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Caretakers, death, dying, fiction, Flash Fiction, Mother's death, short story, writing, writing process
This is the title of a short story I wrote that was published in the Fall Issue of Cobalt Review. I’ve copied it below. It’s very short.
It came together when I was working on a blog post about Wallace Stevens, one of my favorite poets. His “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” was on my mind while I was reading Paul Harding’s Tinkers.
Harding’s novel about a man on his deathbed looking back at his own and his father’s life reads almost like a prose poem at times, written in short, lyrical vignettes. I was reminded of my own mother’s death, which I remember as a succession of brief, intensely vivid scenes.
I first wrote of this experience in my blog post “The Deer’s Scream, My Mother’s Eyes, and a Ripe Strawberry.” I wondered how the story would unfold if modeled after Steven’s poem. This is the result of that experiment. While based on personal experience, it is fictionalized. I’d be very interested in hearing what you think.
13 Ways of Looking at Dying, Just Before, and the Moment After
By Deborah J. Brasket
I
She streaks past me naked in the dark hall. Light from the bathroom flashes upon her face, her thin shoulders, her sharp knees. Her head turns toward me, her dark eyes angry stabs. As if daring me to see her, stop her, help her. Or demanding I don’t.
I struggle up from the cot where I’ve been sleeping. Through the open doorway, she’s a slice of bright light, slumped on the toilet, the white tiles gleaming behind her.
She kicks the door shut in my face.
II
Late June she’s diagnosed. October first gone. Mid-August her strength rallies.
“I don’t think I’m dying after all,” she tells me. “They got it all wrong. As usual.”
“Don’t look at me like that,” she says.
“Like what?”
“Like that.”
III
The plums lie where they fall in the tall grass. I pass them on my way to the dumpster, where I toss plastic bags filled with fouled Depends, empty syringes, and morphine bottles.
On the way back to her apartment I gather up a few plums, passing over the ones pecked by birds, or burst open from the fall, or too soft to hold together, carefully selecting those with bright tight skins.
“Where did you get those? Did you pick them?”
“No, they were on the ground.”
“Garbage. Throw them out.”
“Garbage,” she insists. Her foot hits the lever, opening the trash can as I try to push past her.
When she’s not looking I fish them out and wash them in cold water. I place them in a bowl in the refrigerator next to the bottles of Ensure and pediatric water that she won’t touch.
When she’s asleep I take one out and press the cold, purple flesh against my lips, biting through the taut, tart skin to the soft, sweet meat beneath. Sucking up the juices.
IV
“Come here. I want you to sit on my lap.”
“No, Mama. I’m too heavy. I’ll hurt you.”
“Come, I want to hold you, like I used to.” She pats her lap.
Her hands are all bone now, her nails long and yellow. Her pajama bottoms are so loose there’s almost no leg to sit on. I balance on the edge of the recliner and she pulls my head down to her chest.
“There now,” she says, “there now.”
I feel like I’m lying on glass. Like any second I’ll break through. Like the long sharp shards of her body holding me up are giving way, and I’m being torn to pieces in her arms.
V
“She says you stole her car.” The social worker from hospice sits on the couch with a pad and pen in her hand. She’s new. They’re always new. We’ve had this conversation before.
“It’s in the shop. The clutch went out, remember Mama?”
“You can’t have it. Bring it back.”
“You don’t need it. Besides you can’t drive.”
“Anna can drive me, can’t you Anna?”
Across from the social worker sits Anna, slumped on the hearth, biting her thumbnail. I sit facing my mother. We are like four points on the compass, holding up our respective ends.
“That’s not Anna’s job, to drive you.”
“I know what you’re doing,” she tells me between clenched teeth.
“What am I doing?”
“You know what you’re doing!”
Her fury flashes across the room in brilliant streaks, passing over Anna’s bent head, the social worker’s busy pen. It hits me full in the face. I do not flinch.
VI
In spring the wild turkeys wander down from the hillsides and graze in the meadow behind our home. Sometimes they come into our yard and stand before the glass doors. Raising their wings and flapping furiously, they butt their hard beaks against the glass. Attacking what they take as another.
VII
She’s moving in slow motion, inching across the room in her walker. Her sharp shoulders are hunched, her wide mouth drooped, her once silver hair yellow and dull. Dark eyes burn in sunken sockets.
Slowly her face turns toward me, her fierce, bitter-bright eyes fixed on mine.
