Your Mother's Back

When we took her to the toilet for the fifth time that day, as I held her up, and you pulled down the necessary, I noticed her back. She wanted to take her clothes off, and we didn’t have the will or strength to resist this time. She stood there, swaying half-dressed, and briefly one-legged like a disheveled flamingo. I saw how her freckles, the texture and colour of her skin exactly like yours. I wanted to touch her back, to feel the warmth of her skin against my face, to kiss those freckles like I kiss yours. But I didn’t. Her skin is your facsimile, yet a world away from how I hold you, even as I hug her close to keep her from falling. 

I wondered if you will also have her lines on your face when that age, those lines of life, and of love. Lines of death now too. And if your hands will be worn and warm like hers, not quite old or grey. Not old yet, she leaves before her time. Not even fully grey, although her face pales. The lines deepen, sharpen as her face recedes like the rest of her body. She collapses inside herself, leaving only her burning eyes, burning bright, pleading, imploring us: don't leave me, don't leave me, please, let me go, let me go. It is time, it is not time yet, it is far too soon, and she is too far gone, gone already, lost inside herself, lost to you and her husband and her son. You search for her. You try to pull her back to the land of the living, to the land of the lucid; it is too soon to lose your mother. She is sixty-one, you are thirty-five.

Perhaps it is always too soon to lose a mother. There will always be things left unsaid, undone, regrets: words stored away as nagging doubts, little scabs to pick at every now and again. And there are many moments of beauty one sadly forgets. There are moments of beauty now, even now, as the end nears, and she runs out of time, flickering out of life. We pray she will slowly, silently, peacefully slip away, but it may not be so, it may be painful, prolonged, or worse: without notice, without final sighs and last goodbyes. I've seen the way you look at her, kneeling at her feet, clutching her hands, gazing into her eyes, speaking to her with your mind, your heart, your bursting heart, and I swear I've never seen you look more beautiful. I've never witnessed a more overwhelming, unconditional love. I can only wonder if one day you will sit by my bedside, holding my hands and looking at me with that same love. I hope so. I don't hope for illness or death, but I hope we become old and grey together, and I am worthy of such an overwhelming love. 

We've spent hours in that bathroom, the three of us. Watching and waiting. Listening and smiling. Sometimes even waving, just to be friendly, just for her to know she's not alone, we are there, and we care. To catch her eye and bring her back to the present moment, from wherever it is she's gone. You sit on the edge of the bath next to her, I on the floor opposite. We are weary, heavy with exhaustion and emotion. This bathroom is her consultation room, her sanctuary, your confession box, my observation tower, our home for many hours of the day. Your father does not come in: only women allowed. 

We wait, we wipe, we feed, we read, we smile, we listen, we warm and hold and hug and kiss. And when she's strong enough, we lead her by the arm around the house to see and touch and take charge of her domain. For she may forget a face, or your name, but she never forgets to switch the lights off, draw the curtains, survey the kitchen, smooth out the sheets, check the towels, inspect your father's attempts at cooking, reject her mother's helpful advances. She is still herself, in many ways, even more so. 

There is no filter, no reservations. She shows her emotions and feelings distinctly and, as far as she is able, expresses them openly. She rolls her eyes, raises her eyebrows, sighs, and sometimes looks dismayed at our poor attempts of assistance and understanding. She speaks occasionally, in her own inner language. Sometimes we understand and respond, and sometimes we only pretend to understand. I wonder if she can tell the difference, and I hope she forgives our inadequacies and knows we tried so very hard to hear her, to listen and understand and let her voice be heard, however unintelligible to us mere mortals. For although not yet passed, she has already passed into immortality. She will always be with you, always be mother, always be what this family was and will ever be. 

You have grieved her for some time, ever since the diagnosis four months ago. Ever since her death sentence, and your life sentence: the pain of living without her. The pressure shows. You are breaking, slowly disintegrating, and it’s often difficult for you to feel present. You are always somewhere else: by your mother's bedside, holding her hands, or with her as a child, her holding yours, her making you her whole world. 

The pain of losing, of failing to heal and of the inevitable impending grief tears at you, scrambling your mind. I can't bear to watch. But I can do nothing else. I wait, I dry your eyes, I feed you, I smile, I listen, I keep you warm and hold and hug and kiss you, and when you are exhausted, lead you by the arm to bed and persuade you to sleep. This is all that can be done, but it is not enough. It is never enough. 

We play a waiting game. How long can her body hold out, how much longer will she sit up in bed, how much longer will she swallow before we have to use the drip again, how much longer will she murmur some words, even if we don’t always understand them, and for how much longer will she recognise you? How much will has she to live compared with the weariness claiming her body? 

