Ending

Content warning: death, terminal illness

Ending  by Kryste Andrews

On the dashboard, the digital clock tracks the passage of time. Kate’s eyes dart from the road to the clock and back to the car in front of her, license plate memorized by now. Exactly twelve minutes have passed with no movement on the road. Mass exasperation reached the breaking point at five minutes, she noted, and the honking and shouts from other drivers began a crescendo. At six minutes she turned off the engine and closed her eyes. She would not participate in lobbing bolts of anger. They would only careen up and down the highway, bounce off metal and glass and turn the road into a junkyard this fine Friday afternoon.

She shakes her head at the vision and turns up the volume on the CD player. The song, “Flight” plays.

‘Let me run through a field in the night, let me lift from the ground till my soul is in flight’

The lyrics touch places of anticipated grief inside her. They are meant to soothe her soul, or something she imagines her soul to be. She leans back and lets her mind quiet.

It spins free now, her soul, and moves at its own pace, up and out of the electric, planet-saving car, her personal rhythm of impatience in charge, escaping this confinement. The jammed-up highway is left to find its own solution.

‘And I’ll start to soar’

The words reach deep and remind her.

I am not a prisoner. I am caught only for a moment in the absurdity of humanity’s blind obedience on earth. I soar above puppeteers and their boundaries. I choose.

Her wings unfurl and she escapes over the Hudson. It’s an easy flight across the river. She set her sights on home, but her wings take her to her mother’s room.

‘Let me leave behind all the clouds in my mind’

She sits at her mother’s bedside in the nursing home and takes her hand.

Mom, it’s me, Kate. I know your mind’s been cloudy for a long time. You know I love you, anyway. I miss you, though, the real you, that’s the hardest part. My smart mom. I’m so proud of you.

She feels a slight twitch of her mother’s fingers, unexpected after four days of coma. The train roars along the track, the death train they boarded when the doctor made his pronouncement.

The doctor, a stranger to Kate, had not minced words, “Your mother has lost the ability to eat or drink on her own again. Our job now is just to make her comfortable so she won’t feel any pain.”  

Mom had been alert then, her eyes open and trusting while the nurse prepared her right arm for the next injection, another hydrating one.

Shocked, Kate hurried to smile encouragingly at her mother and say, “But, you’re so much better, aren’t you, Mom? Isn’t she better, doctor?”  

“No, I’m afraid not. This won’t last and she has a DNR that states she doesn’t want to be kept alive by artificial means.” He barked at the nurse. “Don’t give the injection.”

The nurse flinched, the needle in her hand, halfway to its destination.

“But, doctor, my orders say . . .”

The doctor’s voice was gruff. “No, the patient is going to pass away.”

Kate stopped herself from bending double at his words. She locked eyes with her mom as questions tumbled through her mind. Did you understand what he just said? Surely this is not the way your life ends. Do you understand what’s happening? Why is it just you and me here now?

There was no need to speak her questions aloud; her mom had been uncommunicative for months, even more disoriented since the surgery. Death generally occurs within a year after a hip breaks, according to statistics.

Kate was vaguely aware when the nurse huffed and said, under her breath, “Well, I don’t like this.” Gathering her implements, she lobbed a final defiant volley. “That nursing home should be ashamed! I’ve never seen a patient’s mouth in such bad condition.”

‘Wanna float like a wish in a well’

She covers her mother’s hand with both of hers, hoping to feel movement again, but the stillness in her mother’s body is complete and in stark contrast to her rhythmic breathing, mouth open. 

Are you here or are you floating on to your next life already? I wish I knew. Why didn’t I call Melinda so she could see you one last time? Would it have been ethical to keep you alive just so she could say goodbye? Was that my decision to make? Did I choose wrong or did the doctor take away my choice?

“The only course was the one taken.”

Who said that? It doesn’t sound like you, Mom.

‘Watch me rain ‘til I pour!’

__________________

Someone’s tapping on the passenger window. Kate’s eyes fly open. A man peers in at her, bending, waving. He motions and mouths the words, “roll the window down.” She turns the CD player off and pushes the automatic lever to create a small opening.

“Ma’am, sorry to bother you, but I noticed you have a brake light out on the right side. Be extra careful in this rain. It’s hard to see. Best to tap the brakes for the car behind you.”

She leans towards him and says, “If traffic ever moves again.” She gives him a sardonic smile. “Thanks.” When did it start to rain?

The man waves and pulls his coat collar up around his ears. He jogs back to his car.

“Well, that guy didn’t say it.” Kate laughs at herself for speaking her thought out loud. The absurdity of talking to herself about something she thought she heard - inside a dream while half asleep in the car in an epic traffic jam on the Henry Hudson Parkway strikes her and she laughs until tears run down her cheeks and her stomach muscles cramp.

Oh, my god, we’re moving!

Kate switches on the engine and catches up with the car in front of her. The sudden motion feels foreign. Traffic inches forward for a half mile or so and halts. The outline of the GW Bridge is visible. To Kate’s left, the clouds hover low on the Jersey side. The familiar ennui upon leaving the city takes over her body. She listens to Flight again. Lately, she can’t get enough of the song, the way the melody flows and seamlessly ascends, then dips and ascends again - a fickle roller coaster. No, that comparison is too clanky. Craig Carnelia’s song is a soft, artless beauty who knows her own charms but moves with grace and modesty, refusing to flaunt her allure.

