I Had to Say Something (15 page)

My mind was racing during the drive home. My mom was
too quiet. She was giving up. Once home, she went directly to bed. By now, Mom lay in bed 98 percent of the day, sleeping at times and crying at times but rarely resting. As she lay there, I watched her for a bit before I turned the lights out. Then it was time for me to leave, but first I booked a ticket for my next visit in early January.

Shortly after Christmas, however, my dad called to say I should probably come back to California sooner. He said she was getting visibly worse. The doctors were talking about hospice care. He didn't know what to do. Could I please come out and help with things?

When I arrived, I saw for myself how much worse my mom had gotten. My dad also looked terrible, his face showing his distress and confusion. I spent the next week with them at their apartment. When possible, I let my mother fall asleep in my arms. Now that she was just skin and bones, I could pick her up a lot easier. Just like anyone else, she needed to be touched—now more than ever.

She looked like a zombie. You could read on her face each morning how long and harrowing the night before had been. Her fear that once she fell asleep she wouldn't wake up was growing. Every hour, she would start crying, and then I would start crying. I could do little more than hold her and tell her I loved her and that everything would be all right. I kept praying, but I was losing faith fast.

“Do you remember the first time you tried to use a video camera?” I asked her. “Or how about the time we tried to figure out that recipe from the
Galloping Gourmet
?” These memories made me smile but did nothing for her. Was she awake or was she asleep? At that point, I realized I no longer envisioned her regaining her health.

I extended my hands and massaged my mother's face. My
Nanny told me that a good massage is not only immensely helpful to the person being massaged, but it also tells the masseur much about that person. Gently rubbing her forehead, cheeks, and nose, I could vividly feel her pain. I know that sounds corny, but the muscles in her face told me plainly how much pain she was in. She yearned to be touched, so I continued to rub her face lightly. She responded well to it. That allowed her body to relax and trust me. Within the hour, she was asleep. It was one of my few moments of joy that entire season.

Growing up in the 1960s, I got a sanitized version of death and dying, sometimes in black and white but never in blood red. People died and that just seemed to be the end of it.

Her bones almost came through her skin. I feared that the slightest amount of pressure might snap one of them. Age spots and discoloration covered most of her once-beautiful skin. As I rubbed her abdomen, I could almost feel her organs starting to shut down.

“Do you remember the surprise anniversary party that Russ, Terry, and I threw for you and Dad?” I asked her. “You always liked it when I bought you a corsage, didn't you?” I could almost see her smile, or so I imagined.

Once again, I massaged her face.

“Please take care of my family,” she mumbled.

I had to sit back and take a breath. In her final days, she was so concerned that those she loved would face horrors without her around. She was calling out to anyone who might hear her, asking them to take care of her family. Or maybe she hadn't really spoken, maybe it was her face calling out only to me, or maybe it was my imagination. I fought back tears, just as I had been doing for more than a year.

“I love you, Mom. You're a queen.”

Every hour or so, she would come to life with amazing clarity, only to end up crying again. She'd try to say something, but I couldn't understand her. I guess at that point, even I wasn't taking her words seriously. I just wanted her to be at peace, but she kept crying.

“What's wrong?” I asked her.

The fear in her eyes scared me. I held her hand and tried to assure her that everything would be fine. Of course, I knew it wasn't going to be fine. And then I would start crying.

“Am . . . I . . . dying . . . Mike?” she managed to ask.

“Everything will be fine, Mom.” The truth was that I wasn't ready to admit that she was, indeed, dying.

“Please don't make me go!” she would exclaim in a moment of clarity, clutching my hand with all her strength.

“Mom, you're not going anywhere.” I would put my hand on her forehead and try to massage her back into a state of rest.

Around January 7, hospice personnel sat down with my dad, Terry, and I and explained how to prepare for her death. “Here's the best way to administer morphine,” I remember someone saying. I wanted to ask him if some morphine could also be administered to me.

The first time I placed the liquid morphine under her tongue, my mother shook her head and tried to spit it out. She was angry, but that was good because it meant she was fighting. Instead, just as the doctor had suggested, I hid the morphine in some applesauce and spoon fed it to her.

My mother did not want me to see her in the condition she was in. Likewise, I hated her seeing me so drained and depressed. I had not worked out in weeks; all I was eating was soup and crackers. I appreciated the break I got when the home health-care assistant came by to give her a sponge bath.
Yet at the same time I feared falling asleep and having my mother pass without me beside her.

I reached a point where constantly hearing my mother cry and listening to her confusion about what was happening became too much to bear. Without thinking, I finally did what I had hoped to avoid doing. I put my mouth to her ear and whispered, “Mom, you're dying.”

To my surprise, her tears suddenly stopped.

I waited a few moments. “Do you understand what I just told you?”

She took her time but eventually nodded. After that, I swear she never cried again.

A nurse had been at our house almost twenty-four hours straight. She said my mother was not in pain and that when the process of expiration began, it would last about two hours because her body would shut down rather quickly. But two hours turned into eight. Crying right in front of my mother, I waited. Twelve hours after the beginning of the end, even the nurse said she was amazed that my mother was hanging on for so long.

At two in the morning on January 9, she finally passed. Dad, Terry, his wife, Mona, and I were there with her. In her final hour, we were all so exhausted we could barely stand. There we were, with our mother for one last time before the mortuary came to take her away forever. I wanted to go with her.

