The Last Days of My Mother (24 page)

“Maybe some people just have stronger beliefs than others,” I said, not understanding why I felt the need to defend them.

“I think you're just saying that because you're scared now. I sometimes think the same way, that maybe Duncan will live long enough to survive this, if he decides not to take his own life. That he could die in slow motion so I can lie to myself, tell myself that death is not horrible, that it is something completely different, but I know that he's had enough. People don't think about that when they show up here with their signs. Their opposition doesn't come
from compassion, but out of rage. They think those who commit suicide are committing a crime against everyone they leave behind, but then they don't care about people dying because of poverty. People don't care about the next guy as long as he doesn't kill himself.”

I wanted to agree with her, give some philosophical input on our situation, this world that championed the freedom of the individual to such an extent that he could ruin a whole nation by photocopying documents, but then object to Mother getting help in dying. However, I had not grown up with this idea like Helena had. She saw that and asked me to excuse her lecturing, she just couldn't contain her indignation sometimes.

“No worries,” I said. “I understand you too. People sometimes think it's easier to correct other people's lives instead of their own.”

“Which is why they go into psychology,” she replied. “Or take short cuts by shouting and waving signs. But in the end we all have to face ourselves.”

“I suppose so. I think it's best that I go see what she wants to do about the drip.”

I walked into the room and sat on the bed. It didn't take much to convince Mother to agree to the equalizer. Each drip counted down the days we had left. The mornings imported sense to remember all our victories in Amsterdam in the beginning of summer, when all days were special drinks and delight. That was life, that was the memory. We moved furniture around to make better use of the living room and made Highland a theatrical stage for the past. Ramji got movers to bring in a hospital bed on wheels. I got out the photographs we'd taken with us from home, scanned them into the computer and held slideshows in the dining room. Duncan slept a lot; Mother and I were mostly alone with the hundreds of photos,
each telling a story. Reykjavik. Berlin. Montparnasse. When Willy Nellyson lit up the wall she said: “He had his good points, your dad.” The balcony of Hotel Europa got a more enthusiastic reaction. The Amstel river and everything we'd done: Trooper in de Dam in Rembrandtplein, Trooper sleepy after the single glass of wine.

“Lord, we've had fun,” she said, flipping through a series of cousin Matti having a banana smoothie that was so well documented it looked like a moving picture. “Do you remember, Trooper? When all days were drinking days, and the weekends too?”

I could recall being confined to the attic with a pound of chocolate and
E.T
. on full blast to drown the revelry downstairs.

“There was singing and laughing back then. Do you remember Brownie? Completely bonkers, but the funniest person I've ever met. She passed out on our Moscow trip and never woke up again. But she lived while she lived.”

I was transported back in time and was once again hit hard by the inevitability of the end. Each passing moment is the last, each day goes by for the last time. And the days were becoming fewer. The moment had come for her to decide how she wanted to die. Did she want to breathe in nitrogen? Helium or argon? Or did she want to drink barbital, which was what Arthur van Österich chose to do in the end? His death was described as peaceful and painless in all of the major papers. I cut out his last statement from one of them and translated for Mother:

Nothing can prepare you for the fear that grips you at death's door. My life's work has been to convince people to have the courage to accept their fate without fear or falsehood. I've maintained that with the right preparations each and
everyone can choose their final hour and live it without faltering, close their eyes for the last time without regret. These past few days I've been both restless and scared. I judge no one for their choice of path, whatever it is and whatever it entails, as long as it causes no harm to others. Respectfully yours, Arthur van Österich
.

The fear set on Mother like a storm from within her bones. After a couple of days on the equalizer the world became such a pleasure dome that it was inconceivable that the darkness would ever return. Free of the constant invasions of the physical world, the Sphinx in her rose again and she became more prophetic than any tarot card, righteous, lucid, undaunted, noble and celestial in spirit, as if the pillars of the earth had merged with her feet. With faith in this equanimity she pulled out the drip and was almost instantly overcome with blinding angst. In the half hour this hurricane swept over her she hated death more than all the disappointments life had brought her. She felt it in the pain that ripped her humanity away, turning her into a reptile and a harpy, and yet she would not let go, didn't want to die. No matter how death tried to seduce her with promises of rest, peace, eternal sleep in the embrace of the stars where her light shone on the world and the sky is the reflection of Eva Briem, she would not go. Anything was better than to disappear and become nothing but this deafening, terrible silence, this gaping void around a body that is doomed to rot, become a skeleton, dirt, and dust. The ache dug into her marrow and rammed a hot poker into her spine for the eleven thousand hours that half hour without the equalizer seemed to last. To live and then suddenly no longer exist: this journey from one level of existence to another brought a crazed dimension of fear. The reverse side of
sixty years of experience flickered on in a second, but what did it contain?

I tried to tell her that she would always exist, in my mind and Helena's, in cousin Matti's heart, and Duncan's and in everyone who had ever touched this grindstone, the people protesting her death in Iceland and in those who supported her all the way, who would stand by her when the final hour came. I told her that she was heroic, all the grand master painters of the soul rolled into one. I gave every speech you think will salvage something when the seas are calm, when the distant possibility of death is just a possibility, just fantasy on a summer's day because death is a part of life, the autumn leaves fall, the seasons change, and we know that somewhere beyond all of this are longer days where the silence calls out to us, but all this time the idea is unreal in its remoteness. We say these things to give us courage, to console those leaving before us, claiming that we never stop being our works and actions, that which we leave behind with our loved ones for them to keep till the end of days. But this idea is shit. Because when all is said and done, nothing will make us reconciled with death.

