by a coworker. The last one reads, She is very ill, may not make it. When we hang up, I quickly phone local family members, dispatching them to the hospital to find out what’s happening and then rush through the streets of the city, gulping air against a rising tide of panic while I try to find my way home. In San Francisco, my sister does the same. It’ll take several hours and a host of flight issues to finally both reach our mom, in critical condition in the ICU, where masks are pushed into our hands to protect her and us from the illnesses. Plural. We have no way of knowing this is only the beginning of a month-long hospital stay, a tragic event that will set back her recovery, and an even longer period of rebuilding all she has lost. But those first days, they’re filled with constant monitoring, cheers when her heart rate stabilizes for mere minutes, thrill when she seems to fight the life support by breathing on her own. But these are false hopes from two people who know nothing about anything medical beyond what we google and the bits of information fed to us in the brief daily rounds by the doctor team. My sister’s friend visits and she knows a thing or two medical having worked for hospice. She tells us in a whispery voice, This is very bad, you guys.
Day in and day out, my sister and I wait for the doctors to round, to hear of some progress being made in that twisting, feverish body. We take bets on which side of the unit they’ll start on and fight our frustration when it’s the opposite end. There’s no rushing things here. Everyone operates in their own time. We see family we haven’t seen in months, having both skipped the annual Christmas festivities this year. I tell the story over and over, how Mom came to visit me in New York City for ten days just weeks ago, had no problem walking up the layers of stairs to our top-floor apartment, and now look at what’s happening to her. We’re all incredulous. Our mom is the mother to all of the local family. A true matriarch. And to see her in such a state is beyond heartbreaking. The doctors keep asking questions about her heart. Yes, she used to smoke; yes, she drinks alcohol. They are grasping for an explanation as to why her heart is so weak. They ask about any recent emotional issues. We tell them about the break up of her law firm and the end to a three-decade long toxic relationship. They start to use words like broken heart syndrome and we wonder why we weren’t there for her more.
The week begins to unfold in a pattern as days in the hospital set to a rhythm. We arrive as soon as we’re allowed, and we wait for the doctors to round. We gather as much information as we can from them and take turns texting it out to family and friends. We google medical terms and learn about heart rate zones and blood pressure and oxygen levels. We hug visitors. We google medication names. We get nervous at bloating ankles and assess the color of urine coming out of the catheter. We google our own symptoms and talk each other down from thinking we have brain tumors or gallstones. We meet new nurses and pick our favorites. We watch for signs of improvement. We go to the same bar each night for dinner during evening shift change and come back to introduce ourselves to the night nurse, make sure she knows how to reach us. Make sure she knows we’re vigilant. We take turns being listed as the Call First person, a terrifying designation that’s scribbled each night onto a huge whiteboard across from her bed that lists her stats and the current nurse and doctors assigned to her. And then we do it all over again the next day. We buy sweaters and thick socks at a nearby H&M since neither of us packed properly for the ridiculously cold weather that we’ve somehow forgotten in our time away from living here. We walk past suddenly empty rooms and hear about people who didn’t survive the night. We meet other people who have loved ones in the ICU too. We learn to carry tissues wherever we go.
We calculate things like – if she can get off the ventilator by Friday, we might be able to fly home by Tuesday. It’s irrational thinking, bred from not enough information shared by the doctors. And yet, we’re elated when an over-eager resident and a newly minted respiratory therapist decide to give it a go on the weekend and try to extubate her while the attending doctor is away. We hold hands and pace the hallway where we’ve been asked to wait during this somewhat brutal procedure, and our hearts soar when the tube is successfully out.
We send a jubilant mass text to the family, encouraging them to come by.
