“Your granddaughter needs to go to a hospital in Nashville for her depression,” I told my 95-year-old mother. “She’ll be away a few months.”
After my daughter had been in rehab for a month, Mom had what the doctors called a mini stroke. There would probably be more, they told me. I prepared myself for the fact that my vibrant, complicated mother might soon die. To my surprise, her deteriorating health made her softer — and me more forgiving.
“Hello. This is the nurse. Everything’s fine,” she said. The staff are trained to begin conversations this way. But if everything is fine, I wondered, why would a nurse be calling?“Your daughter’s had an accident. Her blue jeans caught fire and she has a third-degree burn on her calf, but she’s OK. She’s been to the hospital and is resting here in the clinic now.”
“I have some bad news,” I said to my mother the next time I saw her. “Your granddaughter burned her leg in an accident and now needs an operation. She will be in the hospital in Nashville for several days. I’ll be driving there tomorrow, but I don’t want to leave you now.”“Promise you won’t go anywhere until I get back?” I joked. We both understood her time on Earth was limited. She smiled and nodded.
As I left her room and walked down the stairs to the parking lot, I felt lighter than I had in years. My constant guilt and worrying about her, about my daughter, about myself seemed to evaporate in that moment. Despite the uncertainty that surrounded me, I suddenly felt confident and calm, rather than anxious or inept. I hadn’t realised how much I’d longed to hear those words from my mother all my life.At the Vanderbilt burn unit, I stayed with my daughter for five days.
While I was in Nashville, my mother suffered a major stroke. Once home, I immediately went to the retirement home to see her. She was lying in bed, paralysed on one side and only able to utter a word or two. I held her hand and said, “I love you.” She nodded her head. Four days later, she died.
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