‘Let me swirl like a cloud in a storm on the sea’

Mom, hold on. I’m coming to you.

Rain pelts the cars. Kate’s glad to be in the middle lane; the outside lanes can flood.

Just get me over the bridge before she leaves.

On the Jersey side, Kate takes the fastest route to the Actors’ Home, to her mother who waits with open mouth and rhythmic breathing. She catches all the red lights, but rain is lighter here and her foot is heavy. She’s close enough for her heart to stop pounding in her ears from worry, but too far away to stick to the speed limit.

Kate throws her wet coat onto the chair just inside the door of her mother’s room. Tears come at the smell of aging bodies, so many lives nearing their ending.

‘Wish me on my way’

The lyrics are still running in her head.

I’m here, Mom. I’m here to hold you.

The aide is there, the quiet one who knows Kate’s name from the years of visits. She smiles at Kate.

“She’s waiting for you,” the woman says.

“Thanks, Henrietta.” Kate smiles into the eyes of the aide, kind witness to so many endings.

The bed has taken ownership of her mother’s body, her head, seemingly fixed to the pillow. The stark contours of her face are finely sculpted from weight loss in the last weeks. Kate is struck by the grace and beauty shining from the skin pulled tight across the prominent cheekbones. There is no pain or tragedy here, just peace, readiness.

She takes in the short, straight haircut done by the hospice worker, so different from the bouffant style her mother wore for decades. The one hairdresser in town was always allowed to choose the style, whatever would hold up for a whole week if a hairnet stayed on at night. It served her Mother well enough; she wasn’t fussy.

Kate speaks as though her mother is listening and understands. “Mom, you look so pretty. Your straight hair frames your face in a very becoming way. You know, you always were the beauty of the family. You just didn’t know it.”

And here at the end, you are modest and accepting of your fate.

“You managed to make your whole life work without making a fuss, didn’t you? Finessing, pulling all the pieces together for us without calling attention to yourself.”

Kate looks at the aide. She feels an urgency to tell her all about her mother’s best qualities. A rush of words come. “She was so modest, never demanding anything for herself, always singing harmony, never taking the main part.” Kate smiles, remembering, “Until one day last year when she stood and sang solo in the group for Alzheimer’s patients. I had never heard her high voice and all of a sudden she sang these high notes out strong and clear with complete self-confidence.” Kate looks at her mother again. “All the years you held back and went along, filling in whatever was needed, making life as easy as possible for Dad. Always so graceful.” She glances at Henrietta. The aide’s face is impassive, listening, witnessing.

Tears flowing now, Kate is determined to keep on talking. If these are her mother’s last moments, she deserves to be surrounded by as much love and appreciation as Kate can give her.

“She was the perfect old-fashioned wife and mother. We were so lucky to be nurtured by her - our fierce protector. She kept me alive, really. I was always sick and she made me take my medicine and drove me to the doctor endless numbers of times and rubbed my legs when she heard me crying - every night for years.”

Kate senses a shift in her mother’s energy, a difference in her breathing pattern. Henrietta hands her a tissue and she sits on the bed, more alert than she thought possible, every nerve poised.

‘Time flying away’

Her mother’s breathing is slowing. There is a pause in the room, time held in check. Kate slides one hand under her mother’s head and gathers her frail body close. The last bit of color in her mother’s face moves slowly downward. The sight is burned into Kate’s brain, the astonishing leaving of the spirit, unheralded.

She cherishes the body until her arms start to shake. She gently gives her mother’s body back to the bed.

No one speaks. Kate’s tears come faster. They drop on the bed, soaking the light blanket covering her mother’s body. Each last step is memorialized.

Henrietta moves to the other side of the narrow bed and hands Kate more tissues. In slow motion, Kate stands, her eyes on her mother. She becomes aware of a thickness in the air. There is no visible difference, but the air is denser now, so dense Kate cannot move. The breadth of it extends several feet beyond the bed, above it and on either side.

Henrietta says, “It’s your mother; she’s all around us.”

Kate barely breathes. She takes it in. You’re here, my precious. I feel you. I want to feel you forever. I won’t move as long as you want to stay.

The minutes tick by. Kate notices where the thickness stops. It’s at a specific place in the room over to her left, near a bed for another old woman, who never makes a sound. Kate doesn’t look in that direction; she sees it in her mind, but she knows where it ends, the smoke or wispy cloud-like matter. 

I can’t stand here forever. Is life going to continue?

I have to move. It’s time to move. Can I still move?

Henrietta stands beside her and takes her arm. “It’s time, ma’am.”

Kate blinks and straightens her shoulders. She smiles at the aide. “Thank you, Henrietta.” They hug.

Mother’s belongings will have to be removed. She gestures to the few pieces of clothing, the family photos on the tiny bedside table and the tape recorder she used for playing Mother’s favorite recordings.

“Do I take everything out now?”

“It would be best, yes.”

She gathers it all and walks to her car, moving but not feeling the ground beneath her feet.

‘Wanna shift like a wave going on Wanna drift from the path I’ve been traveling upon Before I am gone.’

Hurriedly, Kate switches off the song. Its job is done.