You wait, wait for the abyss, having walked along its cracked periphery for so many weeks. You can't keep balancing on the edge like this, no one could. As painful as it is, you need the abyss, you long for it, to plunge yourself into its depths, to feel the pain as you hit the bottom and then the numbness, the long pervasive numbness. You long to feel nothing, to wake in the morning to emptiness, to absence, to loss. It will be horrifyingly permanent, she will be gone forever, but at least you will no longer wait for the fall. You will have fallen, and then finally, eventually, there is the chance, the hope, the possibility of climbing back up again. 

In the meantime, we wait for the call. And hope we can get there in time. We live 1200 kilometres away, across the girth of Europe, from North to Adriatic Sea. The quickest we could possibly arrive is five hours. Will that be long enough? 

She has death in her already. We don't know how long it's been there, watching, waiting, silently growing, getting hungry, getting bigger, ready to take her. It pains us to think for how many weeks or months or years death was inside her, tiring her, hurting her. We did not know or take her seriously when she seemed a little tired, or didn't feel hungry, or had a headache. We feel guilty. If only we'd known, perhaps we could have done something. Perhaps we could have treated it, found it, stopped it, carved the death out and thrown it away. We feel guilty because we know there's nothing anyone could have done. No treatment possible, no means to reduce, repair, restore. And this does not seem possible, people survive cancer all the time, even brain cancer, why not her?

But this is no convenient tumour, this is death's cruel trick, hiding in the casing of the brain itself. They looked for a lump, but it hid from the lens. So obvious, so cunning that for months, no one noticed. We saw the effects, but not the cause. Death, you have already taken her, yet you persist in this painful game of making her weaker day by day, making us suffer to watch. 

We weep for her, weep for her living and weep for her dying. But she does not weep. We don’t know if this is because she does not know, or because she has accepted the inevitable. Maybe she is too weary to cry, maybe she tries to be strong so as not to cause us further pain, maybe death has already taken that ability from her. So many other physical functions fail and fall further away. We do not know, we cannot tell. She started to disappear too quickly that by the time there was a diagnosis, she was no longer lucid. You did not dare to tell, did not care to upset her, when she could barely speak, and we could rarely understand. You did not dare, and now it is too late. 

Like mother, like daughter they say. You share the same skin, the same freckles on your back, the same slight frame, the same huge heart. She has devoted her life to you and your brother, but you had seven years together before he arrived. Seven years and two lost babies. How much more she must have held on to you, convinced you were all she would have. And that intensity of her love, her devotion, was sometimes too much. You had to get away to be your own person, have your own life, succeed or fail, and choose who to love on your own terms. 

You never forgot her; you spoke weekly. But you feel guilty now for leaving, for needing to leave, and for temporarily escaping the arms of motherly possession. This is natural, it is normal, not wrong. But now, as she lays dying, every possible moment of natural disregard or frustration or annoyance feels like treachery. It torments you. You have never betrayed her. You have never left her. And she will never leave you. It’s not possible. The ties are too strong. You have always been her one true love, and she yours. You have heard her voice in your head for many years now, no matter how far from home. Home will always be her lap, her hugs, her words, her look, even when it appears to be one of disapproval. But she has never been disappointed in you, never been hurt. She loved you fiercely, and you have loved her harder than you know. You did not disappoint her. You did not do her wrong. You don't need to make up for anything now, but even so you try, as if the intensity of your eyes, the firmness of your hand, the fullness of your heart, and the largeness of your love can heal her, can destroy death and bring her back to life. 

We finish in the bathroom, letting her stand and stare for many minutes at the reflection in the mirror of the three of us. We stand behind her, smiling encouragingly, holding her in our arms and hearts. We take her back to the sofa where she sits for much of the day reading her beloved art books. We don't know if she’s reading; sometimes she traces the words with her finger. She stares at a page for so many hours some visitors assume she cannot be reading. They gently try and take the book from her hands and interest her in something else, such as their presence. But she holds on to that book as if it is life itself. I believe for her it is. She gazes at the pictures: renaissance visions of the holy mother and child, Frida Kahlo's depictions of birth and breasts and hospitals. Of motherhood. She may well be trying to tell us something, or her subconscious reminds her of what's important: You. You and her, and your brother. Motherhood, loving and being loved. That's what she has excelled at, that is what she's given to you both, an incredible capacity for love. 

It is her life's work, and it will never be diminished by death.

for Valeria & Anita

-JP Seabright

JP Seabright is a queer writer living in London. They have had poetry published in three anthologies, short stories published online and in print, and various pieces shortlisted, longlisted and highly commended. Currently they are working on novel-length fiction and nonfiction works.