A Mother's Goodbye

by Kate Hewitt

  I nod slowly. So now I know. And strangely, that brings its own sorrowful peace. There will be no more striving, no more savoring, no more eking out another precious moment. Now is the time for goodbyes, and amazingly, my body relaxes. The screaming inside me stops, forever silenced.

  Heather brings Isaac to me that night. I am doped up on a morphine drip, the world going hazy at the edges. But I see my son in full clarity. It will be the last time I see him. I want his memories of me to be good ones, strong ones, building sandcastles on Cape Cod, not withering away here.

  His face is pale, his eyes huge and dark as he stands by my bed. Heather quietly leaves the room, and I try to smile. ‘Hey, bud.’

  ‘Mom.’ His voice wobbles, and his lips tremble. I reach for his hand.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I say, stroking his fingers, memorizing the feel of him. His skin is so soft. ‘You can cry. It will always be all right to cry.’

  And he does, the tears spilling down his cheeks, and strangely I’m glad. Now is my chance to comfort him, to give him the last of my strength. I reach my arms up, scrawny, skeletal arms, bone-white, that don’t look as if they belong to me, and I hold my son.

  I press my cheek against his and close my eyes as I breathe him in, the smell of sun and soap and little boy sweat. In my mind he is a newborn, squalling and perfect, a baby, chubby and red-cheeked, a toddler, a gap-toothed six-year-old.

  And then, with my cheek pressed to his and my eyes tightly closed, he is a cocky ten-year-old, a moody teenager. He is learning to drive, graduating, going to college. I see him as an adult, comfortable in his own skin, finding his place. I see his arm around his wife’s shoulders as they laugh together. I see my grandchildren, a whole handful, boys and girls, grinning and laughing, the family I never got to have. My family.

  I see it all in that hug, I feel it and I believe it with everything I have left, and I hold onto it even as I let Isaac go.

  Thirty

  HEATHER

  For three days and nights I stay by Grace’s bed. Isaac is at Stella’s, which is where he should be. And I know, with every instinct I’ve ever possessed, that this is where I need to be.

  I’ve never seen someone die. I hope I’ll be strong enough. I sit by Grace’s bed as I watch her sleep. I watch her eyelids flicker open; sometimes the world comes into focus and sometimes it doesn’t. Nurses come and go quietly; they up the morphine, check her vitals. Dr. Stein visits and gives me sympathetic smiles, talks to Grace if she’s awake and lucid, which isn’t very often.

  But sometimes she is. Sometimes her eyes open and she smiles at me, and a memory comes to her, unbidden, spilling from her lips.

  ‘My dad was just in here,’ she says with a shake of the head. ‘By the door. He had a fishing rod. He loved to go fishing. I always pretended I didn’t mind the worms.’ And then she closes her eyes, murmuring about how strange it is to see him again. A few minutes later she opens her eyes again. ‘I thought my dad was here. It’s so odd… I can’t tell what’s real any more.’

  ‘Maybe it’s all real,’ I offer, and she smiles.

  ‘That would be nice. I think I’d like that, although…’ Her eyes close as a faint smile curves her mouth. ‘A little while ago I thought I saw spiders scuttling all over the floor. Like Raiders of the Lost Ark. I hope that’s not real.’

  ‘Don’t worry, only the good things are.’

  ‘Yes,’ she murmurs as she falls back asleep. ‘Only the good things.’

  I call Stella when Grace’s asleep. We’ve developed a strangely intimate relationship over the last few days, conducted through texts and phone calls, pictures she sends for me to show to Grace, while I give her halting, grief-ridden updates. I hear the warmth in her voice when she talks of Isaac and her children, and it comforts me. There’s not a single pang of envy or shard of regret in me when I hear her voice, and I recognize the love she already has for Grace’s son.

  Then I call Kevin. When I had told him I needed to stay with Grace, he didn’t offer one word of protest. He just said ‘Of course.’ I loved him all the more for it.

  He is my rock now; taking time off work, talking me through it all, helping me to be strong, knowing how important this is. How beautiful, in its own painful way. Because this is painful, all of it, even as it feels right to be here, to be a part of it. And Kevin is a part of it, as well. When I told him I’d said no to Grace, that we wouldn’t take Isaac back, he just hugged me. He offered me comfort, because he knew how much I was hurting. Just as he does now.