We think she’ll immediately be back to herself, and we don’t hide our disappointment when it doesn’t work that way. We question why she’s so disoriented and can’t really communicate with us, except to say, I have to go. There are reasons and explanations, as there always are. She’s agitated and only calms down to the voice of our male cousin, who is good at calming all of us down. Her blood pressure and heart rate are so erratic that the nurse says, This can’t be right, and removes her from the monitoring. When we finally leave for the day, it’s nearly midnight. We assure ourselves on the drive back to her house that we’ll arrive in the morning to a fully restored mom. We plan to bring her favorite foods and cozy clothes. We’re sure she’ll want those when she’s feeling better in the morning.
It takes the tinkling ringtone a round before registering. I am the Call First person. I don’t know the time of night, but it’s dark and cold and the phone number is the hospital’s. I answer to the same resident who first informed me of Mom’s condition, a solemn tone, telling me that my mom’s heart has stopped and they are attempting to revive her and we should get back to the hospital as soon as possible. I’m in motion then, rushing, blood pumping in my ears as I tear my sister out of bed and we move faster than I’d ever have thought possible. It’s 4 am. We had neglected to get gas in the car on our trip home just hours before, and we’re forced to find a station that’s open at this hour. We curse and shiver against the frigid night and finally pull into a 24-hour place where we put in enough fuel to get to the hospital and then rush out of the station to immediate flashing lights behind us. The police officer is suspicious. It’s either very late or very early depending on your disposition and we’re red eyed and anxious in a car we don’t own. I tell my sister to stay calm. He’s in no hurry to run her license, proof that he doesn’t believe our story that we’re en route to the hospital, that there’s an emergency, that our mom is dying as we sit here. My cell phone rings as he finally lets us go, and it’s the resident again. Your mom is stable. But this is a huge setback. Please still get here as soon as possible.
We send a new mass text to the family. Come to see her, this may be your last chance to do so.
The doctors round on the opposite side first. We’re told, this is still a recovery plan. That means, they have not given up, yet. But there are concerns. Being dead for any number of minutes is clearly not ideal, and fourteen (though not twenty) is a deep worry. There are tests, but we’re told we really won’t know anything for sure until she’s off the life support again. I call my brother-in-law, a neurosurgeon in Atlanta, and he speaks with the doctors on our behalf, tells me, This is challenging, my mom is very sick, the ventilator is not ideal, but heart failure is worse. We are looking at months of recovery, not days. A month for each day on the ventilator, he’s the first person to explain. And it starts to become clear now.
Mom’s pastor and his wife come to visit. My sister and I are not religious people, and it’s still odd to us that Mom goes to church now when her beliefs are a mashup of loving acceptance, altruism and a belief in destiny that would seem to have no real home in a traditional setting. The pastor asks us to hold hands as he prays over her. I catch the eye of the nurse and she shrugs at the furrow in my brow. She’s not a tourist to these hopes. She deals daily in the currency of failed prayers. After, I tell her that if it works, if that praying keeps my mom alive, I’ll start going to church. It’s a promise I don’t keep.
My sister and I make a plan to trade off time. I’ll return to New York City while she stays on in Michigan and then I’ll fly back at the end of the week for as long as I can and we’ll swap again. I say goodbye to my unconscious mom, kiss her restless face, and am sure I won’t see her alive again. I pace at the airport, torn between wanting to stay and wanting to get as far away as possible. I check my phone every few minutes, keep it on during the short flight, and am in a near panic when the battery almost dies on my ride home from the airport.
Every time the phone rings my heart lurches, sure it’s bad news. I come to hate the tinkling sound of the ring tone. My sister takes to texting me before calling me, things like, I’m going to call you now, but everything is okay.
