A Final Goodbye

Mary sat on the edge of her bed in the nursing home, her beautifully fragile hands holding a well-thumbed snapshot. She studied the fading picture, vague familiarity ghosting her face. Just out of reach, distant memories teased her mind. She didn't remember taking the picture, nor could she recall anything about the day it was snapped, but strong instincts pulsed through her veins with each beat of her heart. Somehow, she knew that the photograph had great importance.

Now in quiet communion with her murky past, she had disconnected from the present, except for her aching shoulders which bathed in the hot glow of sunlight flooding the window. Her once sharp eyes dulled with age, held steady on two young boys, each frozen within their innocence. Their round faces, even in black and white, radiated mischief.

Their childlike expressions, wispy grins, and wide eyes charmed Mary as the warmth spread into her chest. She sensed a connection that reached across the years. Though she couldn't remember any details of a shared past, if one even existed, she felt an unbroken love for those two boys.

“Who are these children?” she said in a flat voice lacking an expected rise and fall of inflection.

Her daughter, Amanda, who had been watching her mother cradle the photo, spoke up, “Those are your little brothers.”

“My…brothers,” Mary said halting between words and with a slightly higher tone that echoed her confusion. “I had brothers?” Her eyes narrowed as she took a closer look.

“Yes, Joey and Don. They were eight and twelve.”

“Thank you,” Mary said.

“Mom, do you remember that day?”

"What day?"

"The day the picture was taken."

Mary was silent a long time, her brow furrowed into hard straight lines.

"Mom,” Amanda repeated softly, “Do you remember that day?

Mary shook her head slowly, “No.”

"You were in Virginia, visiting your grandparents. I think you were fourteen."

Mary cocked her head ever so slightly.

“Remember, your Grampa built that beautiful house on Chesapeake Bay.”

Mary smiled as if a long-lost vision flashed through her mind. “But I’m not in this picture,” she said.

“Mom, I think you were holding the camera.”

“I took the picture?”

Amanda smiled, “I imagine so. You were the family photo bug.” 

Mary grinned and lifted the photograph up to her eyes. “Where is the house?

Amanda went very still and looked down at the floor. A long moment later she said, “Let’s not talk about that.”

“Talk about what,” Mary said.

With each passing second, her grip tightened on the photograph, as if clinging to the last few morsels of a disintegrating dream. Through the haze of dementia, she whispered their names, “Joey…Don,” her voice barely audible. It was a plea to hold onto memories she could no longer find. It was torture for Mary, knowing the memories were in her mind, but unable to recall the details. She knew the past was slipping through her fingers like grains of sand.

Amanda gently caressed her mother’s bony hands, tense with fear. “It’s okay, Mom,” she said. “That picture was made eighty years ago.”

“Eighty,” Mary whispered. “That’s a long time, right?”

Amanda laughed, “Yes, Mom, it’s a long time.”

Beth Ann, the attendant on duty breezed into the room pushing a cart. “Miss Mary, it’s time for your pills.”

“I hate pills,” Mary blurted instinctively, annoyance in her tone.

Beth Ann nodded and smiled while she picked up one of three white bottles on the tray. “This one is for your heart,” she said.

“My heart’s, fine. It’s my head that’s broken,” everyone laughed, even Mary.

Amanda winked and whispered to Beth Ann, “She still has a sense of humor.”

Beth Ann poured some water into a small paper cup and handed it to Mary. “The pills are on this napkin,” she tapped her fingernail on the metal cart. “You must take these before I can leave the room.”

“Pouff,” Mary said, but she complied and gulped them down.

“Miss Mary, I’ll be back after dinner to give you a shower.”

“She is so nice,” Amanda said as Beth Ann hurried down the hall. “Don’t you think?”

As the day melted away, Mary closed her eyes, enveloped in a sense of peace that transcended the confines of her failing memory and the concrete walls of this nursing home. At that moment, still holding onto the photograph, she found a shred of comfort in the physical paper squeezed between her fingers, a testament to the immense power of love.

Her daughter checked her watch. “Mom, it’s time for me to go. I need to get home and fix supper.”

Mary’s eyelids flickered for a short second. She nodded and her head dropped to the side.

“See you tomorrow,” Amanda whispered. “We’ll have lunch together.”

But she didn’t answer.

Later that day…

The dinner alarm on her clock buzzed softly. Mary reached up to rub her cheek and opened one eye. The bright sunlight was gone, replaced by the subtle colors of early evening—navy blues, and cinereous grays. A minute later, Beth Ann, wearing an apron and a black hairnet, appeared in the doorway.

“Miss Mary, it’s time for dinner. I’ll get your walker.”

She didn’t answer.

“Sweetie,” Beth Ann repeated, “You need to get up. Chicken tonight.”

“I’m not hungry,” Mary mumbled.

Beth Ann went to Mary’s bedside and slipped her hand under her neck. “Let me help you.”

A few minutes later, walking down the travertine tile hallway, the drowsy scent of the evening’s dinner seemed more akin to a middle school cafeteria than a five-thousand-dollar-a-month nursing home. Mary ignored the aroma, her walker making clacking sounds as she pushed it across the hard floor.

After dinner when Mary returned to her room, she saw the photograph lying at the foot of the bed, face up. Beth Ann had gone into the bathroom to warm the shower. She was also humming the tune to When the Saints Come Marching In.

Mary sat on the bed and looked down at the photo, afraid to touch it. “What is this?” she yelled.

Beth Ann didn’t hear her and continued preparing the bathroom.

Mary became more and more agitated until, with the sweep of her arm, she brushed the picture onto the floor. “Bad…bad…bad,” she repeated until Beth Ann came out of the bathroom and sat beside her.