  ‘How’s Amy?’ I ask Kev on the second night, my body aching with tiredness, my eyes gritty. Grace is dozing fitfully, twitching, her eyes fluttering open before she sinks back into sleep. She hasn’t eaten anything in nearly eighteen hours.

  ‘She’s all right. Quiet. She hasn’t gone anywhere. Out, I mean.’

  ‘Is she going to be okay?’ I ask Kev, as if he can tell me. As if he knows.

  ‘She’ll get there. We all will. It’s just going to take some time.’ And I decide to believe him, because I need to believe in my family, the family I chose seven years ago, and am choosing now.

  Later, when Grace has lapsed into a deeper sleep, Dr. Stein comes in and checks on her. Her forehead is furrowed as she reads the notes clipped to the end of the bed and then checks Grace’s pulse, scans her face. I hold my breath.

  Dr. Stein gives me a quick, sympathetic look. ‘Not long now,’ she murmurs, and I am jolted, as if by electricity.

  ‘You mean…?’

  ‘I’d say no more than twelve hours.’ She pats my hand and leaves. I stare at Grace, fighting an urge to shake her awake, to somehow make these last hours count. I think of Isaac, and my chest hurts. Everything does.

  Outside dusk is falling, the sun sinking below the buildings, making the dozens of windows shimmer like gold. I pace the little room, stretch my legs. Wait.

  My mind starts to reel back, a montage of what-if moments. When I first saw Grace’s profile on the internet. When I first mentioned her to Tina. When I first met her. I had no idea back then how our lives would become so intertwined, so intimate.

  And then, of course, seven years of visits. Of silent, crackling tension and quick, sharp looks. A world of conversation in pointed glances, suppressed sighs, thinned lips. What if we’d hammered out our objections, admitted our fears, back when Isaac was a baby? Would things have been different? Could we have become friends a long time ago, instead of now, when it feels so late? But not quite too late.

  Maybe we needed everything to happen the way it did, messy and complicated and unplanned, so we could be where we are now. Where we need to be.

  Grace opens her eyes. They look bright, almost green, and her mouth curves in a faint smile. My heart turns over and I sit down next to her.

  ‘Can I get you something?’

  She licks her lips and shakes her head. ‘I thought Isaac was here. He was a baby, sitting on the floor, smiling up at me. At us.’ She closes her eyes briefly. ‘I know it’s not true, but it’s so strange.’

  ‘I’m sure it is.’

  ‘I’m losing it, aren’t I?’

  ‘It’s the morphine, Grace.’

  ‘I know.’ She opens her eyes. ‘My father was the same.’ She looks at me, maybe taking in how bedraggled I must look after spending two days and nights on the hospital floor. ‘Have you been here long?’

  I know she doesn’t really have any sense of time. ‘Not very long.’

  She falls back asleep, and at some point I do too. When I wake up something feels different, it’s almost as if the air has changed. I jerk upright and check on Grace; she’s still breathing, but more slowly, her head tilted to one side, her body slack. It’s as if something vital has left her, something I didn’t even realize she still had to lose. My heart starts to race.

  A couple of hours pass and no one comes in. It’s as if we’ve been forgotten, as if we’ve entered some Twilight Zone of reality, of life, a hovering between one thing and the next.
<
br />   She stirs, twitching restlessly, and I take her hand and clasp it between mine. Her bones feel hollow, her skin dry and papery. Everything so light.

  Autumn sunshine pours through the windows. It’s a beautiful September day, the kind of day when you feel like starting something new; going on a jog or making something fancy for dinner. Breathing life in deep.

  A nurse comes in, checks the morphine. Smiles at me. I stay where I am, stroking Grace’s fingers, sometimes murmuring something, I don’t even know what. I just want her to hear a voice.

  She opens her eyes a few times, but doesn’t seem to focus. ‘It’s all right, Grace,’ I say as I stroke her hand. ‘It’s all right.’

  Then, when it feels like I’ve been sitting there forever, as if I always will be, she opens her eyes and this time she sees me. We stay suspended for a moment, staring at each other, and then her gaze moves down to our hands.

  A smile curves Grace’s mouth, and lightly, so lightly, her fingers squeeze mine. She leans her head back against the pillows. ‘Thank you,’ she whispers, ‘for holding my hand.’

