An Invisible Thread (18 page)

“So, Laurie, I know this has been very painful for you,” she said, “but you need to know you have the strength to handle it; don’t ever forget that.”

I began to see in myself something of my mother’s survivor spirit.

My mother was taking methodone for her pain, which was getting worse and worse. Her oncologist, Dr. Ochoa, showed Annette and me how to inject her. He came in with a syringe and had us practice on an orange. He made it look so easy, but I couldn’t
stand needles. Over time, though, I got used to it, and injecting my mother with methodone became part of our routine.

I could tell my mother wasn’t improving, and that’s when I began negotiating with her. “You have to get better,” I’d say. “You cannot leave us with Dad. You married him, not us, and we can’t deal with him without you. And besides, Dad really needs you. We all do.”

The truth is I didn’t have to plead with her this way. I knew she was fighting as hard as she could.

One night when her pain was especially bad, I left her room to talk to Dr. Ochoa.

“She is getting worse, and she’s really scared. What can we do?”

Dr. Ochoa told me my mother’s will was keeping her alive. What she needed, he said, was for someone to tell her it was okay to let go. I couldn’t believe what he was saying. He wanted me to tell my mother it was okay to die? How could I possibly tell her that? What would I possibly say?

Dr. Ochoa put his hand on my shoulder and said, “You’ll know what to say.”

“But, Doctor, how will I know when it’s time? How do I have that conversation?”

“When the time comes,” he said, “you’ll know.”

A few days later, my mother’s cancer spread so much that it started to break through the skin of her stomach. At first it was just a little dark blueish blister, then several more, and over weeks they began to cover her stomach and lower body. My mother gripped my hand one night and looked at me with sad, heavy eyes.

“Laurie, I’m not going to get better. My cancer is too advanced.”

I squeezed her hand tight. I sensed her statement was really a question. Am I going to get better? Or am I going to die? My mother was terrified.

And then, as Dr. Ochoa had predicted, I knew just what to say.

“Mom, do you remember what you told me when I was so upset about Kevin? You told me God never gives us more than we can handle. You have to believe that now. God is going to take this away from you very soon, and then you will never be in pain again.”

My mother gave me a sad smile, and we held hands and said nothing more. It was late, and I had work the next day, so I got up to leave. I leaned over to kiss her good night, and she looked up at me. “Thank you, Laurie,” she said. “I love you very much.”

We decided to bring my mother home and take care of her there. We filled the closet in our laundry room with big bags of methodone and needles, and I showed Nancy how to give my mother a shot. Even my dad practiced on the orange, but he was too impatient to learn how to do it properly. My mother had been injected so many times in the last year that it was getting harder and harder to find a space on her arms or legs that wasn’t bruised. We just did the best we could and tried to keep her as comfortable as possible.

Once again, I decided to stay at home with my mother and commute into the city for work. At that time, my brother Frank was away in the navy, and we hadn’t told him how sick our mother was. When we finally called him and arranged for him to come home, he was in shock to see how bad she was. I kept thinking of what Dr. Ochoa had told me—how I would know when my mother was
ready to go. I wanted to be there when it happened—no, I
needed
to be there. So I stayed with her.

And then, on a Thursday night, around ten, my mother came out of a deep sleep and asked me to wake up young Steven.

“I want him to play the organ for me, like he used to,” she said.

We sat next to my mother while Steven, in his striped pajamas, played some of the standards she loved to hear. “Please Release Me,” “Spanish Eyes,” some other Engelbert Humperdinck songs. He played for her for a solid hour. Finally, she said she was ready to sleep. I gave her a shot, she closed her eyes, and, in the reclining chair that had become her bed, she drifted off.

The next day, it was my birthday: I turned twenty-five. I felt like the end was near for my mother, but still I went to work. On the train ride in I kept hearing Dr. Ochoa say, “You’ll know.” I got to my office and settled in, but within ten minutes I knew I had to go home. I took the train home and found my mother in an unusually deep sleep. I’d seen her drift away many times, but this seemed much more serious. I could tell by looking at her that she wasn’t just sleeping. My brother Steven, who was just thirteen, sensed what was going on, and he asked me if he could stay with my mother in the den where we had put her chair. I realized no one had really sat down with Steven and told him the terrible truth about our mother, so I took him outside, sat down with him on the curb, and had a talk.