“This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” she says.
VIII
I kneel at her knees weeping. Her hands lightly pat my head.
When I look up her eyes are closed and she looks so peaceful. Her body sinks deep into the soft cushions steeped in her own scent. The wings of the chair, the arms and the legs, rise up around her, the sharp edges of her face and body sunk in softness.
If I could I would let her, cocooned like that, sink deep beneath the shade of the plum trees outside her window. Sink into the earth just like that.
The tight bitter skin broken through. All the sweet juices let loose.
IX
The ground squirrels are popping up everywhere, their long tunnels weaving through the roots of the old oaks, loosening the soil that anchors them to the slopes. We fear they will eventually cause the trees to tumble and the hillside holding up our home collapse.
So we feed them poison, sprinkling it around the trees and along the squirrel-dug furrows, as if sowing seed. It’s the same stuff found in the Warfarin my husband takes to keep his blood thin and clot-free.
Sometimes I imagine them out there beneath the oak trees in the moonlight, the squirrels running in slow motion through dark tunnels while the blood running through their veins grows thinner and thinner. The light in their brains grows brighter and brighter until they finally explode, like stars, in a burst of white light.
X
She sits on the edge of the bed hunched over, letting me do what I will. The lamplight spills over our bent heads, catching the sheen on the tight skin of her calves.
I hold her bare foot in my hand and rub lotion into the dry skin, messaging the soft soles and the rough edges of her toes. I spread the thick lotion up her thin ankles and over the sheen of her legs where it soon disappears. I pour on more and more.
Her skin is so thirsty. There’s no end to the thirst.
XI
I listen to her breathing in the dark from my cot in the next room. I hold my breath each time hers stops, waiting, listening. Sometimes minutes seem to pass before the rattle starts up again. Each time it’s longer and longer. Soon the minutes will turn to hours, the hours to days, then weeks, years.
How long can you hold your breath before your heart bursts?
XII
I touch her hair, her cheek, before they wheel her into the room where she’s cremated. I wait while she turns to ashes.
XIII
It’s too dark to see when I hear the deer scream. There’s only the sound of thundering hooves and that long terrifying cry passing from one end of the meadow to the other, before crashing down a ravine.
It ends abruptly, as if a knife had sliced its throat.
I see the deer often in my dreams, screaming past me in the dark, slowly turning her head toward me. Fixing her fierce, bitter-bright eyes on mine.
I do not turn away. I let her drink and drink.
First published in Cobalt Review, Issue 9, Fall 2013, in a slightly modified version.
(Forgive me if this has shown up twice in your reader)
Related articles
- “13 Ways of Looking at Dying, Just Before, and the Moment After” (deborahbrasket.wordpress.com)
Several ideas are bubbling in my head after reading your wonderful words. Thank you.
I’m so glad you enjoyed this!
Wow. This is incredibly personal and poignant. I don’t know if “enjoyed” is the right word for this, but it moved me deeply. Thank you.
Thank you, Beverly!
Wow. These are incredible. Great work.
Thank you! That means so much.
Excellent work, Deborah.
Thank you, Karen.
Interesting blog. Was this hard to write?
It was hard to write–emotionally. But it was one of the quickest stories I’ve written, as far as revising to place where I felt it was ready to send out, and then in how quickly it found a home.
This is beautiful, Deborah.
Thank you.
Deborah, this is absolutely beautiful. Your gift with words enables me to try and understand this piece on a whole different level. Although my mother didn’t pass away, she was more close to death than I had ever known or seen before.
I love this: “I listen to her breathing in the dark from my cot in the next room. I hold my breath each time hers stops, waiting, listening. Sometimes minutes seem to pass before the rattle starts up again. Each time it’s longer and longer. Soon the minutes will turn to hours, the hours to days, then weeks, years.”
Your whole story was moving, but this is my favorite part. Thank you so much for sharing this.
Thank you! Your kind words mean so much to me.
Amazingly written! And so moving. Congratulations on getting this piece published! It is definitely deserved.
Thank you, Chrys.
Poignant is what I have to say about this. My Mum died due to cancer so this was hard to read. Good writing!
It was hard to write as well. I’m sorry about your mum. Thank you for leaving your comment.
Amazing is the word. What a treat this was to read, despite the subject matter. Beautiful. Thank you.
Thank you! I so appreciate your note.
Very moving. Congrats on getting it published!
Thank you!