  Those are the last words she ever says.

  Death feels sudden, even when you’ve been laboring toward it for hours, days. It feels like the moment in musical chairs when the music stops, and you’re left looking around, wondering where to go.

  After Grace dies I sit there for a moment, simply because I don’t want to begin the next part. But then her skin starts to cool and I don’t like seeing her so still, so I get up and tell a nurse. Half an hour later, having filled out some forms and called Stella, both of us fighting tears, I drive home.

  Walking into the house feels strange, like stepping through a gauzy veil, from one reality to another. It’s four o’clock in the afternoon, and Amy and Lucy are at home; Emma is still out at the community college where she’s training to be a nursing assistant.

  ‘Mom?’ Lucy looks up from the TV, instantly anxious. I try to smile. Then Amy opens the door of her bedroom.

  ‘Is she dead?’ she asks bluntly, as only Amy can, and all I manage is a nod.

  Lucy looks nonplussed and Amy goes back into her bedroom. I sit down on the sofa, feeling as if I am a hundred years old.

  ‘Will we ever see Isaac again?’ Lucy asks, and I turn to look at her. I can’t tell anything from her tone; she sounds merely curious.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes, I think we will.’

  Later, when the girls are in bed and we are alone in our room, Kevin holds me and I cry. I didn’t realize I had so much sadness inside me as the sobs wrack my body and my breath shudders through me. Kevin strokes my hair and my back and keeps his arms around me. He doesn’t say anything; I don’t want his words. I just need his body next to mine, the thud of his heart, anchoring us to this moment.

  The next morning, I wake up early, the light still grayish as I make coffee in the kitchen. I feel like I’ve been away from my normal life for a lifetime, first with Grace’s surgery, and then the trip to Cape Cod, and then the weeks after, when I took unpaid leave to help her live, and then to help her die.

  I need to go to work, if not today, then tomorrow. Get back to living my own life, making money, making dinner. Life with all its little trials and errands. I can’t imagine it yet. Even just standing here feels like an effort. It’s hard.

  I am just sitting down at the table with a cup of coffee when to my surprise Amy appears in the doorway. Her hair is rumpled, her face pale. I lower my coffee cup.

  ‘Amy…?’

  ‘Can I talk to you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She hovers in the doorway, pleating the bottom of her t-shirt with her fingers. She looks nervous, which is something Amy never is.

  ‘Amy…?’

  ‘When I told you that thing before… it wasn’t true.’ My mind is racing, trying to figure out what she means. The make-up? The boyfriend, or lack of one? ‘The pregnancy test,’ she whispers, and realization slams into me.

  ‘You mean you’re pregnant?’ She nods and I try to keep my expression neutral rather than shocked or appalled, both of which I feel, even though I, of all people, shouldn’t be either. I wasn’t that much older than Amy when I was pregnant with Emma. ‘How far along…?’

  Amy shrugs. ‘I don’t know. A couple of months.’

  I sit back, reeling. ‘And the father…?’

  She doesn’t look at me as she answers. ‘I don’t know who it is.’

  The words fall into the stillness like stones. I have no words. Amy. My little girl. It takes everything in me not to look horrified. Not to cry. And then Amy does.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mom,’ she says, her face crumpling as tears streak down her face. Amy, who never cries. Somehow this makes everything simpler; my choice is clear.

  ‘Oh, Amy. Amy. Come here, sweetheart.’ I fold her in my arms, hugging her for the first time in years, while she cries and trembles. I stroke her hair and tell her it’s going to be okay, even though I have no idea if it is or not. She’s fifteen years old and pregnant, no father in sight. But we can talk about all of that later. Right now all she needs to know is that I am not going to walk away from her now, or ever.

  The next few days pass in a blur of grief and activity; I go back to work, I tell Kev about Amy. He is stoic and accepting, as I knew he’d be. We arrange for a visit to the doctor. I sit with her in the examining room, both of us pale and tense as the doctor confirms her pregnancy and says she is about sixteen weeks along.

  Sixteen weeks. Already in the second trimester, nearly halfway through, and she still looks so slim. She could find out if it’s a boy or girl soon. Feel it kick.

  I hold her hand as we walk out of the doctor’s office and then sit in the car. Rain drums against the windows; the weather has turned. Amy stares into space, dazed.

