It’s only been five minutes,I wanted to say. But she knew that, of course. She’d already lost so much: her principal flautist position at the Phil, her social life, and now these moments with me, which I knew she cherished.
“It’s okay,” I said, pasting a smile onto my face. “I need a break anyway. I’m starving.”
My mother let out a slow breath. “Sweet girl,” she said. I didn’t know what that was supposed to mean, but she reached out and squeezed my shoulder before she left, like she could impress her words into my bones.
I unscrewed her flute slowly, placing the three separate parts into their little velvet beds, then latching the case shut.
The house was too silent with my mother ill and my father at practice, school on Thanksgiving break. I drifted from room to room like a ghost. I couldn’t remember what I used to do to occupy my time. I didn’t want to keep playing and have the sound of the piano keep my mother up if she was trying to rest. Should I read? Check out what was on Netflix? Every option felt empty and soulless.
I was glad when lunchtime came. I thought maybe after her rest, my mom would be feeling better—if not back to her old self (she hadn’t been her old self in a long time), then at least able to crack a few jokes.
But when she came in, she looked—if possible—worse than before. Even the golden light cast by the dining room chandelier couldn’t lend her face any color.
She told Tiff that the food was delicious, but she barely touched it. I couldn’t eat mine, either; I was too busy watching my mom push her salmon around the plate with the tines of her fork, divvying up the fish until it was just a mess of flesh.
“I was hoping to talk to you both,” my mother said after lunch was taken away.
My father and I watched her in silence. Nothing good ever came from someone sayingI wanted to talk to you.I tried to wrangle my mind into silence; it was only too easy to start theorizing all the different things she might be about to say.
My mom examined her plate like it was the most fascinating thing in the world. She tapped the tines of her fork against the porcelain three, four times.Just spit it out,I wanted to say.Get it over with.
Another part of me wished she wouldn’t speak at all. That this entire moment would evanesce into a dream.
But the words came out of her anyway—too fast and all at once. Brusque and blunt, like she wanted to get it over with.
“I want to discontinue treatment. I’m tired of being on dialysis,I’m tired of being in and out of the hospital all the time. I’m done with it all. I just need to rest.”
The words landed heavy on the table. I heard my father’s sharp intake of breath even as my own ears buzzed with white noise.
Quit treatment? My mother had lupus nephritis. Her kidneys didn’t work. Sheneededdialysis, she needed it to…
“But that’s it,” I said, before I could even think through what I was about to say. “That’d be it. You can’t live without dialysis. So…so what? You’re just going to—”
I couldn’t say it. I couldn’tsay it.
“Miri…” my father started, but he couldn’t seem to speak, either. It was as if my mother had stolen all the air from the room and left us both suffocating.
She shrugged, far too casual a gesture for the conversation. “I’ve quit my job. I can’t play music anymore. I can’t even leave the house unless it’s for treatment. I sleep most of the day. Even walking up the stairs is enough to make me feel like I’ve just climbed an alp. I want to enjoy the rest of my time, not…” She sighed. “You both need to understand…you know how this ends. No matter what. Sooner rather than later, no matter what I do. Ever since my transplant failed, we’ve just been counting down the clock. Youknowthat.”
Her voice sounded tight all of a sudden, and she looked away, grabbing her fork to start macerating her fish again.
“Just wait a little bit,” my father pleaded with her. “Just give it a few more months. You can’t make this kind of a decision out of nowhere, you—don’t be impulsive, Miriam.”
“It’s not impulsive. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time.”
And the worst part was that I believed her.
I should have seen it. I should have seen it coming a long way off. I’d watched her get tired, her lupus eating away at every part of her—joints, skin, heart, lungs, kidneys. She’d been dying for a longtime now. The only reason she wasn’t already in the ground was the machine keeping her blood clean and her body alive.
“Don’t, Mom,” I said. “Please, just…please think about this. Longer. Please don’t just—you can’tleaveus!”
The last words burst out of me, scraping raw and ragged against my throat. I squeezed my eyes shut against the tears that threatened to spill down my cheeks. At least my mother had the decency to look conflicted. But it wasn’t enough.
She didn’t have to say it. Her mind was made up.
I tried to imagine a world without my mother in it, but it was impossible. She had always felt larger than life, a symphony that filled every room she was in. A goddess among mortals, invincible—until she wasn’t.
I thought about her chair vacant at the dinner table. The side of her bed empty while my father slept. Her flute case gathering dust on a shelf.
