My Mother's Hands

I squinted one eye closed and returned to the moment.

And took a deep breath and another and another.  Be still my soul.  Jesus shall reign where e’er you roam.  All things bright and beautiful. All creatures great and small. Songs she sang as we used to walk together.

Return to the moment the moment of holding her swollen hand.   How will they get her rings off?  Took a picture of her hand and engagement ring and wedding band on one and a sapphire surrounded by diamonds on the other.

Return to the moment, kiss her forehead, and put a fresh washcloth on her forehead.  She is getting ready to go and I am saying good-bye.  Kiss her forehead.  Rub her head.  Sing a song.  Thank you for giving me this life, this ability to love.  Thank you for giving me this moment and goodbye.

And she did take another deep breath and waited and paused and was still.  Then another deep breath and then pause and another one and no more breaths.

My mother is having no more breaths.  No more laughing so hard with her sisters she wets her pants.  No more making big birthday suppers of whatever we wanted – fried chicken, green beans cooked with fat back, mashed potatoes and gravy, no more sliced tomatoes with mayonnaise.

No more days lying in bed next to me.  

I took a deep breath and went to the door to get the nurse and returned to my chair, didn’t open the door after 3 times back and forth.  I settled down and sat next to her and sewed on William’s Christmas stocking beads and left an empty space forever for her on his stocking.

Stocking - she loved to watch my hands move and we would sit for hours together her watching me sewing just like she had once with her mother.  He mother who played the piano and sang hymns and who took her last breath when my mother was 24 and had a little baby, my sister, Alice who was and is now still my big sister.

Take a deep breath and return to the moment.  Moment of love and her hands.

Her hands, the rings on her hands.  Did the funeral home cut her fingers to get them off? Was a weird thought?  My mother is dying and that in itself is weird. I asked if we needed a receipt for the jewelry and they said no. They would handle it. 

I used to arrive at my mom’s to visit her and somewhere in the visit sit next to her close and do her nails.  By the time I got there every month they had become long and witchy, not the well-groomed hands of my mother.   She was a little afraid of the emery board and clippers. 

Even the sound of the clippers made her wince.   It was as if the fingernails themselves had nerve endings.  

I would turn on something on the TV, Turner Classic Movies or Classic Arts Showcase and get her pink crescent shaped spit-up plastic container and get denture cleaner tablets from the nurses station and put them in the warm water and soak her hands a while, one at a time,  to loosen up the dirt and decaying food as by now she was eating her meals with her hands managing a fork just a little too much.

Her hands.

Made homemade bread.

Knitted ski sweaters.

Drew designs for houses.

Scratched my back and made my special creamy scrambled eggs.

Put on her red lipstick and painted her fingernails.