As I Open the Door

As I Open the Door (peggy’s prompt for 04/10/09)

--I smell
--I hear
--I feel
--I see
--front door
--oven door
--bathroom door
--bedroom door
--classroom door
--cathedral door
--restaurant door
--nursing home door

As I pull open the nursing home door I already get the hint of sanitizing cleaner, like Pine Sol with bleach, or some commercial grade equivalent. I consciously try not to hold my breath, although it’s tempting, both because of the odor that becomes stronger with each step and because I’m not sure what I’ll find when we finally reach G’ma Camp’s room tucked away in the nether regions of the facility.

Judy and Tommy say that she’s not doing so well, that she’s not trying. Sometimes she pushes her food back out of her mouth when Judy feeds her. Most of the time she just lies there, not even trying to use her arms or hands.

We enter through the open door of G’ma’s room and approach her bed. G’ma is lying in the far bed by the window, absolutely still. She doesn’t turn her head or raise her hand or rearrange her feet or give any other indication that she’s aware she has visitors.

My heart sinks and I involuntarily hold my breath again, although the room smells the same as the hallway. I walk to the side of the bed and lean across so that I can look into her face that she has turned toward the window. Her eyes are open, but she doesn’t look at me.

“Jane,” I say softly. “It’s Gwendie. I’ve come to see you. How are you?”

“I’m fine,” she says in a low gravelly monotone. “How’s Jonathan?” in the same monotone, still not moving a muscle. “He’s fine,” I say in as normal a voice as I can muster. “That’s good,” she says. This is the beginning of every conversation we’ve had since Jonathan was born 25 years ago, although not with the monotone voice.

G’ma’s daughter Judy steps up to the bedside and I step back. She tells her mother that she’s going to give her lunch. I watch as the nursing assistant raises G’ma’s head and upper body with additional pillows, and Judy pulls open the foil top of a cup of vanilla custard.

“Here, Mom,” Judy says, holding a spoonful of the custard next to G’ma’s mouth. “you need to eat to keep your strength up.” G’ma obediently opens her mouth and takes in the custard, and just as quickly pushes the mouthful back out into Judy’s hand with her tongue. “See what I mean?” Judy says to me. “She’s been doing this the last few days,” Tommy says quietly. “She just won’t eat.”

A few minutes later, after having swallowed a few spoonfuls of applesauce and several sips from some mysterious clear liquid, G’ma turns her head toward the window again and closes her eyes. Clearly, she’s had enough—of food, of visitors, of life.

Judy wipes her mother’s face clean with a damp cloth and we say our good-byes. I lean over and kiss G’ma’s cheek. “Well, I’m going,” I say. “I love you,” I add for probably the first time in the thirty years we’ve been related by marriage. “I love you, too,” she says in that monotone, her head still facing the window. She’s never said “I love you” to me before either, not even the glib “love ya” that people say to end phone calls nowadays.

As we open the door again at the front of the building and walk into the blazing sunlight and clear blue skies of South Texas, tears well up in my eyes. “She’s had another stroke,” I say to Judy and Tommy. “She’s not trying to live anymore.”

I’m not sure they’re convinced of that. But I have the same feeling I had leaving my mother’s house the Christmas before she died, knowing it would be the last Christmas I would ever see Mama in the flesh. It’s so sad for me. I cry for me.

“Good-bye, Grandma,” I whisper to her from Jonathan.