I swallow. It has been a couple of weeks since I saw her on video chat. I had used Abuela’s phone to call The Greens twice. Just days ago, they told me she was stable. How could so much have gone wrong since then?
“Is she … ?awake?”
“No,” the nurse says. “She’s sedated heavily. But you can still talk to her. Hearing is the last sense to go.” She pauses. “Now is the time to say your goodbyes.”
A moment later, I am looking at a wraith in a hospital bed, the covers pulled up to her chin. She is hollow-cheeked, faded, taking tiny sips of air. I try to reconcile this image of my mother with the woman who hid in bunkers in active war zones, so that she could chronicle the terrible things humans do to each other.
Anger washes over me—why isn’t anyone doing anything to help her? If she can’t breathe, there are machines for that. If her heart stops—
If her heart stops, they will do nothing, because I signed a do not resuscitate order when she became a resident at The Greens. With dementia, there was no point in prolonging her life with any extenuating measures.
I am uncomfortably aware that the nurse is holding up the iPad or phone and waiting for me to speak. But what am I supposed to say to a woman who doesn’t remember me now, and actively forgot about me in the past?
When she reappeared in my life, already in the throes of dementia, I convinced myself that putting my mother in a care facility was more compassionate than any consideration she’d ever given me. She couldn’t move into my tiny apartment, nor would she have wanted to, when we were little more than strangers. Instead, I had figured out a way to use her own work to fund her living expenses; I had done the research and found the best memory care facility; I had gotten her settled and had patted myself on the back for my good deeds. I was so busy being self-congratulatory for being more of a daughter to her than she was a mother to me that I failed to see I had really just underscored the distance between us. I hadn’t used the time to get to know her better, or to become someone she trusted. I had protected myself from being disappointed again by not cultivating our relationship.
Just like Beatriz, I think.
I clear my throat. “Mom,” I say. “It’s me, Diana.” I hesitate and then add, “Your daughter.”
I wait, but there is absolutely no indication she can hear me.
“I’m sorry I’m not there …”
Am I?
“I just want you to know …”
I swallow down the hurt that roars inside me, the wash of memories. I see my father hanging a giant map on the wall of my bedroom, helping me press thumbtacks into each of the countries where my mother was when she wasn’t with us. I think of how, when her returns were inevitably delayed, he would distract me by letting me pick a color and then he’d cook entire meals in that monochrome. The heat of my blush at age thirteen when I had to explain to my father that I’d gotten my period. Scratchy phone connections where I pretended my mother was saying something other than You know I’d be there for your birthday/recital/Christmas if I could. Nights I’d lie in bed, ashamed for wanting her to just be my mother, when what she was doing was so much more important.
Feeling forgotten.
And in that second, staring through a screen at someone I never knew, I cannot trust myself to speak, because I’m afraid of what I might actually say.
You weren’t there for me when it counted, either.
Quid pro quo.
Just then, the connection dies.
Elena tries rebooting the modem three times. One of those times, the video call is picked up, but the image freezes immediately and goes black. It is when Gabriel and I climb back into his Jeep and we are driving down the main street of Puerto Villamil with its tiny sliver of cell service that the text comes in.
Your mother passed tonight at 6:35. Our deepest condolences for your loss.
Gabriel glances toward me. “Is that—”
I nod.
“Can I do anything?” he asks.
I shake my head. “I just want to go home,” I tell him.
He walks me to the door of the apartment, and I can see he is trying to find the words to ask if he should stay. Before he can, though, I thank him and tell him I just want to lie down. I wait until I hear his footsteps on the ceiling above, and I imagine him telling Abuela and Beatriz that my mother has died.
I hold my breath, waiting for the words to beat through my blood.
I pick up my phone and stare at the text from The Greens, and then swipe my thumb to delete it.
That’s how easy it is to remove someone from your life.