My mom asks what the matter is. I tell her I don’t want her to die.

You’ll leave the milk out.

The basement door wide open.

When the call comes, you’ll drop everything and run.

Ambulance and mom are words you’d rather never have any association.

Such things, however, are inevitable.

But that doesn’t make it any easier.

On the drive over, a strange fog will settle upon you as you refuse to think what might happen.

Parking. Parking. Dammit! Why is there no parking?

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You’re told to follow the red line. Or is it the yellow line? And there she is, propped up on a gurney. Every one of her children is present. Several of her grandchildren, too. No surprise there.

She’s stable, chipper and cheerful — her usual self. It appears, however, that they’ve let some air out of her tires. She’s smaller somehow. Or maybe it’s that all that vitality is now, somehow, compressed?

The nurses love her. They chat away with us, saying, “This is how I want to be when I’m her age”.

She’s being admitted to a ward. As she is wheeled out, the nurses call out to her: “Come back any time!” We all chuckle at the duality of that invitation.

I sit with my son while the ward nurses do their thing. He squeezes my hand as I lower my head to his shoulder.

I can’t imagine a world without her in it.

Lord knows, I’ve tried. Especially in my teen years. But here we are and it’s a whole other subject.

I watch over her as she sleeps and my stomach churns with long-forgotten memories. She used to sew many of our clothes, and her own, as well. The black velvet dress with the crisp white collar she made for me to wear to my first high school dance flashes in my mind. I remember, too, the raw silk drapes she “ran up” for the living room.

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My mom is a do-er. She can fix just about anything. Mechanical or vegetable. And that includes people, too. I was used to coming home........

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