REFLECTIONS By Linda J. Kobert, MFA, MSN, RN

arty, the Meals As I kneel before her re- on Wheels delivery cliner, bathing the ugly, seep- Mman, walks through ing lesions that are, I imagine, the front door just as I’m just like the malignancy that about to start changing Mom’s is eating away at the inside dressings. He’s jovial, likes to of my mother, she starts to talk, says this is such a great croon. job because he gets to meet Moon River, wider than a all kinds of people and loves mile. I’m crossing you in style to hear their stories. “Like some day. you, Millie,” he says to my Her voice is gravelly now, mother. “How you have such but all I hear is crystalline a good voice and sing in the grace. And while my voice choir.” has never been as elegant Mom doesn’t sing in the as hers—“Don’t screech, choir anymore. She hasn’t Linda,” she would always been out of the house in command me—I sing along. months. She’s got cancer. Dream maker. You heart She’s dying. Slowly, though, breaker . . . and mercifully, without too But all of a sudden I’m much pain. Yet. choked. Tears are running She’s polite enough while down my cheeks, and I’m Marty is standing in her liv- struggling not to let her see ing room, looking down on me sob. Which surprises the her propped in her recliner, Moon River and Mom hell out of me. I smooth the draped with an afghan, still A nurse caring for her dying mother soapy cloth over her swollen wearing her purple night- leg lumpy with lesions, pat it gown and bathrobe. It’s all rediscovers an old source of dry, then run my sleeve over she ever wears now. intimacy and ease. my face to catch the drips “I used to sing with a com- there. She thinks I’m having munity theater group, too,” a hot flash, that I’m wiping she tells him. “Show tunes. ‘Climb Every Mountain,’ ‘Dia- sweat from my brow. My voice quavers, but I keep singing. monds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,’ that kind of thing.” Two drifters, off to see the world . . . “‘Ol’ Man River’?” Marty asks. I don’t know why I’m crying. Maybe it’s because there is “Oh sure,” she says. “And lots more.” such a lot of world to see, but she has seen so little of it. She’s After he’s gone, though, she complains. “He just yammers always been too scared to venture very far from familiar places. on. He doesn’t know a thing about music.” Now she’ll never see more of the world than she can see this It’s hard for her to be gracious, I tell myself; she’s uncom- minute. She’ll probably never even make it into her kitchen fortable. Still, I know she’s said similar things about me over again. the years. These days I’m willing to forgive her, though, will- Maybe I’m crying because I haven’t sung with my mom ing to overlook the unkind comments and criticism that once since I was a teenager, standing in front of the sink in that made me think she was more like the wicked stepmother than kitchen, up to my elbows in soapy water, washing the dinner the kind and loving fairy godmother I needed. dishes while my sisters dried and we all sang Daisy, Daisy, So I pull on latex gloves and start snipping at the gauze give me your answer do. Mom lifted the plates and glasses that holds the dressing on her leg. “You should sing,” I tell into the cupboard and added harmony—notes that came her. Because it’s the one thing she has always been very good naturally to her ear; she hadn’t learned to read music yet. at, one thing I can say I admire about my mother: how her Or maybe I cry because there’s a beatific smile on voice sounds like flowers bursting into bloom on a warm my mother’s face right now, even as I poke at the painful summer day. wounds that cover this grotesque appendage that is her “Now?” leg. And maybe that’s enough. Enough for me to forget she’s “Yeah. Why not?” not a fairy godmother. Enough for me to remember she’s my “What should I sing?” mom. ▼ “How about ‘Ol’ Man River’?” Because Marty suggested it and, well, I can’t think of another song right this minute. Linda J. Kobert is research and communications director at the Myosi- Her hearing aids don’t work very well, though. “‘Moon tis Association and chief editor of Hospital Drive, the online literary River’?” she says. ­magazine of the University of Virginia School of Medicine. She lives in Charlottesville, VA. Contact author: [email protected]. Reflections is “Sure,” I say. Because it doesn’t much matter what song it coordinated by Madeleine Mysko, MA, RN: [email protected]. Illus- is; whatever she sings, it will cheer her up. tration by Barbara Hranilovich.

72 AJN ▼ November 2017 ▼ Vol. 117, No. 11 ajnonline.com