I sensed that Helena was having a hard time so I held her in silence. We moved closer to each other than could be constrained by daywear. Desperation creates hollows in the labyrinth of the brain that don't require intoxication to fill, just anguish.

“I just get lonely and then I don't want you to leave.”

“I don't want to leave.”

“So don't leave. You can hold me, just for a while, because you're you.”

I was completely lucid, I'd never ventured through the days with such sobriety. The high I experienced was the undiluted reality, the dripless existence that I knew Mother would never experience again.

It was well into December when we finally convened in the kitchen to go over the paperwork. Helena made tea, Duncan and Mother lay together on the couch, Frederik handed out the papers. I filmed her signing her name with an unstable hand. It had to be crystal clear that no one was making this decision for Eva Briem Thórarinsdóttir. She was the one letting go of the spark, the longing that was ignited of the very certainty that she had to die. Even Frederik, who had been in this situation numerous times, helped hundreds of patients down this painful path, let the scientist's mask fall for a moment, giving our hands a quick squeeze under the soft kitchen light. We knew this was the end. She would be dead within a fortnight.

“I'm going to drink barbital,” she finally said and handed him the document. “I'll drink barbital on New Years Day and that will be that.”

Chapter 20

A
t the break of dawn on the day of the wedding I walked alone across the snow-covered cemetery and sat down by her plot. A grayish owl circled over the field that would become Mother's last resting place. She chose the spot herself, a quiet corner at the edge of the already overcrowded old cemetery, under a large maple tree. She said her heart would always belong to Iceland, but her remains would find rest here, in Lowland's cemetery where the road ended.

I walked back to the church and counted my steps as they dug into the ground. The blankness all around exaggerated this intimacy with my surroundings: documenting each detail, constantly registering reality to memory before my world would disintegrate and disappear. The night had dressed the countryside in white as fitted the occasion, and the air was crisp from melting ice that drip-dropped on the church steps. It was pleasant to step inside the warmth. Steven sat in the antechamber drinking coffee and dressed in a corduroy suit. He was back to his lanky old self, stick thin like the day I had first met him. BodySnatch was now owned by a large corporation. He and Gloria had bought a penthouse in the center of Amsterdam with the profits and donated the rest of the money
to Libertas. He pushed a cup of coffee toward me and asked me to have a sip, give it a minute, and then have another.

“First hot, then cold?” he asked and I nodded. “I don't know what's inside these thermoses that keeps the coffee hot all day long, but as soon as it's in the cup it gets colder much faster than newly brewed coffee. This must be coffee from yesterday. Monica probably couldn't be bothered to make a fresh pot this morning so it immediately pisses out all heat.”

“Unless it's a matter of the coffee pissing into the cup and then pissing off,” I said. “Then all you've got left is piss, no coffee.”

“That'll be it—piss. I'm throwing this out.”

As soon as he got to his feet Helena came in wearing a light blue dress and high heels with golden swans on the sides. I asked if her secret mission to hide all contours of her body was over, but she just smiled and took me by the hand, leading me outside. She said she had made up her mind.

“I'm going back to med school, right after the holidays. If I do well Fred's going to train me as his successor.”

“That's great news.”

“It just dawned on me how absurd it was to ruin all my chances just because I was afraid of becoming a cliché. I thought that I needed to be the exact opposite of the people who brought me up in order to lead an independent life. But that's nonsense.”

“Of course. Who else could take over the place anyway?”

“Whatever happens, I'll at least be happy with actually making a decision. To have one thing settled when so much is up in the air.”

She didn't ask me outright, but she undoubtedly wanted to know what my plans were, whether I was going to accept the job Helga and Fred had offered me. I didn't think I had much to offer at the hospice—a representative of life where everything was doomed? I
had never seen myself as that kind of person, but maybe something in me had changed. The joy of having been able to do this for Mother stifled the anxiety over my imminent loss. We were here because it was possible to hold your head high despite everything, possible to surrender with dignity. When all was said and done Mother and I were not in the hands of professionals, but rather held and supported by friends, and they had changed us. Each breath was impregnated with unrest, finality, and anxiety over what awaited us in the near future, but there was resistance in the void and something tangible to hold on to. I took Helena by the arm and as we walked back up the steps I told her I would think about it. The ceremony was about to begin and people were arriving: Gloria's coworkers, friends of the Cannabis Museum, and the young girl from the reception, her eyes as heavy with makeup as when I first saw her. On the benches closest to the door were a few of Libertas' patients along with Monica, Ljudmila, Helga, and Ramji, and up front close to the first bench Mother and Duncan sat in their wheelchairs, gaunt but with expressions of joy that would have made me cry in the long-gone, hung-over days of summer. The low reggae sounds of the band Satiricon provided a background for the hubbub while Steven took his place by the altar and exchanged Rasta blessings with the vicar. Finally Gloria made her entrance and the nuptials were sealed with a kiss and applause.

“We should also applaud the grand newlyweds over here,” Gloria said and asked us to rise. “To Duncan and Eva, who will unfortunately not be able to join us at the party later on.”

Mother was in tears over the generosity of the young couple to let dying pensioners share their big day, and said that this more than made up for my absence at her and Duncan's wedding. We headed to Highland with our trusty Ramji at the wheel. He was himself at
a turning point in his life; he was going to visit his village, Nainital, for the first time in eleven years, and spend the New Year celebrations with his family.

“Have a safe trip, dear Ramjiminn, and thank you for all your driving,” Mother said when they said their good-byes at the door. “Give Buddha my greetings.”