Three Months Before My Mother Died We Went to Dollywood
We rented an electric cart, so she wouldn’t have
to walk; the treatments and new tumors we didn’t
know about yet made her tired.
Both of us bought hats to protect us from the sun —
mine black and red, hers straw and floppy.
We got freshly squeezed lemonade and fudge,
and only ate half. We split a hotdog and fries
for lunch, and a bottled water, and then another.
She couldn’t go on rides. I rode Daredevil Falls,
the log ride that rushes from high up
down into the drench of water. She took
my picture. In one you can’t see me;
in another I’m a red blur about to fall.
We watched rollercoasters, and she said you’d
probably rather be here with friends, and I said no,
and it was the truth. She bought me a mug
with my name printed below Dolly’s perfectly
painted face. She wanted me to remember the day.
For a little while we sat and talked about nothing,
and everything, watched the people rush
around us, the kids too hot, the parents too hot,
but everyone, wanting so much, to keep going.
* * * * *
At Home
Almost a year after it happened
I started napping in the afternoon,
unable to stand daylight, the trudge
from morning to evening. I didn’t know
what to do when I wasn’t forced
to work, didn’t want to work, didn’t
want another day. I knew each
that passed meant my life was closer
to over, but also meant hers had been
over longer. I stared at the wall, replayed
the moment her eyes went blank
or empty, or just dead, became that thing
I can’t quite describe, tried to figure out
if she went out or deeper into herself
where the brain unhooked itself.
In the groggy hospital dad said,
We’re going take you home.
She said, I’m going to die.
He said, We’re taking you home.
She said, You’re taking me home to die.
* * * * *
Fourteen Mondays
She asked if there was anything in Massachusetts that I liked.
When I said there wasn’t she said, life’s too short to be unhappy.
The week before she’d said, most people in this life never get what they want.
She’d started the third new treatment by then,
and even the coffee she loved didn’t taste good anymore.
I’d been lucky enough to spend her last summer with her.
The picture we used for the obituary
was one I took across the table at the restaurant
where she took me for my birthday.
It burned down the winter after she died.
She looked beautiful those last months, and I told her,
and not because she was my mother and sick,
but because she was beautiful,
as if the illness had made her more herself.
I know she was scared,
but Dad wouldn’t let her talk about dying,
you have to have hope, he said,
meaning he had to have hope.
He said she seemed to make peace when the doctor told her
the cancer had spread to her brain,
not the doctor who made her cry,
but the one in the small hospital in our small town
where dad took her when we thought she’d had a stroke
and was talking out of her head.
Eight lesions that I can see, he said,
and my father went to the car to weep.
At the end of August, I grabbed my things, rushed out the door,
a quick hug so I could cry in the driveway.
She died in October in the middle of the semester,
the same month her mother died
in the same house where her father died
and her grandmother died
and where my father proposed to her.
Just think, she said when I left, you’ll be home for Christmas in fourteen Mondays.
My sister gave her the morphine, told her she could go.
My dad shook her once, trying to wake her up.