“Steven, Mom is really sick, and she’s going to go to heaven very soon. You need to get ready for that. We all do.”

Steven just cried and cried. I put my arm around him and hugged him close. He told me he wanted to be near our mother
and not in his bedroom upstairs, so I set up a bed for him in the living room right off the den. That night he tried to stay up as late as he could, but he finally conked out. My father wasn’t working that night, but he couldn’t bear to see my mother this way so he’d gone out drinking. Our house was eerily quiet. At one point my mother woke up and looked at me and reached for my hand.

“I feel strange,” she said. “Please don’t leave me. I don’t want to be alone tonight.” I promised her I would make sure she wasn’t left alone for a single minute.

Nancy and I took turns watching her. Around 3:00 a.m., I went into Nancy’s room, woke her up, and asked her to sit with Mom.

“Don’t fall asleep,” I told her. “You must stay up and watch her. I just need to close my eyes for a while.”

Nancy, just seventeen, promised me she’d stay awake. My father had come home by then, drunk but in no mood to start trouble, and was passed out in his bed. I caught a catnap in Nancy’s room, not far from the den. At five in the morning, I heard Nancy scream. I ran into the den where Nancy was standing over my mother, trying to get her to talk. My mother just lay there, breathing but unresponsive. She was in a coma.

We called for an ambulance. Just a few minutes before paramedics arrived, my mother woke up crying. I told her we were taking her to the hospital to get her oxygen. I didn’t know what else to say to calm her down.

“I don’t want to go,” she said. “If I go I will never come home.”

An EMT crew came in with a big stretcher and wheeled it right past Steven, who was fast asleep in his makeshift bed just a couple of feet away. Even with all the sirens and clanging and commotion,
Steve didn’t budge. He just kept sleeping. I was glad he did; I don’t think it was meant for him to see what was happening. I still believe God protected him from a frightening sight.

My father didn’t wake up either. We decided not to get him up for fear he would just make things more chaotic.

Instead, we met up with Annette and went to Sloan-Kettering Hospital without him. Dr. Ochoa was there and asked us if we wanted a priest. We watched as my mother was given last rites in the emergency room. She struggled more and more to breathe and, finally, she stopped. Dr. Ochoa looked at her, then at us.

“She is gone,” he said.

Annette and I hugged and cried. I felt my mother had hung on too long, had endured an enormous amount of suffering. I should have felt relieved that she was finally at peace, but all I felt was sadness, a deep, overwhelming sadness. I felt sad for what my mother’s life had been like. I cried for all of the hardship, all of the affliction. And I cried for all the happiness she deserved but never got.

And then, all of a sudden, a nurse noticed something.

“Oh, my God,” she said, “your mother is alive! Talk to her, talk to her!”

The nurse noticed my mother open her eyes. We looked down at her, and she turned to face us and gave us the warmest and most peaceful smile. We stood there in absolute shock. My mother tried to talk and at first her words were jumbled. But then, as if something clicked in her brain, she spoke clearly.

“I’ve been given the strength to tell you everything I always wanted to say to you but couldn’t.”

Dr. Ochoa was as baffled as we were. The nurse took my mother’s vital signs and told us they were stronger than they had been in months. Suddenly my mother was perfectly lucid, and she moved her arms and legs like she hadn’t in weeks. It was like she’d simply decided she wasn’t sick anymore. But more than that, she seemed so calm and content; a strange, glowing peace had come over her. I stood next to her and kissed her and held her and cried.

Then my mother said, “Where’s your father?” I told her he and Steven were on their way. Frank and Nancy were still at home.

“I want to talk to all of you,” she said.

She was completely calm and in charge. I left her with Annette so they could have their talk. When Annette was done, she came toward me, crying, and said, “Mom wants to talk to you.”

