2010
Mom died on January 10th,2010. I spent the last six weeks of her life with her, usually taking the night shift, while my sisters alternated in caring for her over the day. What started as a rather easy task, accompanying her to to the loo once or twice a night, soon became more intense, when her personality deteriorated, and her mind lost more and more of the wonderful complexity that I admired so much. And the nights, especially the "hour of the wolf" from 2:30 to 3:30 a.m. became worse and worse. The progress of her cancer ulcers made her immobile and weaker every day. I spent nights and nights with her, holding her hand, soothing her anxiety, humming all the childhood tunes I learnt from her. My brother in law, at daybreak, would read fairy tales to her, and she loved them. After an experimental phase with a transportable night stool she had to wear pampers. Which she, in clear moments, would take off, complaining about the smell... It was hard to keep from patronizing and commanding her. When I first had to lift her up to change her diaper, I was astonished at how light she was now. And how shapely her legs had become.
On Christmas it snowed, and we rolled her hi-tech bed to the window and escalated it to max height, so she could have a good look at it. After a while she asked us to turn the bed back again. She didn't want to see the beauty of the world any more. In the following two weeks she lost most of her grammar and vocabulary, reduced to the Thuringian of her youth. Finally, speech disappeared. But she still reacted strongly on soothing humming, but she did not want to be touched. Her skin got too sensitive, something to do with the specific chemistry of her dying. The last two days were a constant fight for breath. Finally, just half an hour after I started my night shift, the pauses between breaths became longer and longer. Finally, after a pause of 45 seconds, she did her last draw. As tradition requires, I opened the window.
My sisters washed and prepared her, finding white flowers (on a Sunday in January!)somewhere, and wreathing a braid over which they crossed her hands. A renowned psychoanalyst, an upper echelons school administrator, and a book shop owner doing what women of all eras have always done: care for the living and the dead. While the men in the back room were having cigars and cognac, and second thoughts about legacy. Finally the morticians arrived to take Mom to the crematory. And we all fled the house.
I carried her urn towards the grave, behind the Catholic priest that she had insisted on, and I was almost blind with tears, half-slipping on the ice covered cobblestones of the graveyard. And I noticed that now, reduced to ashes, she was still lighter than when I lifted her up.
Fast fore-wind to four months later. I'm in my hotel room in the MIAMI Hotel, soi 13, Sukhumvit Rd, Krung Thep Manakhon, also known as Bangkok, Thailand, hacking on my silver Netbook. Pranee is under the sheets of the bed, snoring in that polite and soothing Thai way of hers. And the thought occurred to me: How will I explain this situation to Mom? And then I realized that I'd no longer have to explain anything to her. Nothing. I'm on my own at last. No more considerations on how to conform what I do or did with her standards. No more polite, truncated versions. And a great serenity came upon me.
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