We’re told our mom will be on life support for at least another few days, but a day later as I’m at my desk on a Monday morning, I get that text and then a call from my sister. They want to try to take her off again. I ask her why they’re risking this, but she says they’re confident about it this time around. And I plan for the next call, brace myself to hear that she’s no longer alive. My stomach is in knots as I sit in a work meeting and try to participate as best I can while I watch my phone for updates. On the other side, my sister stands by as the doctors try the extubation again. This time it’s a success. She’s awake. Actually awake and not like before. Hours later, my sister phones me on speaker from a new hospital room, no longer the ICU, and my mom asks how I am. Her voice is small and scratchy, not the booming version that likes to talk over us and laugh loudly at jokes. She’s sure she’s been in a car accident, can’t understand why else she would be in such pain. I know she won’t remember a single word said, after so many days of induced coma, but I tell her everything about my day and how much I miss her and that I’ll be back soon. And I hang up and cry since I know there’s still so much recovery to come and that, while this is a big step forward, she is still very fragile. I text my brother-in-law an update on her progress and he texts back, She’s very lucky.
At the weekend, my sister and I swap places as they’re moving Mom from the regular hospital ward to the rehab floor. I’m panicked by the nonchalance of the nurses here versus the ICU. I think, she’s not ready for this yet, but there are procedures and insurance parameters and all of the mess of being an American with one of the worst healthcare systems in the developed world. There are no longer monitors, though a nurse comes by regularly to take her stats and force pills at her from a tiny Dixie cup. Mom questions what they are, she’s never been a fan of prescription drugs, but the nurses give her little information. There are intermittent breathing treatments that she hastily pushes off her face as soon as the respiratory therapist leaves the room. A parade of doctors takes turns coming by, introducing themselves. This is a new team, but one doctor says she’s followed the case since my mom was first admitted to the ER. She shakes her head in awe and says she didn’t think we’d make it this far. We ask for a different doctor.
The first few days in rehab are full of confusion and mishaps. Nurses who pull my mom up out of bed by her arms and PTs who rush in to scold them and show them how to deal with a patient who has multiple broken ribs. I learn that CPR, when done successfully, generally means lots of broken ribs. The wound around the adrenaline injections site slowly fades from a purple cloud to a rose bush to a little twist of discolored skin that’ll become permanent. The shunt in her arm remains though there are no medications deposited through it. Under the clear bandage, blood has pooled into a gruesome field and I ask the nurses to please take it out. They finally do. Another bandage on her neck makes sleeping uncomfortable. I ask the nurses to remove that as well, but they refuse, given its precarious location. A doctor finally yanks it off in exasperation days later. These are reminders, remnants of the ICU that she’s brought to the rehab floor with her.
A bell rings over the hospital loudspeaker every time a baby is born. One morning there are three twinkly sounds in a row and Mom and I wonder if it’s triplets or three separate families. We make up stories about the babies, give them names and futures. We share ominous looks when we hear Code Blue to a nearby room. We’ve learned the language here. We watch the Olympics. We watch Wheel of Fortune and get really good at solving the puzzles. It keeps us preoccupied in the otherwise dense and endless time of the hospital. We eavesdrop through a thin partition on the family in the next room over, give them fake names and a made up family rivalry. We cluck our tongues when visitors bring the patient McDonald’s. We aren’t making it up that she’s just had quadruple bypass surgery. When another patient from down the hallway goes streaking by one lazy afternoon, we laugh so hard it hurts Mom’s ribs and stings my stoic cheeks. We wonder when the last time it was that we laughed.
There’s a walker now since she’s too weak to stand on her own. She quickly learns how to maneuver it to the small toilet closet in the room, though the nurses scold her when she does it without their help. She drags an oxygen line alongside her, tells me to make sure it doesn’t get pinched while she goes. Twice a day, peppy young women come by to wheel her to the rehabilitation area where she does things like walk up three stairs, lay down onto a bed and get back up again, and make slow circles around the space with the PTs holding onto a thick belt around her waist. These simple things exhaust her. It’s painful to see her so reduced and so I spend those hours in her hospital room instead, checking email and updating family and friends on her progress. As part of her rehab, she also gets a shower every other day and to wear her own clothes, and even though she struggles to find the energy to drag a comb through her hair, I can see her slowly becoming herself again.
