Back home.

My mother got home and was in bed for two weeks while her friends and I bustled around her, taking care of her, the house, the dogs and eachother. My mother had amazing friends. She told me that if she died, I didn't have to to keep any of her things but that I should keep her friends. This was good advice.

The main players of these last weeks were her life long "forever friend" whom she met in ballet class when they were both 7 years old, Maureen. Her husband, Howie who is also a pharmacist and helped research medications for her and brought her whatever she needed. Her friend Joyce who had been her lamaze instructor when she was pregnant with a baby before who was born premature and lived a day. Her best friend in recent years, Mary Francis who had become one of my closest friends too. She was right between us in age and I babysat for her little boy, Gerry. Mary had been a nurse and gave my mother her baths. Brad, my boyfriend from college was there, looking after me mostly. And our neighbors the Feehans, always checking in on us, Carol cooking us food.

All day there was someone or other there. One night, Joyce sent me and Brad out to see a movie because she thought it would be good for us to go out. It was awful, we saw some shoot-em-up action movie and I realized that what I wanted was for everyone to get out of our house. I wanted to be alone.

One day I opened the door to the attic upstairs, closed it behind me, climbed the steep narrow stair case that we had painted 3 shades of pink, pushed open the heavy wooden trap door at the top of the stairs and climbed into the attic. I quietly closed the door in the floor and sat in a rocking chair and rocked. I don't know how long I was there. Eventually I could hear people talking to each other, asking each other if the other had seen me. "Where is Sarah?" I sat very still. I waited until it was very quiet and climbed back down.

I helped my mother go to the bathroom at night. She would call me, I would help her out of bed, hold her arm as she shuffled across the hall and into the bathroom. Help her sit on the toilet. I would have to sort of hug her to lower her onto the seat. One time she said, "You must hate this. This is so awful." and I said, "No, I get to hug you, why would I hate this?" and I meant it.

She hated being sick. She was sure she would survive. She was determined to beat cancer. She ate macrobiotic food when she found out she was sick. Got into Ayurveda. She didn't drink or smoke, she was a runner. She had a positive attitude. She prayed a lot. She fell in love with Jesus somewhere in those last years. She said she would meditate and see Jesus pouring a purple light over her liver to cure it and he was laughing. Later I could not shake the thought that Jesus had been laughing at her.

One day in the summer, the first time she went through cancer treatment, I came home and she was taking pebbles out of this little patch of dirt on the side of the house. She said she was imagining the pebbles were cancer cells and she was taking them all out. I think she may even have said that if I wanted to, I could do it too. I didn't. I didn't think she would die. I have often thought, I should have. Not that it would have saved her, but it would have been a kind gesture. I was a college kid though. I was a kid. I was busy.

The best thing I ever did was shave my head for her. When her cancer came back, she tried chemo again and was sad to lose her hair after having grown it back from the last round. It started to fall out. It was October. I was coming home for the weekend from Cooper and I shaved my head with Brad's help. I walked home from the train station and had a pink crocheted hat on. I walked in and took my hat off in the front hall. Her hand went to her mouth and she started to cry. "You're so beautiful," she said. Then she smiled and said, "Can you shave mine?" And so I did. She had a friend over. I can't remember who now. But her friend took two polaroids of us sitting on the couch with our shaved heads.

There are things I wish I had done differently of course. Looking back. But I really didn't believe she would die, because she didn't believe it either. And I was a kid. I thought the grown-ups had it under control. I came home from school every weekend. She said she was happiest when I was home. I think I resented it a little. It was hard to be the only one. We were just 2 left of our original 4. My dad long gone, down in Florida and my sister as well.

Back home, she slept mostly. She could not read. Her liver function was so low that it clouded her thinking. She could not think of the right words to say. She was an author and she could not read. I imagine it broke her heart to lose her relationship with words. It was painful to witness. She had always had a stack of books on her bed, reading them all at once, not one after another. We had so many books in our house. Book cases everywhere. She made a shelf of books she wanted me to read. I did not keep all of them. Another regret. I should have at least written down the titles.

One day she had to get out of bed and come down to the basement to show me how to bleed the furnace because the heat didn't come on. I had to do it every few days I think. Welcome to home ownership. When she died our house was mine. So was the furnace, the tax bill, the lawn, the dogs, the car.

When we first arrived home there was a lot of commotion and phone calls and research. What haven't we tried? Howie set her up with a vitamin C drip. It did not help.

She did not want to eat. She ate clementines. For years every time the pile of clementine crates appeared in the super market I would cry.

Another part of her liver not functioning was that she would cough up bile. Clementines and bile in tissues. She was so skinny, bone thin. Bald mostly, with just soft grey fuzz on her scalp. Jaundiced with the whites of her eyes yellowed. It is shocking to see your parent, this strong, in charge, competent, dependable, powerful person sort of wither away.

I put a picture of her on the dining room table so we could remember what she looked like before. I told her I had done this and she asked to see it. It was a picture of her from a long time ago, the mommy I remembered from when I was young. With her long blond permed hair, sitting on a dock in Shelter Island. I brought it to her and she cried. I thought maybe she was upset that I put such an old photo of her. Maybe she was insulted. Probably not though. I would guess it was her own grief for her own life that was slipping away from her.