3
There are moments, I believe, when we are capable of communicating with those we love without using our voices, moments when we think of someone and the phone rings, or we speak the person’s name and suddenly they are standing beside us. I had often felt this connection to Mickie. When I returned to my room late that night after meeting Fernando, I was filled with a strong urge to talk to her. And just like that, my phone rang.
“I have something amazing to tell you,” I said. I rambled on about Fernando for several minutes until I detected a subdued quality in the tone of Mickie’s voice that was unlike her.
“You need to come home, Sam,” she said. “You need to see your mother.”
4
Mickie filled me in as we drove from the airport to Our Lady of Mercy Hospital. Two months earlier, as I had been traveling in India, my mother had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer, but she had chosen not to tell me or Mickie. Knowing my mother, she saw no point in burdening or alarming us for what she believed to be God’s will. The cancer had already infiltrated her lymph nodes, and the doctors subsequently found tumors in other organs, including her liver, kidneys, and lungs. They gave her three months to live without treatment, perhaps six months with an aggressive regimen of radiation and chemotherapy that would leave her sick and weak. My mother, always the tough Irish lady, chose not to have the treatment. She was in the hospital because her kidneys had begun to fail.
When I entered her hospital room, she had her eyes closed. I hardly recognized her. Her collarbones protruded from beneath her thin gown, as did the bones in her hands, which even now clutched her rosary. Her skin, always pampered with lotion and creams, was wrinkled and sallow and appeared translucent. The worst part of being a doctor is that other doctors cannot lie to you. They cannot give you false hope of a miracle. I had known cardiologists who diagnosed their own heart attacks, and dermatologists who diagnosed their own malignant moles. No one needed to tell me what I already knew. My mother was dying.
I took her hand and leaned close. “Mom?”
She opened her eyes and smiled. Then she placed her hand on my cheek, and her eyes widened. “My boy,” she whispered, looking into my eyes. She started to cry. “My baby boy with the extraordinary eyes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, Mom?”
“What’s to tell?” she said. “It’s my time, Sam. It’s God’s will.”
“You’re too young, Mom.”
“I’ve led a wonderful life, Sam, more wonderful than I had a right to ever expect. God gave me the kindest, gentlest man to be my husband, and he gave me the most precious baby boy.”
I fought back tears of guilt. I should not have left her. Maybe I would have noticed something—fatigue or jaundice, something. “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m sorry I haven’t been around more.”
“Sorry for helping the poor and the sick? Sorry for helping God’s children?” She shook her head. “Don’t you think of it,” she said. “You’ve made me so proud. You’ve been everything to me and more. I had no right to keep you to myself. It was God’s will for you to do his work.”
Initially, it did not feel this way. Initially, my work felt as I had intended it, an escape and a penance, but in Fernando I saw the truth in my mother’s words, and I hoped they would help to relieve the tremendous guilt I knew I would feel for having been gone.
“You don’t owe me anything. You took care of me when I needed you most, when your father became ill. You saved me, Sam. You saved the store. You saved it all.”
I shook my head.
“Your father,” she said, worry creeping into her voice.
“I’ll take care of him,” I said. “I won’t leave again. I’m staying home, Mom.” I sat on the edge of her bed. “Are you in pain?”