Forsythia for Cynthia

THE MECHANICAL DISCHARGE from her morphine drip station was the pulse in that room. Toward the end, when the coldness of death had come in like winter, she kept her thumb on that pulse. And even though she had little control of her own, she kept her thumb on that pulse. Everything, including the short, white trashcan in  the bathroom, was sterile and clean. I think they washed the peanut butter sandwiches before lunch. Over time her lunch grew increasingly rounder, from sandwiches with cheese and Triscuit crackers to bowls of tasteless broth and grapes, and eventually to pills. Her room smelled like pills and linen and although I knew her sense of smell had gone I couldn’t take it, the smell. I clipped fragrant lilac cones from our tree at home and brought them to her room, put them next to her bed. I wondered how many people died in that bed, on those sheets, on that day. It was a blustery morning and the drive from Bow took about fifteen minutes, not nearly enough time to consider real death. It was cold enough to see your breath that morning, but I don’t remember seeing mine. Maybe I held it until I got to her room. When I finally did inhale, I remember the air tasted like tears, heavy with my father’s sadness. I could taste it the way you can taste soil when you garden. My mother loved to garden. Before she died, relatives and friends filled her hospice room with flowers: forsythias and others I couldn’t name. She could name them all. I imagine the moment before she closed her eyes forever, taking one last look at the life around her, seeing my sleeping father on the couch beside her bed, looking at the love filled bouquets, all alive with color. Forsythia was her favorite.

Advertisement