The goodbye.

   The last two days my mom was alive she was asleep. I suppose she was in sort of a coma. She was receiving a lot of morphine for pain. A hospice nurse was brought in and sat in her room for 24 hours of the day, both days. I think there were 2 nurses, women. I don't remember much about them. They were quiet. I remember the face of the nurse that told me my mother was dying. In a foggy way.
   That night, I guess because the nurse was there, the house was empty except for me and Brad and my friend Kerry. We had eaten Chinese take out. We were having a nice time.
   The nurse called me upstairs. She met me in the hallway outside my mother's room. She said, "Your mother is taking very shallow breaths." I stared at her. "What does that mean?" I asked. She said again,  "Your mother is taking very shallow breaths." I don't know why she couldn't or wouldn't say that she was dying, but she didn't. Kerry and Brad came upstairs. Did I call to them? Did the nurse? Did they just know?
    I stood by my mother's bed, I held her hand. Brad stood on one side of me and Kerry in the other. I bent over my mother, my face close to hers. Her breaths were small and spaced far apart. I whispered in her ear, "I love you. It's okay to go now." She took a couple more breaths and then stopped breathing.  I kissed her cheek until it was cool. I cried. I looked around, wondered where she was now. Brad probably held me while I cried, Kerry too. I don't remember, the memory is a lonely one. I remember feeling panicked afterward, not sure what to do, who was I supposed to call first? I probably called Howie. There was probably a chain of phone calls that were made. Where was my sister? I don't remember. She had come from Florida to see my mom before she died, she was there when we sat Shiva. I don't remember her that night, she must have come. Oh yes, I remember she stayed in a hotel. I remember.
   I remember being along in my mom's room with her. Walking to the sliding doors that looked out onto her patio and looking outside. Whispering, "Where are you?" Looking at the bare trees. I went to my room and got a pair of scissors and cut a little of her hair. Her hair was very short and patchy and grey. Not at all the long, shiny, blond hair she had her whole life until chemo wiped it away. Grey, coarse, wavy hair grew in it's place. I put her hair in a tissue and folded it. I still have it, folded in the same tissue.
   I went to her dresser and put on her engagement ring my father had given her. Not a diamond, just a gold ring with a jade stone in it. She had taken to wearing it for a few years before she died. The stone was exactly the color of her eyes. It felt like a piece of her and I wanted to keep her close to me.
   I remember Maureen and Howie coming. Maureen going upstairs to see my mom and hearing her cry out. I wondered if it was because my mom had been wearing the pink pajamas she had given her. Was it a small detail like that, that just pushed the moment too far for her? Or was it just seeing her long time friend, there and not there at all. I didn't ask.
   Our small team of care takers gathering again. And then my high school boyfriend's mother at the door saying she heard that we were sitting Shiva now and how embarrassed she was, backing away.
   "The people" arriving to take her body, whoever they were.  Who were they? I still don't know. The funeral parlor that would cremate her body? The police? The hospital? The grim reaper? I think that Howie had arranged this too. But I don't know. I was not asked to take care of these things. I am glad it was taken care of. I would not have known what to do. Sitting here now, I do not even know what was done.
    I quickly headed out the back door, I did not want to see her body leaving the house. In a bag. I am glad I don't have that memory. Instead I remember standing in the snow in my back yard, holding onto Brad who held me while I cried. Kerry coming outside and wrapping us with an blanket. Probably an afghan my mother had made. My Aunt Melissa, my mother's sister coming outside and telling us to come in. Pulling at me to come in.
   The only other thing I remember about that night was trying to light a candle by my bed before I went to sleep. I could not get it to light. The wick was too small. Waking later in the night to the candle being lit and wondering if I had lit it or if my mother had.

   The next day people came. A lot of people. I remember being upstairs and hearing people talking, being afraid to go downstairs. Afraid of stepping into that reality that my mother was dead. All of the condolences, the sad faces, afraid they would all be looking at me.
   Eventually I gathered my courage. I walked down the stairs and standing in the middle of the hall looking up at me was our neighbor, Carol. As soon as I saw her face, I started to cry. I walked right into her arms and she held me.
 
   Then sitting in a rocking chair in the middle of all these people in our living room, my living room.
 
   Standing at the bottom of the stairs at 7:30, exactly 24 hours from the hour she died and her friend Joanie walking in the front door, her wild, grey curly hair like a halo around her head, setting her sights on me and making a bee-line for me, a book in her hand. She handed me this book, I think it was called, 'We Don't Die' or something like that. About mediums and life after death.
 
   Other memories I have of those three days of the house being full of people and food are Carol's chicken, My aunt Melissa and my sister Johanna, on my bed in my room laughing. Were they laughing about doughnuts? Were the eating doughnuts? Something about doughnuts. And carrying on, laughing about memories and me feeling awkward and leaving the room.
   More tension tamer tea. More Oreos. Sitting around the dining room table full of my friends. Friends from high school and college. People who would not otherwise ever be in the same room unless I was getting married. I thought how great it was, how fun to have all my friends in one place like this. I think we were playing a board game and laughing and I thought, they must think I'm crazy. My mother is dead and here I am laughing and having a good time.

   On the third day there was a memorial service at a church in Baldwin. I had never been to this church but my mother had been with her friend, Janie, a number of times.  I thought maybe someone would ask me to say something at the service, but no-one did. I thought I should say something but someone else had arranged the service and I felt like I was just attending.
   I remember standing at my bedroom window looking out at the street before we left. It was raining. I was wearing a black velvet dress my mother had bought for me. We saw it in Banana Republic together. It was a mock turtle neck, A-line dress with long sleeves. The velvet was so soft and so black, it did not reflect any light at all, it was heavy and a little stretchy. The inside of the dress felt like silk. It was expensive, to us anyway. My mom was not a big clothing shopper and not a big spender at all. But for some reason, she loved this dress and wanted me to have it. I wonder if we both secretly hoped I would not have to wear it to her funeral, and there I was. With navy blue tights and black flats. I knew Mary Francis would not approve of the navy blue with the black on a normal day but today was not. And I thought it appropriate to be dressed in black and blue.
   I sat in the front of the church. It was a large white church with high ceilings and wooden pews. When the service began it was packed. There was standing room only and people stood in the back and along the sides. The minister read a reading about a boat. Something about seeing a boat on the horizon and saying goodbye and that somewhere on the other side of that body of water there are people who see that boat on the horizon and are welcoming it as it moves towards them.
   During the service a woman cried out so loudly, a quick loud sob that echoed around the room. I did not look back and I still wonder who it was.
   After the service, the line of people who walked down the center aisle and hugged me. The tears, the smiles, Brian Selznick, an Illustrator and friend that had worked with my mom on some of her books, how white his teeth were.  Two of my girlfriends from high school, Giuliana and Vanessa, hugging me together. I laughed and said, "My stooges." Another friend I had grown up with, who had loved my mother and struggled so with her own, hugging me tightly and whispering in my ear, "It should have been my mom."