Whisper Me This(35)

“No loved one should have to watch this,” the man says. “Let us clean her up, and then you can come to say good-bye.”

“I’m the one who wanted this.” My voice breaks on a sob. Tears start pouring, and it feels like they’re coming from somewhere other than my eyes, somewhere deep at my center, where a vital part of me has broken open. I double up around the damaged place, both arms folded over my belly, trying to suck in air. Breath refuses to cooperate. I’m too broken inside. Blackness traces the edges of my vision. A loud roaring fills my ears. My knees are going loose, and I’m just about to fall when breath finally comes rushing into my oxygen-starved lungs.

My body makes a noise I didn’t know I was capable of, a loud keening wail of loss and betrayal. “No. No, no, no, no, no.”

There are voices telling me to breathe. Hands pushing and pulling, compelling me away from my mother’s still form laid out on the bed. Away from the terrible silence caused by her lack of breathing. I have no clear awareness of where we are going until I find myself sitting somewhere dim and quiet, all the voices gone.

When my vision clears enough to see, I’m looking directly at an angel. White wings, outstretched hands, face all kindness and compassion.

Only a statue, and I’m glad it isn’t real. Any angel coming to me now will be an avenging being. My last words to my mother contained anger and accusation, and then I brought down a whirlwind of torment on her.

I’m as shocked by this as I am by the suddenness of her death, the way she could be breathing one moment and not breathing the next.

Here.

Not here.

My mother.

Some stranger with a lifetime full of secrets.

These conflicting realities sit side by side, and I can’t summon an emotional connection to either of them.

“Here. Drink this.”

Not the angel talking to me, but a mere human, more boy than man, sporting a still-adolescent beard. He offers a glass of water and a sympathetic smile. To me, the smile looks pasted on. A solicitous mask that he’s learned from somewhere and donned.

Comforting Expression Number 3, for a grieving woman in shock.

He pushes the glass of water into my nerveless hands. “Drink a little. Really. It’s good for shock.”

Shock. Is that what this is? I feel like I’m encased in a shell of ice. If I move, if I drink the water he’s extending to me, the ice will crack, and I will feel . . . something. I’m not at all sure I want to do that, but my hands move of their own accord, accepting the glass and bringing it to my lips.

He’s right.

The sensation of ice-cold water flowing down my throat, into my stomach, serves to wake up the rest of my body. My arms and legs feel weighted, and there’s an elephant sitting on my chest.

“Better?” the man asks.

I nod, not speaking yet, and take another swallow.

“I’m Chaplain Ross. Would it be all right if I pray for you?”

It’s phrased as a question, but it’s not meant that way. He is hell-bent on prayer. I can feel it. And at the moment, I’m not on the sort of terms with God where this is a comforting idea. But my childhood beliefs are deeply ingrained, and saying I don’t want his prayer feels like sacrilege.

He pats my hand. His is clammy. He smells sweaty, nervous. If I were a better person, maybe I’d feel some kindness toward him, but as it turns out the very first emotion to really hit me here in the chapel is irritation.

“I know you’re heartbroken right now,” he says, still patting, “but I assure you, there is comfort in God.”

“How old are you?” I ask him.

He blinks rapidly. His eyes are pink-rimmed, the lashes so pale they are barely visible.

“I don’t think that is relevant—”

“I think it is. You want to tell me about the comfort of God. I’d like to know if you’re old enough to have ever needed comfort.”

“Age has very little to do with the need for God.” He says it politely enough, but with an edge that is a reprimand. Point taken. I don’t know his life. Maybe he was an abused and battered child. Maybe his entire family was killed by a drunk driver when he was six.

I don’t know. I don’t want to know.

“What is your faith base?” he asks.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Do you attend a church?”

I don’t. I haven’t been inside a church in years. “Lutheran, I guess,” I tell him, giving him the church of my childhood, the church my parents still attend. Or have attended.

“Our Father,” Chaplain Ross intones, his voice dropping into a soulful register, “we know that you are the source of comfort for all who mourn. Our help, our rock, our solace . . .”

If he’d gone for a genuine heartfelt, please-bless-Maisey sort of prayer, I might have stayed. It is quiet and peaceful here in the chapel. But I’m not going to hang around and listen to this fledgling boy–man use prayer as an opportunity to tell God what he already knows.

Without apology, I get up and slip away. The chaplain, eyes firmly shut, continues to pray. Maybe it will do him some good. There’s precious little hope for me.





Leah’s Journal

In fairness to myself and all my decisions, I will allow myself to invoke my childhood as a defense. Is it strange that I don’t miss my parents? I never missed them. Not once since I fled my old life to manufacture this one have I even been tempted to contact them. Probably they are dead by now.