habibti yuma

My mom had asked my oldest sister to have me come stay the night with her which I found interesting since I’d spent several nights with her. That’s how I knew this would be the last time.

I got stuck in traffic on my way to the hospital and all I could think was, “please God, please let her be alive when I get there”, which wasn’t a stranger to thought. Every morning for eleven years I would wake up and lay still to hear the sound of her at the kitchen sink or on the phone or anything, “please God, let her be alive.”

When I got to her room she was sitting up in bed. She looked okay and smiled when she seen me and said I’m sorry, I know you’re tired. ( imagine that, here she is laying in a hospital bed, body infested with cancer, wearing a pink babooshka on her small bald head and she’s apologizing because she knows I’m tired!) She even suggested I leave because she felt bad but I didn’t. I know she wanted me there. She asked for me and I wanted to be nowhere else in the world.

We talked a little but I can’t remember what she said. I hate that I don’t remember! What’s wrong with me? Wasn’t I paying attention? Her dinner came in and she tried to eat a little which gave me hope since her appetite had been very poor. But I knew better as I watched her sitting there with death hanging over her head. Hovering. Waiting.

She needed to use the bathroom so I helped her get up and get there. She sat on the toilet and leaned forward to rest her head against my belly and wrapped her arms around my waste. I remember staring down at her and wanting to pick her up like a baby and nestle her in my arms and against my chest and protect and comfort her. I wanted to save her.

When she was done she couldn’t wipe herself. She said I know you gross out but I can’t do it, can you please help me? And just like that, there went her dignity, right down the toilet with the rest of her shit, My mother asking me to wipe her ass! The strongest, bravest most beautiful woman I ever had the privilege to know and then she kissed my hands! My hands! Can you fucking believe it? As if I were worthy! I shouldn’t have just wiped her ass. I should’ve kissed it right along with the very ground she walked on my precious precious mama! I’m so sorry.

When I got her back to bed I layed next to her and we held each other and kissed each other. I’ll never forget her breath on my skin that night and the softness of her cheek. She was so fragile and frightened, trying to be brave but who wouldn’t be scared?

She became agitated and uncomfortable because her body hurt so I lay on the other bed so she could rest. I didn’t want to leave her side but I felt so sorry for her.

I fell asleep.

It seemed like forever when I woke up startled by the sound of the IV crashing to the floor but only fifteen minutes past. Still, it makes me sick that I fell asleep.

The suffering began…

  She didn’t know what she needed or what to do. She thought she needed to pee but she didn’t. She paced and moaned and cried. She would sit then stand then lie down then get up and pace again. She kept saying in Arabic, “yuma ya habeebtee, ya Allah, mautooney. Khaloony a moot.” (mother my love, kill me, dear God let me die). I was sitting on the window ledge just staring at her. The room suddenly felt dreary and gray like the sky during a violent rain. I remember thinking it was because death was there and I kept looking to see if God was there too. I realized I was spacing out and  didn’t know what to do so I got up to hold her and she let me.

She closed her eyes and lay her head on me and breathed heavy. I suggested she take slow deep breaths but she couldn’t. She was so agonized. I tried massaging her but it hurt her body to be touched.

We paged the nurse over and over again asking her for something to relieve the pain. I didn’t know it then but if they administered more morphine she would have overdosed but the nurse was so cocky about it. I realize now that perhaps this was hard on her too but still, she was so unkind and short with her patience.

My mother was asking me to help her and I couldn’t! I paged the nurse again and when she came she said she called the doctor and was waiting to hear back from him and all I said was okay. That’s it! Okay. I didn’t yell at her. I didn’t ask her what we could do. I didn’t insist that she help her somehow. I wanted to shake her into my rage, into my fear. I wanted her to understand that my mother was suffering. I wanted her to feel the loss of what I was losing! How could I make her see and feel what I was seeing and feeling? How was she ever gonna know the love that was diminishing, the woman, the sister, the wife, the mother? How was anybody ever gonna know? Still, I just stood there like a fucking idiot and said okay.

What the FUCK was the matter with me? My mother was suffering and I didn’t do a fucking thing! I couldn’t. I didn’t know how to help her.

She kept asking me to help her, “Yuma sadeeny yuma!” (mom help me mom) I hadn’t realized it until much later as I rehearsed that night over and over in my head that those were the last words my mother ever spoke, “Yuma, sadeeny yuma.”

I never told anyone about what happened that night. I was ashamed for being unable to do anything, for falling asleep, for letting her suffer. My mother would have never fallen asleep on me. She would have done anything. I miss her so much!