“What’s the matter, Miss Mary?”

Mary pointed at the photograph on the floor, her face flushed, her hands trembling. “Those are bad people.”

“But Mary, those are you brothers. ” Beth Ann said bending down to pick up the picture.

“No…no…no! Leave it on the floor.”

“Ok,” she said. “Remember, your daughter told you about them yesterday, and that house on the Chesapeake.”

Mary rubbed her hands together as if worried. “My daughter.” It was a question, not a statement.

“Let’s get you in the shower. You’ll feel better.”

The next morning…

Mary was in her bathrobe sitting on the chair in front of the television. Even though she’d been in this room since February, and it was now September, she had never turned on the television. She didn’t know how to work the buttons on the remote. In fact, she’d hide the “damn thing” so people would stop trying to teach her how to use it.

The door standing open, Amanda knocked on the jamb. “Hello, Mother,” she said cheerfully.

Her mom looked up with a blank expression.

“Mom, it’s me, Amanda, your daughter.”

Mary smiled, her jaw quivering, but she didn’t say a word.

Amanda came over, kissed her mom, and sat at the end of the bed. “Do you want me to turn on the TV for you?”

Mary immediately reacted. “No,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

“What’s this?” Amanda said, pointing to the photograph on the floor, and she picked it up.

Mary turned her head away from the photo and froze.

“What’s the matter, Mom?”

Mary refused to look at Amanda. “Take it away,” she said.

Amanda heard the medicine cart clattering down the hall before Beth Ann walked in the room. “Hi, Amanda,” she said pushing the cart up to the bed.

She gave Beth Ann a puzzled look.

“She’s bothered by this,” Amanda wiggled the photo gently so as not to draw more attention to it.

“Hummm, she had an episode with that picture last night before her bath.” Beth Ann then explained what happened.

Amanda’s jaw went slack and her whole body sagged. “Ever since she tore it out of the family photo album she’s been obsessed with it. Staring at the boys for hours.”

“She told me last night that it was bad.”

Just then Mary jerked around, there wasn’t anything wrong with her hearing. “Give me that pitcher,” she yelled, “it’s mine.”

Amanda held it tight. “Mom, what’s wrong.”

Beth Ann bent down close to Amanda’s ear and whispered, “I’m going to check her for urinary tract infection. People in here get those all the time and they start acting crazy.”

“No, that’s not it. Something tragic happened after that photo was taken. Mom senses it.”

“Was it bad?” Beth Ann asked.

“Terrible.”

Mary stood up, her legs wobbling, she shuffled to the bed. Amanda reached out to help but it was too late. Her mother fell and hit her arm on the bed frame, tearing her frail skin.

Beth Ann ran to get the nurse; Amanda got a clean, wet towel and held it against the wound.

“Mom, what were you thinking? You might have hit your head.”

Mary started to cry.

The nurse arrived within minutes and dressed the wound. She also made a note in Mary’s medical chart that she had fallen. Amanda saw her make the entry. Aware that the nursing home had a policy that stated if a resident fell two times, they would be restrained in bed during the night and locked in a wheelchair during the day. This was Mary’s second fall.

The nurse put Mary in a wheelchair to take her to triage for further evaluation. As she rolled out of the room, Mary said, “Stop! Give me that picture.”

She sat rigidly in the wheelchair, her thoughts strewn with fragments of memories like random pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. She clutched the photograph tightly, one finger tracing the outlines of the two boys frozen in time.

When they reached the triage area, Mary's heart pounded in her chest, each beat echoing with the weight of the past. Nurses bustled around her, their voices a hollow murmur as they tended to the needs of another patient. But Mary remained lost in her own thoughts, the photograph, like a distant lighthouse, shone weakly through the fog of her mind.

Her daughter hovered nearby; concern etched across her face like cracks in a porcelain jar. She reached out to touch her mother's shoulder, a gesture of comfort amid the pain. "Mom, are you okay?" she asked.

Mary looked up, her eyes clouded with fear. "Something happened," she whispered, her voice barely audible above the din of the bustling hallway. "Something awful."

Amanda's chest tightened as the desperation in her mother's words increased. She longed to ease her pain, to unravel the mystery that haunted her brittle mind. She knew what had happened, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell her mother.

As the nurses conducted their assessment, Mary's gaze drifted back to the photograph clutched in her unsteady hands. She felt the strongest connection to the two boys she had ever had, their innocent smiles masking a darker truth.

And then, like lightning illuminating darkness as black as the hide of a Black Widow, the fragments of memory began to coalesce in Mary's mind. She saw the beautiful house on Chesapeake Bay, engulfed in flames, smoke billowing into the sky. She saw Joey and Don, their faces twisted in terror as they tried to escape the inferno.

She raced to the porch, her brothers trapped behind a wall of smoke and fire, she was too late to save them. She couldn’t, or wouldn’t, run through the smoldering door. 

Tears welled in Mary's eyes as the truth washed over her, a wave of grief and guilt crashing against the walls of her fractured mind. She had taken the photograph, but had she also taken their lives? The weight of that day hung like an anchor upon her soul.

With a broken heart and tear-streaked cheeks, Mary whispered a final goodbye to the two boys who lived in the fading photograph. Then she tore the picture in half and dropped the pieces on the floor. When the scraps silently lit upon the travertine tiles, she knew that the love for her brothers would live in her heart until the day she died.

But she had carried the raw pain of that dreadful day long enough. Finally, on this day, a serene peace shone in her eyes, revealing the knowledge that her pain would someday be lifted. She hoped that day would soon come.