Judges' general comments can be found at the bottom of this entry
 
 
 
My Mother’s Keeper
By Ginny Arata
Email:  ginnngary@comcast.net
(Copyright 2006)
 
 
I need to let you know that somewhere in this story I crack a joke about my mother’s death.  If that makes you uncomfortable, and I can certainly understand that, please  go on to something else.  The rest of us will catch up in a bit.
 
Once you get to a certain age you begin to have friends who have lost their parents.  
 
“Lost”, of course, is a wildly inaccurate euphemism  because it implies all sorts  of things about them wandering about or waiting in front of the wrong store at the  mall or, having taken the second exit instead of the first, driving endlessly  looking for your street so they can visit.  They aren’t lost, and indeed some may  say they are finally found and have gone home.  Home, capital H.  Anyway, friends  have parents who die and they have stories about the dying, about what happened  first and next, and then.  About regrets and signs and, later on, about dreams.   Once the stories start, you all take your turn, waiting to tell how it was for you.
 
I noticed years ago that people get a certain look on their faces when they begin to tell their death stories.  It is as if they are telling the stories to themselves in a comforting way.   I also have noticed, in hearing the same people tell the story to new listeners, that they tell it virtually the same way every time.  As an example, I will tell you my story.  This is the story of my mother’s death, the way I told it for 10 years and two days.        
 
My parents, after 10 years of living half the country away from their children,
decided to move back to Virginia.  They moved into an apartment close to me in
April.  In June, my mother was diagnosed with colon cancer.  In July she had
surgery, in August she had chemo. There was another surgery in September.  She had more chemo, rallied for Christmas, then died one February night.  I used to recite this almost like a prayer every day, but now the details are fuzzy.   What month was the first chemo?  Were there really two surgeries?   
 
What is crystal clear is the day that she died.  I was at work and my dad called me, wanting me to pick up some twin sheets for the hospital bed they had finally decided to get for her.  I stopped at Target on the way to their place, looking for purple sheets because that was her favorite color and I wanted to brighten up the room. There weren’t any, of course, so after a lot of debate I settled on some blue ones that were nice enough, but not anything great.  I guess I took too long, because when I finally got to their apartment the whole room was filled with anger it seemed.  I jumped in and helped steady my mother as she walked over to the bed they had set up in the dining room.  I quickly made the bed and she settled in.
 
The home healthcare nurse wanted to put a tube down into Mother’s stomach so that she wouldn’t throw up as much.  It turned out she didn’t have the right size tube, but since she wanted to get it done and not have to make another trip out there she wanted to try it anyway.  The tube was either too big or not big enough, and it wasn’t stiff enough to go down from her nose through her throat to her stomach.  It kept coming out of her mouth instead; she wouldn’t swallow it.  The nurse tried putting it in ice cold water to stiffen it up, and that’s when my mother started fighting us.  The nurse asked for my help, and I held my mother down.  I yelled at her.  I told her to stop fighting us.  I told her she had to let us do this so we could make things easier on my dad and he wouldn’t have to clean up after her so much.  I yelled at her and I fought her and she fought back, boy did she fight back.
 
Her strength was just amazing.   We couldn’t keep her down, and we certainly
couldn’t get that tube in her throat, so we just gave up.  The nurse said she would come back the next day with the right kind of tube.
 
Then she asked me if I would help her put in a catheter.  I had never in my life seen my mother naked, but what could I do but say yes?  So I stood there and helped, as my mother lay naked under the bright overhead light of the dining room.  We finished quickly, but I could see that the damage had already been done.  My mother just stared at the light above her as I covered up her again.  She didn’t say a word, and I know now that in those moments she decided to die.  
 
Her breathing got quite labored.  The nurse seemed startled, called it something that I remember as the Death Breath, although I am pretty sure that can’t be true. 
 
My dad asked me to step into the other room with him to discuss whether we should take her to the hospital.  As we were talking, the nurse called to us and said that things were getting worse.  My dad went to the nurse to discuss the hospital option, but I went to my mother’s side.  I sat there and I held her hand, and I watched her look at the light.  I remember asking her what she was looking at.  I told her it was okay if she was tired and wanted to let go.  I told her that I loved her, and then I sat there and listened as her breathing got more ragged.  I knew she was dying, but I couldn’t make myself say anything to my dad or the nurse.  I just sat and listened to her breathing, one breath and then the next and the next, till the next one didn’t come.
 