That was the worst night of my life. The night that felt like it would last forever. The night my mother began to die…

I imagine everyone thinks their mother is the best mother in the world. For me, mine was. She was beautiful in the way that made everything else seem dull and faded. She smelled so good all the time but not because her perfume smelled good but because on her skin it couldn’t help itself. She was gentle in the way a raindrop rests on a flower petal and fierce in her love the way oxygen is to fire. She was undeniable only I don’t think she knew it because she was humble, teachable, peaceful, grateful.

Beauty held a different definition for her. Everything and everyone was beautiful to her. Literally. She seen what the average person didn’t and she was graceful in it. “Turn the other cheek” she’d say and she meant it because she lived it. She found it difficult to understand cruelty. She only knew how to love and love she did…

She had a naivety about her. She wasn’t quick to understand a joke but when she did her laughter was contagious. Her smile lit up a room. It really did and all who knew her loved her because it was impossible not to. She drew you in like a song that you needed to listen to in silence so you could feel every word in its rhythm…

When morning showed up, I called home and told them all to come. Most of her sisters and brother and parents were all there. They flew in from out of town to be with her. My father, brother and sisters and their husbands, aunts, uncles, cousins, everyone came. We were all there, crowded in that room. The room where death and me had our own little secret.

She knew we were there but she couldn’t talk. We all just sort of shuffled around. People act so differently around death. Some cry. Some talk. Some say nothing at all.

The day was long. Doctors and nurses were in and out. some went to get coffee and smoke. Some just sat by her side. But all of us knew what was coming or rather what was leaving.

She continued to be uncomfortable throughout the day until her body just went into shock. Uncomfortable? Is that what I just said? No, she wasn’t uncomfortable, she was tortured, in agony.

We asked the doctors, “Can’t we do something to help her? More chemo? Radiation?” We were so desperate, but her body was overtaken.

They say some people need permission to let go. So as the day progressed we needed to decide whether or not to give her enough morphine to put her out of her misery. So Connie asked her and I can’t quote her but it was something like, Yuma, if we give you more morphine, you’ll die. Do you want it? She nodded or blinked to say yes, I can’t quite remember…

The phone rang and it was my moms youngest sister Samya. She asked me to put the phone up to her ear. I don’t know what she said to her but it felt like she was waiting to hear her voice. When mom heard her voice she breathed in a sort of gasp and her eyes grew big. That was the first of her last five breaths. Her eyes were fixated at the ceiling in awe. That’s when God came. Oh, he was there and she could see him.  I went to her side and sat next to her holding her hand.

She breathed again. I whispered in her ear, “it’s okay mom, let go. you were the greatest mom. We’ll be okay just go. Be with God. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you…

It was time.

Death lowered itself on to my mother like a vulture seeking prey and enveloped her into its arms.

She took her final breaths and and all the poison in her started seeping out of her mouth and nose. My grandmother wrapped a towel around her head and down below her chin and I yelled no! She’ll choke! My sweet grandmother just watched her daughter die and I yelled at her. I think it was my aunt Laila who removed me from my mothers side. Samer, my cousin held me while I sobbed into his chest.

Connie was two weeks away from giving birth to her first child. She was swollen and devastated. Our mother would never see her first borns’ first born. Tragic!

Mona cried but I don’t remember what else and I believe Mazen, my brother, well that’s just a whole other story. Our mother, the only person who loved us more than anyone ever would or could, was gone and we were lost.

It rained on the way home…

I walked into my house. The place that was once my home because of the woman who made it so.  The place that felt like the safest place in the world, where peace and joy and laughter and fear once resided. The place where the aroma of love was cooked into the dishes that were prepared, where monsters didn’t exist, where life breathed.

Everyone was there but it was empty still, vacant of the life that preserved the life that was there, vacant of the warmth from the gentle touch of a simple woman who held more love, more compassion, more strength in her little finger than anyone could have held in their entire being. Vacant.

I found myself in her bed, wrapped in her blanket, with my nose pressed to her pillow to feel and smell even the tiniest part of her. My mother. But she was gone. Forever. And life would never be the same.

The kitchen was full of everyone sort of scrambling around trying to make sense of what happened, trying to feel comfortable in this home where the love once seeped from its seams. The place we all gathered time and again to be near her, around her, in her presence. We were all there and it was empty.

Somehow I remember everyones faces and somehow I can’t recall.

Zbishik, the polish guy that rented the apartment in the basement for ten years, is the face I remember the most. He looked as tormented as I felt. He loved her and in his broken english said to me, “you mama like my mama.” She cooked for him and he did odd jobs around the house to help her. They were buddies but to him she was his “mama” too.

I don’t know where everyone slept or if they even slept there. I just remember my brother Mazen slept in her bed and I slept in mine. She and I shared a room with two single beds for a very long time but now she was gone.