1.
“Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy,” my mom read. I was lying on the green carpet in my brothers’ room, two bunk beds towering over me on either side. All four of the boys were snuggled under their covers, listening, probably falling asleep.
My mother made up a distinct voice for each character, no matter how silly. Aslan was wise and spoke slowly and Lucy, my favorite, had a high voice. Sometimes my mom would read a line twice if she stumbled but she did it so smoothly that I felt like C.S. Lewis wrote it for her to read. I can still hear the beautiful rhythm of her voice as she read. The way she would shape the story with the volume of her voice. I can see her sitting in my second-oldest brother’s bunk, holding the book open with her pinkie and thumb, her curly black hair clipped away from her face, a little concentration crinkle in the middle of her forehead. When she finished reading the chapter of the night, I begged her to read another. I didn’t want to sleep when I could dream to my mother’s voice.
The scene belongs in a snow globe. Frozen, protected, and silly with joy. Just like the six of us.
2.
My mom’s dad died from complications of double brain aneurysms when she was fourteen years old. She was the only other person in the room when it happened.
I always imagined it happened in the spare room of the house my grandma had when I was growing up, even though it didn’t. I imagine they were watching MASH reruns while my mom flipped through a magazine. I imagine the curtains were translucent white like an onion and the light shined through dappled and warm like nothing in the world could go wrong, but of course, it did.
I know that the fan was on. I know that my mom’s dad was taking a nap and breathing normally for one moment and then his breath sounded loud and broken. And then my mom didn’t have a dad anymore.
She’s there sitting on the couch next to her dead father and then she’s on the porch with the neighbor lady who is telling her “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You don’t have a daddy anymore.”
So the story goes.
I try to think about what happened between those moments. Did someone call 911? Did anyone touch his clammy skin trying to find his pulse? Did they turn off the fan? Or open the curtains? Did anyone wonder about the girl who was there when it happened? But then I remember they don’t do that kind of thing in my family.
Honestly, it might not have been caused by the brain aneurysms, or high blood pressure, or polycystic kidney disease, or the alcoholism. It might not have even been the combination. But they never tried to figure out why he dropped dead. Again, they don’t do that kind of thing in my family.
3.
This also happened to my mother— not a double just the one— and I was far younger than fourteen and she didn’t die.
But still. Brain aneurysm.
The difference was, she had the habit of going to the doctor. She had the habit of avoiding things. She had the habit of being careful. She broke the pattern that way.
For some reason I can’t remember, I was in the room during doctor’s appointments. The walls in the exam room were chocolate brown other than the beige contrast wall behind the exam table. The black curtains were closed, making me tired and irritable while we waited for the doctor to appear.
I thought it was funny when the doctor did arrive, that he actually dressed up in the white coat and spoke with a comforting detachment like he was telling us to go back to sleep after a bad dream. It was my first encounter with a serious doctor. It was my first encounter with watching someone else get their reflexes tested. My first encounter with CAT scans and blood draws and death. Or the possibility of it.
But I was a brave five-year-old sitting on her mother’s lap craning my neck to look at the black and white scan on the computer screen with the little irregular vein that held her whole life inside of it.
“And so what we’ll do,” the doctor’s voice bloomed into the room. “is take a little pin, like a paper clip, and clip it right there before the bubble, ok? And then the extra blood that’s pooling there now, see?”— he made a circle on the computer screen with a blue dry-erase marker— “will be pinched off so the bubble can’t fill up anymore. So if we don’t clip it the bubble will keep filling and then that’s when bad things happen.”
4.
The Christmas Shoes is a movie about a little boy with a terminally ill mother. From what I remember he was trying to find magical shoes that would heal his mother in time for Christmas. My family received this movie in the year 2007. For some reason I can’t remember, we decided to watch it in June the night before my mom’s brain surgery.
After the movie, my family and I sat in the blue glow of our saltwater fish tank. My parents and older brothers were crying uncontrollably. I, being only five, didn’t understand why we were crying, and everyone else was crying too hard to explain it to me. But then I remembered the doctor’s blue pen circling the little bubble in my mom’s brain. Oh, the dying mother in the movie was my mother! The pain the little boy was feeling was my pain. We were crying because we were scared.
Oh, the dying mother in the movie was my mother! The pain the little boy was feeling was my pain.
I was sad about everything after that. The sunlight catching the dust particles was too beautiful. The stray cat under the shed didn’t have a family. How could any of us be expected to hold in our tears when there are wild dogs and spiders and car accidents and brain aneurysms? Anyone could die at any time and not even my parents could do anything.
I wish I could tell little me that we were not just crying because we were scared. We were crying because we loved. And love is worth so much more than fear.