A week in on the rehab floor, she’s antsy and invites several friends to the hospital to see her. She asks me to brush her hair and help her put on specific leggings and a sweater she’s had me bring her from home. She takes the oxygen out of her nose and folds up her slender legs under her in the large recliner in her room. I sit on the bed while her friends circle her in folding chairs. She eats the cookies one of them brings but not her hospital-issued dinner and makes fun of me when I suggest she should eat more as she’s trying to rebuild her strength. She’s always been a social person and she’s in her prime for these visiting hours, but when they leave and we’re alone again, she grasps for the oxygen line and looks spent. The next day, she struggles through her PT and I remind her that she only ate cookies for dinner. She asks me when I became so boring.
Squeezed back in my old bedroom, I feel an odd sense of déjà vu and loneliness. For over a year now, I’ve had dreams that my mom is avoiding me. It’s like she’s around, but I keep missing her and I long deeply for her attention. These are vivid moments in my sleep that hurt my heart and wake me in tears. I wonder now if they’re premonitions. A reminder that she won’t always be here. Or if they’re connections to a young me who waited up late in the night on many occasions, worried about her while she was out having fun. Those early feelings of abandonment have played out hard in my adult life, have ended many a relationship and caused endless fights. I realized my parents were divorcing while playing hide and seek at age four. I told the story to a friend recently, about how I hid in my dad’s closet and saw that his clothes were gone. I ran my hands over the empty hangers and I knew. I stayed in that spot, silent, ruining the game. My friend shook her head and said, Your childhood was kinda fucked up.
Each night after the hospital, I drive by a bar called Fins. This place did not exist when I lived here and it’s part of a renewal in the small downtown area. It’s colorful on the outside, strung with lights for the holidays that could stay year-round and be all right. You could put this place in Brooklyn and it would fit right in. And so I’m drawn to it. I’m desperate for some sense of normalcy and as I sit at a traffic light each night waiting for the color to change, I watch the locals having fun and feel pangs of jealousy. I see people my age go in and out the door, see laughter through the windows and drinks being ferried around the bar and really wish I could go inside. But I’m sure that if I walk through the doors I’ll run into a middle-aged version of one of my high-school friends and I can’t bear that thought right now. I don’t want to look into what would have been. I don’t want to pretend that I’m better. Because I’m not. It’s only that I’ve worked hard to move away from this place because I never felt like I fit in. It’s easier to hide that feeling in New York City than here.
But I’m antsy too. I’m antsy to do the things I want to do. The hospital becomes like a second home. I get to know everyone. I hear about their weekends and love lives and the shitty commutes in the snow. My mom tells them all I’m a writer and that I work in the arts in New York City. It gives me a bit of a star status on the ward. I get good at one-liner descriptions of my work. I give advice to a nurse who wants to buy a piece of art, look through a website on her phone that’s image after image of average looking prints she’s deeply drawn to, and tell her to choose the one that most speaks to her. The hospital room overflows with flowers, photos of family and friends, drawings by kids, baked goods and mixed nuts and nice smelling lotions. There’s a constant parade of visitors from every part of my mom’s life, people I’ve never met before or sometimes only heard of. A stack of books sits next to the bed, her drawers overflow with clothes. And I worry we’re never going to leave here. Like it’s some new life for us. We finally get a tentative release date and it’s still two weeks to come. My body aches from too much sitting around. I do walking laps in the hospital for exercise and hospital staff ask me if I’m lost. I want to say yes. I go in circles around and around and around a scruffy indoor courtyard. So much so that I get dizzy trying to make a mile and I think about what it’s like to be back in New York where I walk that far just to get to the train each day. My work is getting testy about how many days I’ve taken off. I almost forget I have a husband. I start to feel like I may never get home. I call my sister so we can make plans for the next swap.
