Sitting with My Mother

In those last days, sitting with my mother

was like holding séance with her double,

a character actress who looked the part

but had few lines and was inscrutable.

She rested on a motorized gurney

with a finger always itching the button

that controlled the slow-motion journey

of her segmented body, up and down.

Often when I arrived, she wasn’t “in”—

but had left this form behind to hold her place.

So meanwhile, we would look at the flowers

that had gradually filled her outer space,

waving beyond the sliding door and patio,

bordering the ceiling of the room,

filling the basket at the foot of the bed,

freshly cut. “Aren’t they pretty,” she said,

pointing to the wallpaper. I agreed,

sensing she was trying to acknowledge

from an interior decorator’s view

their fulfillment of a perennial need.

Once she asked, “Where’s the baby?” We assumed

she took the hospice for a hospital.

That had been her purpose four times before.

A tumor baby? It was not ill-logical.

We tried to make do with the resident

teddy bear, which she cradled tenderly

for a moment until its dark brown fur

convinced her, I guess, she wasn’t its parent.

Long ago, she had often assured me

at the dentist’s or the doctor’s office,

“I’m not going anywhere, darling. See?

I’ll be sitting right here when you come back.”

Clearly, it was my turn to sit and wait,

to rehearse some lines with her understudy,

wondering when she’d get a curtain call

from an audience of angels—in thrall.