The power of that story continues to amaze me, no matter how many times I tell it.  There is a grace and a comfort to being with someone at the end which I cannot do justice.  I have always been grateful that I was there with her that night, even as I get angry she didn’t say goodbye and sad that her last words to me were harsh ones.  I have told that story in tears, in whispers and in print.  For a long time right after she died I felt as if I had to tell the story over and over again,  to anyone who would listen.  When I met someone it was the first thing I wanted to tell them about myself.  “Nice to meet you.  My mother died.”  It defined me.  It engulfed me.  It colored every aspect of my life.  It changed who I am and I clung tightly to that new me.  I am a woman who sat with her mother while her mother died.
 
 
Sounds important, doesn’t it?  
 
I considered it an honor, which I still do, and I gave it the utmost reverence and respect.  It was an Important Event.  The problem I encountered was that I couldn’t get out of that spot, that pool of heaviness.  Try as I might, and I did try I swear it, I couldn’t move much beyond memories of my mother as she lay dying.  Where else was the memory so clear?  What else could I gravitate to when I thought of my mother?  The other memories dimmed as I wrapped myself up in the all important task of being the keeper of her death.  As her death defined me, I allowed it to define her.  I don’t necessarily honor my mother with my self important telling of the night that she died.  I honor her by fully engaging in the ways which I am like her, the ways she taught me to be by her life and her outlook, the things she taught me.
 
My mother was a silly woman.  She liked frogs and stuffed aminals (that is not a typo).  Every December I would come home from school on some random day and
Christmas would have arrived at our house while we children were gone.  All the day to day knick knacks disappeared and in their place were Santa and Mrs. Claus, reindeer and garland and holly and mistletoe.  She put notes in my lunch from the dog.  She warned us about the collywobbles we would get from eating a sandwich the wrong way and she loved cugar shookies (sugar cookies, for those of you who have different mothers).  When she was cold she complained about there not being enough degrees running around outside.  She loved phlox and mums and she hated velvet.  She could spot a typo at a hundred paces, and she devoured crossword puzzles and books.  She knew lots of really worthless facts.  She was a great first base coach.
 
My mother got lost in the story of her death, the story I told time and time again. I am not even sure that she would like the way I tell the story, now that I think about it. 
 
That changed one day when I was talking to a co-worker about death and dying.  He shared with me the story of his grandmother’s passing, and some of it was similar to what happened with my mother.  His grandfather was on the phone to his wife, who was in the hospital very ill.  He told her she didn’t have to hold on just on his account.  She hung up the phone and died shortly thereafter.  I remarked that I believed that some people just choose to die.  Here’s the story of my mother’s death that I told that afternoon.
 
My mother had colon cancer and was really sick.  One night it seemed that she was ready to go.  I told her it was okay, and that I loved her, and then she died.  You know, I think she just said to herself, “I’m sick of this shit.  Next?”
 
I laughed so hard when I said that.   “Next?”  I repeated it and laughed all over again.  What had I been thinking, boiling down her life to that one moment when she left it?  My mother wasn’t a very serious woman, not overall, and I don’t have to be so serious.  
 
Certainly my original story of her death has beauty and grace, but I am better fit to celebrate my mother’s life, keep her memory alive in the ways that I am like her.  I love feeling that connection to her when I read a new book by an author that she loved (Dean Koontz, anyone?).  I love sitting in my house when it is all decorated at Christmastime and knowing how much she would have appreciated my efforts.  I watch myself insist on alone time at home and know that she showed me how to do that, how to take better care of others by first taking care of myself.  I love her yellow pitcher on my mantel and her glass bear on my shelf, and every time I cook and try to keep the towel on my shoulder I wonder how in the world she kept it from slipping off.
 
I am my mother’s keeper, as are my sister and my brothers.  I can look at each of them and see bits and pieces of her still alive in them.  It’s not that she hasn’t died; it’s that she didn’t simply die, she didn’t only die.  She lived.  It’s time to focus on that.

 
Judges' general comments:
 
This is a beautiful piece, full of passion and caring and the psychology of overcoming death.  Of all the pieces entered in our 2006 contest, our judges felt this piece had the most depth in the level of thought.  Our judges could see Ginny really wrestling with the meaning of death (and the definitions of our lives in general) as the story went on.  Our biggest suggestion for publication is to play around with this piece some more—see if it’s best told as a narrative (as it is currently), a mix or narrative and present, or even, all present.  We suggest playing with the timeline.  Perhaps Ginny could start with the action of that evening and then pan up to the present.  Or start at the evening, pan back to her life with her mom before she was sick, and then pan forward to the aftermath, etc.  Play, play, play with this to maximize both the drama and the end of that drama.  Working on showing (versus the sporadic doses of telling we get) and examining punctuation (especially being weary of run-ons) is also high on the list.  Beautiful vision behind this piece, Ginny!  Nice work.