  ‘Amy?’ I ask gently. ‘Have you thought about what you want to do?’ She shakes her head. I rest my hands on the steering wheel and take a deep breath. ‘Sixteen weeks is pretty far along. You’ll feel it kick soon.’ Her lips tremble and she presses them together.

  ‘I guess… I guess I should give it up for adoption.’ She glances at me swiftly, searchingly, without bitterness or accusation. ‘Like you did.’

  Does my daughter finally have a glimmer of the difficulty of the choice I made, have lived out every day since? ‘You have time to think about it,’ I say. ‘To decide what is right and best for you as well as the baby. You don’t need to say for sure right now.’

  She nods, and I take another deep breath, let it out slowly. Then I start to drive home.

  Three days later we all dress in our somber best for Grace’s funeral. Stella organized it all, and called me to let me know when and where – a big, beautiful church on Fifth Avenue. We file in quietly, sit in the back. There are more people there than I expected – neighbors, parents from school, colleagues from work, or so I assume. A whole life I never knew about, people who care, and yet I was the one who was there in the end. It feels like an honor now, a privilege.

  We watch silently as Stella and Eric come in, their two boys behind them, and then Isaac. He looks so small in his dark suit, his face pale, his eyes serious. My heart squeezes with love and pain and I want to reach out to him so much my fingers twitch. Kev reaches for my hand and holds it tightly.

  I don’t remember much of the service. A priest, a prayer, a poem. Thoughtful silences, singing, kneeling. The words blur by as I stare at Grace’s coffin, shrouded in white, a single wreath of white roses on top. Grace. I miss her. I miss her more than I ever expected to, and I know I will feel that ache for a long time.

  After the service, we circulate with cups of coffee and paper-thin sandwiches cut into triangles, the girls sneaking looks on their phones as we smile and nod, exchange bland greetings with strangers. I know it’s hard for them. We don’t quite fit here, and yet we belong.

  Then Stella comes up to me and Kev, taking both of my hands in hers. ‘How are you?’ she asks. She looks gaunt and grief-stricken, dressed
in an unobtrusive black suit. ‘I’ve been thinking about you so much, Heather…’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about you, too. And Isaac.’

  ‘He seems okay.’ She tries to smile, but sniffs instead. ‘I know it will be a very long road, and it’s all so hard, but it’s good. If that makes sense.’

  ‘It does.’

  She squeezes my hands. ‘You shouldn’t have sat in the back. We’d saved a pew for you all, up front…’

  ‘It’s okay.’ I squeeze her hands back before slipping mine from hers. ‘But thank you.’

  ‘It’s you I should thank. For being there for Grace, and for Isaac…’ She pauses uncertainly, and I know what she is trying to say. She is thanking me for giving up Isaac. For letting go of my son. ‘Do you want to see him? Talk to him, privately, I mean?’

  Kev and I exchange looks. ‘You go,’ he says softly, and I gulp. Nod.

  I find Isaac half-hiding by the trays of sandwiches, scuffing his shoes – they look shiny and new – on the floor. I smile at him.

  ‘Hey, Isaac.’ I touch his shoulder. ‘I wanted to see how you were doing.’ He blinks at me uncertainly. ‘Shall we go somewhere a little quieter?’ He nods, and I take him by the hand and lead him outside to the foyer of the church, and then to a dim little room off the side with dusty chairs and piles of old hymnals. It smells of incense and candle wax. We perch on the chairs and I smile at him, or try to.

  ‘How are you?’ I ask quietly, and he hunches his shoulders. ‘It’s hard, I know. It will be hard for a while. A long while.’ I wish I had more words, words that would help and heal, but all I can offer is this. ‘I just want you to know that I’ll always be here for you, Isaac,’ I say, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘No matter what. If you ever want to call or email or visit, whatever, all you have to do is tell Stella and I’ll be there.’ I squeeze his shoulder lightly. ‘I’ll be there, Isaac. I promise. Always.’ He nods slowly, unblinking.

  Gently I draw him into my arms, and he rests his head against my shoulder. I close my eyes as I memorize the feel of him; he fits under my chin. His skinny arms wrap around my waist. We stay like that for a few seconds, and then Isaac starts to wriggle away. I let him go.