Having A Holly, Melancholy Christmas

Why the holidays are bittersweet for me


The 15th anniversary of Mama's death is approaching, and I find myself even more blue this season than I normally am.  Maybe it is the number of years causing me more melancholia than usual. Maybe it is just the events of this past year catching up with me.  Surgery, weight loss and the inevitable changes that happen as a result might make anyone feel a bit off-balance.  I've also been thinking about the unit of CPE I did in the first half of the year.  I spent a lot of time in the hospital dealing with the stresses and tragedies of other people, remembering other times when it was me and my family who were patients and caregivers.  And of course, my most intimate experience within my own family was with Mama at the end of her life.

She died very early in the wee hours on December 8, 1997.  What follows is a poem I wrote a few weeks after she died.



The World Still Turns

Somewhere between land of the living and domain of the dead
inside this room my world has ground to a screeching halt

A small space littered with soiled gauze, used syringes, bloody linen

Mama's broken, worn-out body

My battered soul in pieces
Beaten black and blue from
worrying, waiting, watching

This place has become my home

Weeks I've spent here
looking on
sickness slowly, meticulously
enveloping her in its cocoon
layer by layer suffocating us all

Her first night here she was terrified
I tried everything, nurses tried everything
the medicine they gave her for panic made her sick

The morning they needed to take blood
Stuck her twice and couldn't get her to bleed
The third time they couldn't get her to stop

Now she's taken no food in over a week

In that time every day the IV has had to be replaced
by angels of mercy who sit patiently at her bedside
and sweat trying to find a usable vein

"Help me, Honey."
"What can I do for you, Mama?"
"I don't know..."

She's been dreaming about Aunt Mary, calling out for Granny
They're both dead

Today her breathing has changed
her face has taken on the look of a corpse
a horrible smell now seeps into every corner of the room
it's coming from her

Old blood
the smell of death

Daddy insists on coming back here
to relieve me

I'm not going
Anywhere

He goes to sleep and I watch

Another breath
and another
and then nothing

her lips turn white
I know the next breath isn't coming

A wave of panic
nausea
alone-ness rises up in me

But not the relief that was supposed to come

I count two minutes on my watch and
go to find the nurse

"I think we're done here, but I
need you to make sure before
I wake Daddy up."

She looks in Mama's eyes
listens all over her chest
shakes her head

"She's gone."

It's 2:40 in the morning
Daddy stirs and asks what's happening
I tell him that it's over

Mama's gone

We cry
He says a prayer
We make phone calls and
gather our things to leave

I stay behind with her until
they tell me that I have to go

I step out into the hallway and
somehow put one foot in front of the other
the walk to my car seems to take forever this time

Inside that little room my world stopped
But out here in the cold hours before daybreak

I feel the chill of December air as it freezes the tears on my cheeks
I smell the aroma of bread from the bakery down the street
I notice the Christmas tree lights twinkling on downtown rooftops

A new day is coming
whether I want it to or not

Out here the world still turns

Somehow

I have to turn with it