I sat down next to Mom, held her hand, and just listened.

“You have always been such a good daughter,” my mother said. “There were times when I didn’t understand you, but I know you are strong and good. Laurie, I am so proud of you. I love you very much.”

I took it all in, tears running down my face. My mother never really spoke to me like this. She had told me she loved me and she may have told me she was proud of me, but to hear her say it now, in this way, meant the world to me.

My father and Steven had finally arrived by then. My mother then asked to speak with her husband.

“The younger children are going to really need you, so please be there for them. Look inside yourself and find the courage to be good to all of our children. Please try not to drink and fly off. Please, can you promise me this, Nunzie? Please?”

And then she told him she loved him.

Then it was Steven’s turn. She told him he was a wonderful son, and she knew he was going to grow up to be a wonderful man. She told him not to be afraid, because she loved him dearly and always would. “I am so proud of you,” she said. “You are so smart and you’re such a special child.”

Steven hugged her like he never wanted to let go.

Dr. Ochoa found us a private room, so we could all be together. When Frank and Nancy finally arrived, she sat them down for their talks. She told Frank how sorry she was for how my dad had treated him and how she hoped he would forgive her for not protecting him more. She told Nancy how sorry she was that she had to give up her teenage years to help take care of her and how grateful she was for that sacrifice and how very much she loved her.

Then she sat up and said she felt no pain at all, and her eyes seemed to glow as she told us what had happened when Dr. Ochoa had pronounced her dead.

“I saw the other side,” she said. “It is far more beautiful and peaceful than we could ever imagine. I now know in my heart I will be able to take care of all of you from there. I will be able to look down and see how you are doing and make sure everything is well. Please believe me; it is all going to be okay. You are all going to be okay.”

I found Dr. Ochoa and asked him if we could take our mother home. After all, I had promised her that. “We don’t really understand what’s going on,” he said, “but if you want to take her home, you can.” I told my mother we were all free to go, expecting her to be as excited as I was.

My mother said, “But I don’t want to go home.”

“What? Mom, what do you mean?”

“I don’t want to go home. I want to stay here until it is time to go to my new home.”

I was stunned. Everyone was stunned. We’d allowed ourselves to think my mother’s instantaneous recovery was some kind of a miracle, that she was, all of a sudden, just
better
. But maybe that’s not what was happening at all.

None of us knew what to do, so we decided to stay with her at the hospital. We were in her room when, about two hours later, she sat up, looked at us, and said, “Oh, my God, I have to go.” Then she began speaking in Italian: “
Padre, vengo a casa pronto
.” We held each others’ hands and prayed with her.

“Now, everyone, give me a big kiss and tell me you love me and leave me in peace.”

After that, my mother lay her head down, closed her eyes, and slipped into a coma.

I stayed at the hospital more or less around the clock. Everyone came back the next day to see her, but this time she didn’t wake up. My father and I were the only ones there when, at 5:00 a.m. on a Tuesday, a nurse came into the visitors’ room where I was lying down and told me I should come with her. My father and I sat on either side of my mother, each of us holding her hand. We listened as her breathing slowed, until she wasn’t breathing at all.

And then my mother passed away.

At the time, I thought it had been cruel of God to bring her back and then just snatch her away. We’d all spent months and months bracing ourselves for the inevitable, and when it happened
we thought we were ready. Then she rose from the dead, strong and healthy, and we believed she’d come back to be with us, to be among us again. But then, just like that, she was taken yet again.

Of course we soon realized God gave us all a breathtaking gift. He gave my mother the strength to tell us we would all be okay. He let us see she would finally be at peace.

Six months after her death, the night I sliced open my finger before my big interview, my mother came to me in a dream. I remember seeing her and running to hug her, and when I did she felt so real, so alive. I said, “Mom, did you hear? I cut my finger.” And she said, “Laurie, of course I know.” I told her about my interview and how I really wanted the job and how I was worried I wouldn’t get it.

“Laurie, don’t worry,” she said. “You’re going to do great in your interview, and you’re going to get the job. Now try and get a good night’s sleep.”