Last Words

We’ve finished the song and Nana is still breathing. Forming a horseshoe around her bed, our hands fidget with the sheet music my father handed out earlier. Me, my parents, Aunt Sally and Uncle Dan, their two adult children—eyes floating in the middle distance, ears fog-banked by reverent silence.

Over the past week, we’ve occupied this room in shifts. My mother even made a schedule, so that there would be maximum overlap, and minimal alone time for Nana. When more than one of us was in the room, we told stories, pretended to include her in conversation. Alone with her, I laid my hand on top of hers and felt intermittent pangs of guilt for watching the clock. I prayed for the first time since I was very small.

At some point there was a discussion between my mother and the doctor about what had to be done. In this room, she is the only one who could have made the decision. We all know it’s right, but none of us is strong like her. She’s crying right now, my mother, soft and solemn tears. I find myself wishing I wasn’t thinking that I could fall in love with a woman who wept the same way.

All day I’ve been trying to avoid the term, pulling the plug. There is no actual plug. The only thing that’s been pulled is the tube that went down her throat. The nurse recommended we leave the room, because apparently, it’s a messy process.

I tell myself not to think about mucus.

My parents called me at college. I came home early, extending my Columbus Day break. This isn’t a holiday I will mind tainting. I’m struggling not to rank holidays based on convenience for a death in the family. The word, convenience, is one I will try not to use again this afternoon.

There was no shock involved, which is how you want these things to happen. It was a steady road, with diagnostic milestones, even if none of us would say "she’s going to die" out loud. When she moved in with my parents, she kept her room so tidy and precise that it barely looked lived in.

That morning, they told me over the phone, she couldn’t get out of bed. They brought her here. I’m trying not to think about the room in my parents’ house. I’m trying not to remember that it used to be mine.

Nana’s chest rises a fraction of an inch, and we watch its fall with our own breath held, thinking this will be the last. Maybe it has been two minutes since we finished the song. I wonder if we should sing again, but am afraid to set a precedent that could lead to our singing for the rest of the afternoon.

This should not become ridiculous.

It was something she’d claimed to want, this song. We may or may not have sung it correctly. People were crying and it was hard to keep tempo. Nobody was thinking about the song. It had seemed like a beautiful idea, and the doctor had given a grave sympathetic smile when my father told her our plan. I’m trying not to remember him asking how long it would take once the tube was out, so he’d know when we should begin our singing.

Duncan Whitmire lives and writes in Los Angeles, California. His stories unto this point have appeared in college literary magazines such as Prairie Margins , and Crosscut. Duncan's story, "Grandma Cass", is scheduled to appear in the fall issue of Amarillo Bay.

Email: Duncan Whitmire

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