Mom doesn’t die and leave you the only girl in the house, I would say. You can relax. You grow up and she gets to see you graduate high school and start college. You read all the time. You become an amazing cook like she taught you. You fall in love with someone who makes you tea every day. And you love love love…
5.
And life becomes silly again when you are twenty-two years old driving your boyfriend’s silver Kia Soul because your 2006 Chevy Malibu, black with a red trunk, broke down in the Trader Joe’s parking lot. You are listening to Vivaldi performed on authentic baroque instruments because you hit scan on the radio because it wouldn’t connect to your phone. So the radio scans past NPR, Ed Sheeran, and some country music stations. And around the time you get your mirrors and seat set right, you remember that you hit scan in the first place. So you listen to Vivaldi performed on authentic baroque instruments as you merge onto The 5. You should have been in your own car (her name is Dolly) with a full tank of gas and music with words blaring out of the speakers. But your car broke down in the Trader Joe’s parking lot and your boyfriend is trusting you with his car, and spending the day at home. Your home. He is there drinking tea and reading. Your love. You know it’s fragile but it’s unbroken.
6.
I might get a brain aneurysm someday. I’m glad I didn’t know that when I went to visit my mom after her surgery. I’m glad I didn’t know that as I walked through the hospital hallways with my brothers and dad or when we entered my mom’s hospital room.
The room was bright and white. There might have been something achingly beautiful about it or maybe I was only trying to focus on something other than the woman in the hospital bed. The doctor had said she wouldn’t be able to talk for a while after the surgery and she might sound like a horse if she tried.
She had a strip of white gauze wrapped around her head. From what I remember she was talking normally and didn’t sound like a horse. My little brother and I climbed into the hospital bed with her and ate her leftover blueberry pancakes. These would be the best and last blueberry pancakes I would ever eat. The blueberries were warm and juicy. They left a saucy blue ring in the surrounding pancake which was sweet and fluffy. The syrup was watery. The serving tray was black but the plate was white. There was a carton of milk that we shared. When the pancakes were gone I asked my mom if we could order more, but of course, that’s not why we were there.
I don’t remember what my brothers looked like, or how they reacted. I don’t remember what we talked about. I don’t remember exactly how it felt to see my mother’s head half-shaved and wrapped in gauze. But I will remember the sweetness of those pancakes for the rest of my life.
7.
The story goes that before we got to the hospital the doctor removed my mom’s bandage and threw it away. When the nurse came for rounds my mom asked them to get her a new one: “My kids are coming and I don’t want them to see me like this.” So the nurse got her a fresh new bandage to hide the staples.
She was excited to see us and excited to go home and even excited that we ate her leftover pancakes–the anesthesia didn’t sit well even a few days later.
8.
After the surgery, “There’s no use crying over spilled milk,” became my mom’s refrain. There will be more milk. But I learned when I was very young that I will never get another mother. So I will save my tears for her1.
9.
My mom used to put a bay leaf in all of her soups. Whoever found the leaf would be dubbed “Lucky! No, blessed.”
But I don’t feel blessed.
Someday I might get a brain aneurysm. I might have polycystic kidney disease but I would keep this from younger me, I would keep it from myself now if I could.
I didn’t keep this from my boyfriend. I hope that when I marry him in a few years, he will mean it when he says “in sickness and in health.”
10.
You will want a nice clean ending but eventually, you will learn that there is no clean ending, kidney failure is part of the deal with polycystic kidney disease, just like brain aneurysms.
Mom was thirty-three when she was diagnosed. Just like Jesus. Just like you maybe.
You will realize things are best when they are messy and lived in. That fear is not a worthy deterrent. How could you live without fear? You will learn to live despite the fear. You will turn and look into the pain a little bit more every day2.
You will learn that your mother will need a kidney transplant before age fifty and that you can’t help because you might need one too. You learn this while driving which used to be the scariest part of your day. Your heart aches at the raccoon bodies on the edge of the highway. Your heart aches for the people who drive like they’ll get more lives.
Now your mother is sick. She was sick the whole time. There is no healing from the damage once it is done. That’s part of the deal. Luckily you learned of the possibility of failure when you were five years old so maybe you can slow it down for yourself.
You do yoga, you go for long walks, you eat like a centenarian, and you breathe as deeply as you can as often as you can and you will do these things for as long as you can. Your mother gave you the chance to break the pattern in your way.
And life feels silly but this time in the wrong way.
[1] Rosewood, Abbigail. If I Had Two Lives. Europa Editions, 2019.
[1] Vonnegut, Kurt. The Sirens of Titan. New York, N.Y. :Dell Pub. Co., 1998.
Main Squeeze Literary Journal 