Very nice! Hope to read more
Many thanks.
Very well and differently written. You were there when she passed and I was not when my mom passed. It makes a difference. I am very glad you were able to share that with us. Love your writing style. Congrats on being published as well.
Thank you! So glad you left a comment.
There are four generations of funeral directors in my family. Oh, the stories I could tell. This was beautiful. Thank you for the heartwarming post.
I’m so glad you liked it. Thank you. I bet you do have some stories to tell! Hope you will share them someday.
an intense clarity of phrase and image … what a lovely read. thank you. tony
Thank you, Tony.
I actually read this one earlier. I still can’t describe my “experience” while reading it. With simplicity you drew me into complexity. The beauty and brokenness of my relationship with my own 88 year old mother mixed and blended with your own story…empathy began to blur the distinctions between the two. I find you rather…powerful. I’m grateful, then, that you are clearly…kind.
I love how you put that–“the beauty and brokenness” of you relationship. Mine was like that too, which no doubt is why this piece resonates with you. I’m so glad you stopped here to leave a comment. Thank you.
I just want to thank you for this post as it moved me to write about my Dad using you as my mentor! Thank you for this. You can read what I wrote and how I quoted and linked your blog to mine.
Thanks so much.
Tomasen
http://conversationeducation.wordpress.com/
I loved what you wrote in your blog. Your own story about your father is so moving. I’m thrilled something I wrote inspired another’s writing.
Even though it’s been a few years since losing my dad, this piece was still hard for me to read — memories came flooding in. Still, I echo what Bev said above, WOW. You took such a difficult subject and handled it brilliantly, Deborah. Seriously moving (sniff sniff) and well done.
Thank you Brenda–that means a lot to me.
Oh my Deborah … this is beautifully, painfully written and then beautiful and painful to read. What a blessing you must have been to your mother.
Thank you. I hope so. I tried to be.
I agree with the comments above regarding if it was “nice” or i “liked it”. It was very moving, very nice choice of words and sentence structure and quite sad.
I was thinking of sharing it with my wife, but i think it would make her too sad given how well it was written.
Thank you, Steve. Yes, I agree this is a difficult read, especially if you’ve gone through something similar. It was hard to write too, but felt important to do so. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Very good stuff Deborah.
In the past, I never read very much literary work. I worked in a heavy construction and civil engineering world so am more about nuts and bolts than poetry and prose. However, over the last few years I have been able to let my mind find its own way far more than I would have thought possible so I am slowly moving in the direction of Enlightenment although complete attainment is probably beyond the life expectancy of either myself or the average Bodhi Tree.
I experienced this piece rather than reading it so I am progressing.
Thank you, John. I think you are right, enlightenment is more a progression (journey?) without an end I think–at least in this world, perhaps. That you “experienced” my story is just what I had been hoping for, so I thank you for that.
Beautiful, touching, accurate.
Thank you. Catherine. Sounds like you’ve had some experience caring for a loved one too.
Beautifully written, Deborah. Painful in ways because it hits so close to home. You did a great job of painting a picture with words. Very touching. I was blessed to be with both my parents when they passed, but other than a few almost unbearable incidences, being with them was a more loving experience than you had. I am sorry your experience with your Mom was as hurtful as it was, and I’m positive had your Mom been of clear thinking, she would never have said the hurtful things she did or behaved in the manner which she did. I don’t believe she ever meant to hurt you, and I’m sure, in her heart of hearts, she loved you more deeply than you know. I pray the hurt in your heart can be replaced with loving and fond memories. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you, Ginny. My mother had a good heart and never meant to hurt anyone, but she was blunt and opinionated and not afraid to speak her mind. At the end I was very aware that it was the disease talking, the paranoia that comes when being on powerful drugs, and the anger at what was happening to her. She always said she wasn’t afraid of dying, and I believe her, but she never expected it to be like that, and I think she felt betrayed, by her body, by God. She had thought it would come in a more gentle, dignified way, and not so horribly painful. I understood that anger, but I was helpless to do anything to make it easier other than simply being there for her, being a witness to the most terrible and terrifying thing that ever happened to her. And that’s what this story is about really, bearing up to be that witness, and doing it in as loving a way as I knew how at the time.
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Thank you for sharing this.
I started a piece like this once but was not able to finish it. My son’s dog died last night. You have written this wonderfully. Perhaps I will try again.
I’m sorry about your dog. You should give this a try again. It may help.