Her sharp gray-blue eyes danced as we kissed goodbye. She turned and I pushed her wheelchair onto the escalator. That’s how she wanted it. She came to Macy’s to die. I watched her go, the back of her head angled down as she looked up to greet two store clerks—blouses whipped up in a breeze of angel wings. Glass doors in the background opened and closed, harp-like sounds rose up against fluorescent lights. She did not look back as the light from the back wall became brighter and brighter and she disappeared into it, pedaling her wheelchair (her Chariot) into the Great Beyond.
No blood. No more Fentanyl. No bad attempts at needling her arm for yet another IV in a sea of bad veins. No humiliating bladder scans. And no nurses or aides asking stupid *** questions. I turned and found my way back outside into the 94 degree heat, the weight of me lunging against the waves rising off the asphalt parking lot, making it hard to walk toward the car. Her Nissan Maxima still smelled like her, the passenger-side door handle filled with her stash of toothpicks, hand lotion drying on the armrest between us. I had been her “wingmate” for seven years. My job was done. This was a dream I had. And it probably is true that my mother would have preferred to go by riding the Macy’s escalator to heaven and not from a hospital bed on the cancer floor of the Boulder Community Foothills Hospital where even in her last days (although we did not know at the time that they were) one of the aides started asking her some dumb*** questions. As a sort-of mountain hippie chick who had been negotiating a serious illness myself (multiple chemical sensitivity/environmental illness), I was astounded when my mom kept saying she wanted to go to Macy’s or Dillard’s on her up days, which were often rare. You are fighting for one more day, one more day, so you can … go shopping? I thought. At the time, our differences were a cow-skull strewn desert neither one of us could see across, with mirages luring us on but proving false the closer we got to them. Nothing soothed us here. I fought her on it and let the choice waft over to my mom’s caregiver. Louise (name changed) had the shopping gene and got as jazzed up as my mom would by going to check out the new Charter Club spring line or the post-holiday sales with her. One day I stepped into my mom’s room, beaming, having just come from a six-mile hike up a local canyon. You know, sweetie, that feeling of bliss you feel when you hike, that’s how I feel when I shop, she said. I left miles behind me when I leaned onto the armrest on her wheelchair and chilled my own system enough to listen to my mom. I see the colors and new styles, feel the textures of different fabrics. I think about what might go with my new pants or blouse. She leaned her head to the side, eyeing me to see if I could finally catch her drift. I feel the same way you do right now. This time it wasn’t a mirage I hit. I waded in up to my waist, my neck. I started swimming. I drank deeply. My mom didn’t want to do cancer support groups, talk with psychologists, read books about fighting cancer after year 2, year 3, year 4 had passed. She didn’t want to journal or review her life much. Yes, why was I still pushing for her to do it my way? She wanted this life and beauty, bliss, new and creative outlets, and time away from the cancer battle, the humiliations of living in a nursing home, and the stress of visiting the cancer center one more damn time. It was her journey. I was her wingmate. She deserved to do this her way. Let the escalator roll … |
Christine Weeber
Writer, editor, healer, and not-so-professional carousel rider. Archives
December 2017
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