Every night when I leave the hospital, I find a religious pamphlet under the windshield wiper of the truck I’m borrowing from a cousin. It’s always wedged under a layer of snow and I always look around as if the person who put it there might still be in the parking lot, even though I’m usually the last to leave at night. One is a spoof on a parking ticket and I almost fall for it. I curse as I yank it out and dust off the ice and snow, but it’s a veiled missive to believe in Jesus Christ. I collect these since I think it’ll be funny to show my friends in New York City, but when the time comes to pack up and head home, I toss them into the recycle bin instead.
My mom’s house is old, built in 1927. It has the charm of a Wes Anderson set, but the practical faults of a house nearly a century old. The surfaces are uneven, the wind rattles through the windows. But it used to be a speakeasy during Prohibition and that history is fun and so everyone puts up with the cracking plaster and the furnace that quits every few years. I’m used to this house full, bursting with laughing family, wine and food, music and hugs. Alone, the house seems too quiet, scary even. The cats look at distant shadows and freak me out. I hear noises. I hear footsteps where there are none. I dream at night of door locks that don’t hold against outside forces. And I wonder for the first time if she’s safe living here alone.
But my mom is the epitome of self-sufficient. With the exception of dealing with bloody injuries and dead animals, which became my speciality to handle as a kid, she’s proven over the years that she can do almost anything. She has painted and re-painted every inch of the house and is often found on the rolling slopes of the roof cleaning out gutters or washing the outside of second-story windows. She taught us that you can fix anything with some duct tape and a butter knife. I try to find tools to fix a cabinet that’s falling off in her kitchen and laugh when I find only a butter knife in a tool box. I have to call my uncle and cousin to come help. Her shower door is held up with yarn and a screw that’s way too long to be part of the original assemblage. I look at all of these mishap DIYs and they’re red flag worries now given her condition. The hospital gives me several sheets detailing how to make her house accommodating for her return. Family members help me cart her bed downstairs and put up rails in her shower. She’s going to hate all of this when she sees it, but I take my responsibility seriously. I order the nicest, spa worthy shower seat I can find and a modern slip-free shower mat. This lands me on a telemarketer list of daily phone solicitations for elderly medical equipment for months to come. I get her a blood pressure cuff that I’m sure she’ll never use and move rugs that might be hazardous for her walker, which I’m also sure she’ll never use.
I find myself avoiding calls and only occasionally responding to friends and family. I know it’s not healthy and yet I don’t have the energy for their help, as much as I might think I want it. I go into a kind of survival mode in this state and it touches something of my core, is almost pleasant in how it reconnects me to some other version of myself. The work ethic of this county is strong. We’re a proud people who are used to getting our hands dirty, doing what it takes to get by. This area was built by immigrants who risked everything for the hope of a better life and that spirit endures. It’s quintessential blue collar. And this has made us all hard to the bone. My sister will point out that it’s also what makes it challenging to be in a relationship with us. Her two divorces and my own occasionally unstable marriage are proof of that. And you do see it everywhere here: divorcees, domestic issues, the constant prattle about shared custody. I call my husband, but it’s more for him than for me.
It took me some time to realize that my stories of the past differed dramatically from those who would come into my life later on. The first time I flippantly shared with my New York City friends the tale of how my babysitter once put my dad’s gun to her hand and pulled the trigger, severing her fingers, it was met with such a startled expression that I didn’t tell it again for many years. I had never heard the word “gap year” until I moved to New York, nor did I know anyone who joined the Peace Corps or fluently spoke multiple languages. I didn’t have photos of trips to Italy with my family or stories about exchange students. And I learned pretty quickly that it’s a buzz kill to talk about how I started working at age ten, cleaning offices, and my many short-lived jobs leading up to working in a factory for the bulk of my high school years. Every day after school and Saturdays. When I first met my husband, I couldn’t have cared less that he was going to Yale. I was most impressed by the fact that, as a teen, he had worked nights in a gas station in Pittsburgh.
