Excerpt from "On This Day"

Most days, this is how I remember my mom: silver hair, big smile, bold colors. I remember her that way today, too, but it's Oct. 15, and on this day, I remember her in other ways, as well.

Thought I'd share an excerpt from a piece I wrote in a memoir-writing class I took a few years ago, my recollection of and reflection on the events of this day, 21 years ago.

Tuesday night went like normal, for the most part. I fed her. Or maybe Dad fed her.

She vomited again, which is happening more and more frequently. She can't really swallow, so her mouth fills with saliva. But she also can't really close her mouth anymore, so her lips dry out and she becomes cotton-mouthed. We use spiky little sponges on sticks that look, amazingly, like white PopRocks suckers, dip them in ice water, and gingerly sponge the inside and outside of her mouth. Then, we fire up the suction tube, which feels (and sounds) like a workshed Shop-Vac, and sweep it across her tongue and along the insides of her cheeks to make sure her airway is as clear as possible. Until the next time.

There were times when Dad and I cleaned out her mouth like this, when she would open up for us, and I would catch her eye and imagine I could see a flicker of recognition or acknowledgment. Mostly not. Mostly, there was shock and panic in her gaze, as if each time we did this was the first time, and she couldn't understand why we would do such a thing to her. Every once in a while, she would clamp down her jaw so hard, biting the tube or refusing to let it into her mouth at all. I’ve always wondered if that was just a reflex, with no cognitive thought, or if, perhaps, it was her saying, “C’mon, guys, give it up.”

Finally, she calms down. The morphine’s kicked in. Her breaths are often more shallow now, but she's sleeping, and they're even. I play Solitaire on the computer in what used to be our dining room while Dad goes out to watch the news. This is our nightly ritual: Feed Mom, change the bed pad, moisten then clean out her mouth. Dad catches the 11 o’clock news while I play games on the computer, then we swap places and I watch TV in the family room while he listens to Leno’s monologue and gets ready for bed. Then, sometime after Seinfeld, I shut off all the lights and head upstairs.

Tomorrow, we start hospice care, and I wonder how things will change.

On this night, I turn off the light over the kitchen sink and check on Mom one last time before bed. In the flickering light of The Tonight Show, and lying still in her at-home hospital bed, she looks frail. I keep thinking of the way people describe someone as being “a shell of their former selves.” I used to believe that was a figure of speech.

Knowing her rest is so precarious—even with the morphine—I give her just a light kiss on the forehead to say goodnight.

“I love you,” I tell her. “You take care of you, Mom.”

Then I pause for a moment. I don’t hear her breathing, so I watch her chest for movement. None. I bend over to listen by her mouth. Nothing. I grab her wrist. No pulse.

“Dad. DAD! Dad… Mom—I don’t think she’s breathing.” I choke on the words.

Dad, in his white Hanes T-shirt and briefs, jumps out of his twin bed and runs around to hers, turning on her bedside lamp in the process. I don’t know how he’s so awake and so fast so quickly. He was snoring a second ago.

I stagger back, out of his way, and dart around to the other side of her bed as he checks her neck for a heartbeat and feels her face and chest. I had thought she looked pale in the reflection of The Tonight Show, but I see now that it’s just her. She’s white. So very white.

I think I know then that it's over.

“C’mon, Jude. C’mon, Jude,” I hear Dad plead as he attempts a few rescue breaths. But with her body unresponsive, he rocks back on his heels and looks at me.

“I don’t know how hard I want to try to bring her back,” he says.

“I know, Dad,” I say, “I know.”

The ambulance came with its lights on, which, I learned later, they had to do, even if the person is already dead. And Commander Riker came from the funeral home. (He looked just like Number One and played in Dad’s bowling league.) Dad must have called the hospice nurse to tell her that her services were no longer needed. I called everyone else.

We never talked about that moment, he and I. All the fear and expectation and relief and guilt and adrenaline and revelation. We never talked about it, but it bonded us. In that moment, we lost the most important woman in our lives.