I smile at that. She’s still with him in a way—like he’s keeping a piece of her memory rooted to his home. When the time comes, I hope I can keep my mother’s memory alive in the small things, too.
Another mile and I’m at my mother’s. A three-car garage sits on the bottom of the hill off to the left-hand side, and I maneuver my truck so the back seat lines up with concrete steps. In retrospect, the idea of thirty plus steps from the driveway to the main home wasn’t the best idea, but I remember her face when we moved here, full of excitement for all the untapped potential. She’d saved and saved for a house for us. As a single mom working three jobs to make ends meet in the expensive state of California, she deserved this.
We moved from our one-bedroom apartment to this house surrounded by nature and rolling foothills. Orchards and horse pastures engulfed us, giving my mother what she wanted all along—the perfect place to raise her only child.
I’ll never know how she did it. Those long hours at the diner, editing manuscripts on the side while also having her own personal laundry business. The woman never slept. Eventually, her side gig of editing became a not-so-side job, and she did that until the bone-chilling diagnosis two years ago. Since then, she’s declined to the point she can’t work anymore.
It’s funny how little you think about it when you’re a child. I used to watch her move through the mundane without a thought—packing lunches, wiping tears, holding everything together like it was nothing while juggling multiple jobs.
Now I’m the one reminding her to eat, helping her with steps she once carried me down, or holding her hand in waiting rooms. It’s strange, this shift, and most days it breaks my heart.
Opening the back door, I allow Max out to use the bathroom, and afterward he sniffs around the overgrown shrubs skirting the parameter of the garage as I gather the bags on each arm.
“Max,hier,” I say before shutting my truck door and climbing the ascending stairs. He bounds after me to stick by my side with his wagging tail. He loves it here, dare I say even more than the cabin. When we visit, he’ll lay on the back porch overlooking the view of horses roaming the neighbor’s pasture. For such a high energy dog, this place calms him.
“Braver Hund.” I praise without the command in my tone. It’s no longer work while we’re here.
I make it up to the house, unfastening the small white fence that outlines the property, and step through after Max bolts to the front door. I knock once, but open the door a crack so she doesn’t have to come let me in. “Mom! It’s just me.” Shutting the door behind me, I bring the bags to the kitchen island and set them on the Formica countertop.
Like most of the house, the kitchen hasn’t been upgraded since the ’80s. The cabinets are the original dark oak with flat-panel doors. The brass knobs clash with the avocado-green backsplash, which in turn collides with the bold checkered linoleum floor running throughout the kitchen and dining space. The only relatively new thing in the kitchen is the refrigerator I bought her last year after the old one quit, and even the stainless steel of that doesn’t mix well with her aged white stove and bulky microwave that sits in the corner next to her hanging rotten bananas.
“Mom?” I shout again.
“I’m coming. Hold your damn horses.” She groans from the narrow hallway that leads to the primary bedroom, guest room, and hall bath.
I sigh, digging out the fresh bananas from one of the grocery bags before I step to replace the blackened ones on her stand.
In another world, one where my sixty-four-year-old mother wasn’t battling terminal cancer, she’d use these overripe bananas to make bread. One of my favorites growing up. Although, as I crept into my teen years, I devoured any and all fruit I could get my hands on in the house, leaving my mother with none to make bread or muffins.
“What’s all this?” My mother rounds the corner of the hall, eyeballing the island full of food.
I grin at her, studying her petite frame that’s grown thinner. Her clothes hang looser now than they used to. Her skin, pale and almost translucent, stretches over her prominent cheekbones, creating a gaunt appearance.
I grew up used to seeing dark circles under my mother’s eyes. Those three jobs she worked to afford this house, to pay for my travel baseball league in high school, and eventually my college education—none of it allowed for a full night’s rest. But now … now her tired eyes are heavier, pained. When she looks at me, with her deep-set gaze and those blue-gray eyes still soft with warmth and affection, I have to look away sometimes.
It’s too much.
And I hate myself for it.
“It’s food, Mom. I got all your favorites. How are you feeling today? Old Man John said he brought you some peach pie.”
She nods, surveying the bags of groceries like she does each week I bring them. We both know she won’t eat it all, but she gives me this. Pretending to show interest, still protecting my feelings, as mothers do.
Her nose scrunches when she digs through a bag and spots some cabbage, the action shifting the oxygen tubing in her nose. The thin, clear plastic encircles her ears, looping beneath her chin before splitting into two prongs that rest just inside her nostrils.
The portable tank, which she keeps by her side at all times now, is new in the last several months. She’d made it so long after her diagnosis without it she refused at first. Not wanting to wheel around the tank that emits a faint rhythmic hiss with each inhalation. She’d told the doctor to go screw himself. However, her weakened lungs knew she needed it, and she finally relented. Since then, her energy and stamina to walk longer distances has improved, and I’ve noticed it’s helped her dizzy spells and headaches.
“Yep. Saved you a large piece of pie over there.” She points a wrinkled finger toward the microwave.
Most sugary, greasy, carb-loaded food doesn’t make it into my diet, so I give her a look—curious, and waiting for something sarcastic to follow. “Thanks. That’s awfully nice of you to … share.” I eyeball the pie all there, minus a forkful. Large piece, huh? “I’m going to put these away and I’ll come join you in the living room. Can I get you anything?”
“I’m not dead yet, Noah. I’m perfectly capable of getting my own shit.” She bats a hand through the air, and I chuckle, grinning at her.
Instead of commenting, I rustle through the groceries and fill the fridge while she shuffles toward where she spends most of her time. It’s then I notice more new patches of missing hair.
Chemotherapy treatments have taken their toll. Her once voluminous, warm brown hair now sits thinner and streaked with gray. She had it cut short, a pixie cut she called it, when she first began her treatments, and she’s lost half of it. Whatever hair left is limp and brittle, but she tucks it behind her ears anyway.
I listen to the news she’s clicked on, putting away the groceries and doing the dishes in the sink. There’s no dishwasher, and though the nurse who stops in to care for her most days does them for me, it’s not her job.
