Waiting for a Moment

I wait.

She is beyond us—in another world. Her connection to our waking reality is tenuous at best. And there is a point when she has gone too far to come back. A point when there is no hope of her speaking or eating or drinking anymore. It is the point when a decision is made. When they bring out the morphine and the sedatives and sleep becomes life for her—and, eventually, it will become death for her. It is that moment when preventing her from suffering is all that is left to do… but also waiting and watching and getting more drugs for her and talking to her silent body and holding her cooling hand.

I am confident now that she is truly done with this life—she is truly ready to go. There will be no more years, no more months…not even two weeks…

I wait.

It is near.

And the dark lady is in our home now. She waits in the threshold of my mother’s room, guarding the line between our world and hers. And the dog is fearful of that cloaked woman, but I am no longer afraid… because she is not the only presence here. Sometimes I hear their voices briefly—the ones who walked before my mother. There is a man with them now—the ancestor who was almost lost, the one whose name had been forgotten by all but my mother, the one who sent me the tiger to help me find the name again, the one whose Ka I fed that he might walk by day and journey to meet her before the end. He has reached my mother in time.

I wait.

I sit with her in the dark of her room as a summer storm rumbles away into the night. I tell her who the man is and that I have brought him to meet her on the other side. I tell her that I trust him—that I will be okay and that she doesn’t have to worry about anything anymore.

I wait.