But I worried about her spending so much time alone. Navigating airports got to be too much, so when my mom wanted to visit, I’d ask Amro, who drove me and was like a member of the family, to pick her up in Arlington and provide door-to-door service. （She’d make ham sandwiches for the trip and could never understand why Amro always saved his for later. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that as a Muslim, he didn’t eat pork.）
When I arrived at 40th Street, the door was open, which seemed strange.
“Mom?” I said loudly and walked in. I found her sitting in her usual place at the kitchen table in her chenille bathrobe, eating a bowl of Corn Chex.
“Katie!” She seemed surprised to see me. “I just don’t feel well,” she said and put her forehead on the table.
“Don’t worry, Mom, I’m here,” I said, rubbing her back.
I wished so much that I lived nearby or that I could move in. But Carrie was heading off to college, and I had a demanding professional life and a brand-new husband…so instead I had meals delivered, that well-meaning default of the sandwich generation.
My mom got up to take her bowl to the sink. Believe me, I tried, but she responded with an exasperated “No, I’ll do it!”—something I’d heard many times before.
Then she said this: “I don’t want you to be sad when I die.”
My heart stopped. It was my worst fear since I was a little girl—one that only increased with time.
I’d do almost anything to have that moment back so I could tell her the truth—that I was going to be more than sad. Untethered, like a helium balloon that had escaped a child’s grip, drifting, aimless. I wanted to tell her that when she died, a piece of my heart would be forever buried with her and my father in a cemetery in Eufaula.
I spent the next few days just being there and helping out, picking up her watch from the repair guy at the jewelry store, buying her a salad, running to the drugstore.
That Tuesday, I was doing my first interview with Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the Supreme Court for Yahoo News, this one about the so-called Hobby Lobby ruling. I got back to Arlington at about 5:00 p.m. and opened the door, which, as always, got caught on the carpet protector. My mom was sitting in a chair by the staircase, clearly furious.
“What took you so long?” she said. “I’ve been waiting for you for hours!”
She got upset over the littlest things. When the neighbors repaved their driveway, she insisted they’d gone an inch over our property line; a Hatfield-and-McCoy-level feud ensued. Perhaps spending all those hours alone gave her too much time to stew.
Still, I got so mad at myself for lingering over a cup of coffee with my producer and not rushing home. That’s time with my mom I will never get back.
IN AUGUST, JOHN and I took a red-eye to Italy for a belated honeymoon. We made a side trip to Banfi winery in Montalcino, Tuscany, where we stayed in a medieval castle. We rode bikes around the countryside beneath a glowing sky the color of an Aperol spritz. We took a cooking class and learned how to make pillowy gnocchi with brown butter and sage, and a meat sauce that tasted like the kind your chubby Italian grandmother would make if you had one. We dressed for dinner and drank the region’s delicious, fruity wines on the patio beneath a dramatically up-lit castle wall.
But when we arrived in Florence, I got word that my mom was running a fever, and the home health aide she’d finally allowed in the house had called 911. Johnny rushed over and found her gripping the banister, screaming, “No, no, no,” refusing to go. The paramedics had to carry her downstairs. I have thought about that disturbing scene so many times, it’s almost as if I were there.
We tried to go to dinner, but I could barely carry on a conversation. Our next stop was supposed to be Portofino for a two-day stay at the apparently very splendid Splendido hotel, which John had been excited about. Instead, I said, “I can’t stay here. I want to go home.” My mom was in the hospital telling the doctors the same thing.
We called in hospice. Those incredible people—Kiki told me that one night, our mother said to the nurse on duty, “Hold me, I’m afraid.” That angel on earth did exactly as she was asked, cradling Mom for hours as she slept.
Back on 40th Street, I’d lie with her in bed, rub her feet, and stroke her silky white hair. I’d hold her hand and feel the loose skin over the raised blue veins that formed tributaries from knuckle to wrist. I fed her droplets of Coca-Cola from a syringe I’d bought at CVS, as though she were a bird with a broken wing.