My last days with Mama at a hospital in Atlanta in February-March, 2008: Every day, Id make sure I dressed up and looked good as I came into her hospital room because it makes her smile with approval. Shed ask me to turn around several times and then come closer, so she could inhale what perfume of hers I was wearing that day. She also wanted me to brush my teeth along with her, so we did that three times a day, she on her bed, me holding a tray for us both so that wed brush and spit (gracefully) into the tray together. It became like an art, spitting into that tray like a lady, and a sacred ritual, spitting together, mother and daughter both. She also liked me to brush her hair, do her eyebrows, put on some light lipstick on her lips, and massage lotion on her legs, sometimes as we talked, sometimes in comfortable silence. She kept saying that just because shes in a place for sick people doesnt mean she has to look sick as well! :-) Then when my stepdad would call in from work and shed ask him softly, pleadingly for what to my mind were impossible, silly stuff, and hed (surprisingly!) let himself be cajoled into it, shed wink slyly at me and say, Men like to feel needed. Thats how you do it. When she had to go into dialysis at another floor, she instructed me to walk around (sashay was her word!) the hospital, maybe Id meet some nice, handsome, single doctor! (After she found out I just read books in her room and slept.) The doctors said she had lost much of her short-term memory with her stroke, but those womanly bonding times with her never showed that. Up to this day, I think she just put one over them, because when theyd come every day to ask her inane questions (whats your name, where do you live, what are the full names of your 5 doctors) to test her memory, shed look at me and give them inane answers too, with this innocent, stupid look on her face! :-) Up to the very end, Mama was all-woman, all-goddessy in her own right.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 00:42:11 +0000
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