This is also one of those push button areas that can turn a state red or blue. It went strong blue for Obama and red against Hillary, but was all in for Bernie. This is automotive country, factory workers, laborers, and everyone is fighting for the same thing here. To be able to enjoy a beer with buddies after work and to spend summer weekends boating. There’s a lot of flannel. There’s a lot of Carhartt. I realize too late that the truck has no windshield wiper fluid. It’s snowing and freezing outside and I cannot figure out how to open the hood while at the gas station. A guy with a Trump sticker on his SUV offers to help and tells me to get back in the warm truck while he does the work. I tell myself I will stop saying negative things about Trump supporters. It’s another promise I don’t keep.
There are two days between my departure and my sister’s arrival, despite our best efforts to not allow any time gaps. I prepare my mom for this repeatedly, telling her that family and friends will come by both days to keep her company. But when the time comes to say goodbye, we both cry. She’s so frail now and I wrap around her thin shoulders, careful of the still broken ribs and the bruises that have yet to heal. I wait thirty minutes in the lobby for an Uber and cry. I wait an hour at the airport for my flight and cry. And when I get home that night, I call my mom and I cry. Back to my regular life, all I want is to be with her again.
I call my sister and arrange for the next swap.
A month passes, and when I visit it’s to her house instead of the hospital and we settle in like two old friends. The frigid winter has mostly passed and I stare out a window at the yawning brown grass and the naked trees that look like scratches through the panes. It’s Easter time and Mom pulls out a pasanky kit because we’ve decided to honor our Ukrainian roots with a nerve-wracking, hours-long session of decorating fragile eggs. After two hours of carefully etching waxy designs into my egg, I break it pulling it out of its first dip. We laugh as the yolk slips out into my lap. And I start again. I inherited my impatience from her, but somehow we’re able to spend an entire day doing this intricate work that leads to two amateurishly decorated eggs that we text everyone pictures of. She is still very weak and the next day, as we shop at a local boutique, she’s forced to sit and catch her breath. Her heart is the last of her to heal and we’re told it could take upwards of a year. I tell her to take deep breaths and she rolls her eyes at me as she does so.
Another day, we go to Fins and it’s nothing like I had imagined it to be on those lonely nights sitting at the intersection, waiting for the light to change. The wooden interior is blond and shiny and lacks the matted rich hues of a Brooklyn bar. The patrons are unfamiliar and the food is subpar. Its charm slinks away and I wonder if it actually had any or if I made it to be what I wished it was. The evening out takes all of her energy and though we’re both notoriously late-night people, we go to sleep before ten. Her fatigue is infectious. I find myself slowing down alongside her. I take her to her outpatient rehabilitation, which she now does weekly, and we both nap afterward. I feel like I’m catching up on years of sleepless New York City nights as she slowly grows strong again.
Her assistant brings files from work and Mom sits cross-legged on the floor in a sliver of sunlight, shaking her head at the mistakes made in her absence. I pick up where I’ve left off on a new novel I’m writing and talk through plot ideas with her. With gentle encouragement and white knuckles, I persuade her to drive to a nearby friend’s house for a visit we’re due for. It’s her first time behind the wheel in months and though she’s nervous, a few minutes in she’s back to herself, speeding and cursing at other drivers. She says, Maybe we should take my bed back upstairs?
My sister does not make plans for a swap. When I leave, there are hugs and kisses but no tears.
I come back in late summer and we go boating with a cousin. It’s a furiously hot day and Mom jumps into the cold lake to cool off. She swims around the boat and effortlessly pulls herself up the slippery ladder afterwards. That night, we sip wine and barbecue. The next day, we throw a party and family and friends fill the house and the yard. They squeeze me extra hard, hold on longer than usual, and whisper in my ear, We’re so lucky.
In October, she takes her dream vacation to the Galapagos Islands, a trip that had been scheduled for earlier in the year. My sister and I arrive for Christmas with our warmest sweaters and thickest socks. In January, we celebrate another year together, a renewed appreciation for life and a determination to make the most of the time we have left.
And I’ll know it’s true, I’ll know we are so very lucky.