 

On the day of my mom's funeral, we placed a few meaningful items in her casket before closing it. Dad brought a ceramic angel and my brother, a deck of cards. I took the queen of hearts from a regular deck and wrote, “You will always be twenty-one to me. Love, Mike.” The reference to a winning
blackjack hand was the best I could think of at the time. I know she appreciated it.

There were almost one hundred people at the service. My sister-in-law's entire family had been with us throughout the last few months. Even one of Mom's former co-workers from Las Vegas made the drive to come say good-bye. That meant the world to me.

I cried the entire service. My mother and my best friend were gone. What would I do now? When the Minister asked if anyone had anything to say, I immediately stood and said this:

At the cemetery, her grave is on top of a hill overlooking a valley. As they lowered her into the ground, we threw flowers on top of her. And then I stopped crying. I simply stopped. Maybe I was too exhausted to know what was happening—or what was about to happen. I thought of my favorite line from
Les Misérables
: “To love another person is to see the face of God,” and it seemed so right.

 

My life returned to what passed for normal for me. As I returned home and tried to start a routine, I found it very difficult. I knew I needed to book appointments to bring some money in, but I had no motivation. Then my first new client ended up being more than I bargained for.

A man named Mark called me from a phone number with a 719 area code to book an appointment. He looked like he was in his midforties and had blue eyes and very dark brown hair. He was a little taller than me and very polite. He was an attractive man. I guessed that he was in the military.

I showed him to the massage room and told him he could get undressed in there.

He took one look at the room, however, and shook his head. “This isn't going to work,” he said. I was miffed, as I really didn't have much else to offer. “Can we just lie on the floor in the living room?”

“Let me put something on the floor,” I offered, going to the closet for a sheet to put over the carpet. I also grabbed a couple of pillows and set everything up like a makeshift bed. I turned out the lights and lit a few candles, placing them throughout the living room.

“That's great,” Mark said, taking off his clothes as he stood by the couch. I took off my shorts and lay down on the sheet. Mark lay down next to me. “Just hold me, okay?” he asked.

I was fine with that, so I simply placed him in my arms and rubbed his body lightly. There was no talking and, to be honest, nothing was happening.

After about twenty minutes, however, I could feel teardrops falling on my chest. “What's wrong?” I asked him.

Mark buried his face deeper into my chest. “You don't want to hear about it.”

I pulled him in tighter. “Try me.”

Mark took in a deep breath. “I'm dying,” he said rather calmly.

In my entire escorting experience, that was the first time I had a client say those words to me so bluntly. “What do you mean, Mark?” I asked.

In words broken up with tears, Mark confided that he had a rare form of leukemia. “Do you know what leukemia is, Mike?”

I wasn't sure of the exact definition, but I nodded and said yes.

“I am very upset. I really needed to be held by another man tonight.”

“I'm so sorry, Mark,” I told him. “I don't know what to say.”

“You don't have to say anything. I'm sorry for bringing my problems to you.”

“Everything will be okay,” I whispered. I don't know why I said that.

I grabbed another sheet and pulled it over us. “Tell me about it,” I said, snuggling my face to his. “I want to know.”

Fighting back tears, Mark told me about his illness. After he was first diagnosed, he went online to do as much research as he could. In the process, he found numerous other people in cyberspace who were suffering from the same disease. He developed online friendships with several of them. He was speaking with such intensity, I wondered if this was the first time he had ever confided in anyone about this.

All seemed to be going well for him until he'd logged onto his computer that morning and learned that one of his online friends had died. “It was more than I could take,” Mark cried. “That's when I called you.”

For the next half hour, we lay there in silence. We had gone past one hour, but that night, I didn't care. I wanted to do as much as I could for this guy. “Do you have anyone you can talk to?”

“My wife.”

Not a surprise because I had noticed his wedding ring.

“I know I am here with you, but I really do love her. She'll
have to face such a huge responsibility by herself when I'm gone.” And he kept crying, softly.

I stared up at the ceiling, trying not to get caught up in his grief. “What responsibility might that be?”

Mark sighed and buried his head in my chest again. “I have three children.”

As far as I'm concerned, you can't hear a story like that and not be touched. He lay in my arms silently for almost another two hours before he decided it was time to get dressed and leave. He told me that he and his wife had not had sex since his diagnosis. That didn't surprise me. The slightest bit of stress can kill your sex drive. During our visit, we did not have sex either, and he seemed okay with that.

“Thank you for listening, Mike,” he told me. Dressed and ready to go back to his life, he handed me two hundred dollars plus a little extra.

I thought about Mark over the next few weeks. If I was watching the news and there was a story about a new cancer treatment, I would think of him. If I saw someone in the military, I would think of him. If I simply saw a good-looking man, I would think of him. Mark had touched me, and I hoped it wasn't because I pitied him.

I wasn't sure he would call me again, but out of the blue he contacted me to schedule another appointment. I was so happy to hear from him.

When he came again, we lay on a sheet in the living room just as we had before. This time we had sex but nothing hot or heavy. Afterward, he told me two more of his online friends had died. I let him lie in my arms again for more than an hour.

“How are your children?” I asked.

That question really made Mark light up. He told me about
all the projects they were doing at school, how their dance classes were going, a recent sleepover they hosted, and all the activities in which they were involved. He talked about all this while resting his head on my chest.

Then, like lightning, he was up and said he had to be on his way. He thanked me again and told me what a wonderful time he had had.

I saw him two more times before he disappeared from my life. Both times we enjoyed intimacy, but on his last visit, he told me how he and his family were going to the Mayo Clinic to see if there was anything they could do for him. He sounded hopeful, but I could tell that he was nervous.