My mother isn’t speaking to my father. She hasn’t spoken to him in five years, and for that, my father is truly grateful.
I was crying the last time she did speak to him. I saw the exchange though I could not hear the words. His whisperings, her whisperings.
The two of them silhouetted against the window light at the end of the long hall. My father leaning over my mother’s gurney, pressed forehead to forehead. The word “Surgery” on the doors behind them forming a caption for the picture they made. Hands clasped together as if believing they held each other’s hearts. As longingly as the first time they had reached for each other, as desperately as two lovers being forced apart.
Being forced to part on this day of life and death.
They had made the decision together, to do or die . . . to do and die. These two who had lived for and in each other’s dreams these past forty years.
My mother with a disease that was cutting the blood flow to her brain. It was deteriorating her life and it would take it in three years. Her life could be prolonged if the surgery was done now. Twelve brave hearts had gone before her but only three of them had walked away.
I watched their process of decision making, both prayerful in the face of death. My mother wanting to live, wanting to try. The churning and turning until there was peace.
How brave we knew she was; we three sisters gathered around her hospital bed feeling time pushing us toward her fate the next day. We were quick to smile, slow to leave, hoping our “Good nights” were not our good-byes. Our father was left to keep his prayerful, loving vigil. It was painful to leave him that night, too painful to think of him alone. But he reminded us that he would not be alone, at least for this night, he had his Love.
