MY MOTHER DIED BEFORE I COULD MURDER HER

CHAPTER 9

Myrna and my mom. My dad and me.

My mother was still in a bad way when I collected Myrna from the airport. Myrna looked tired. The flight from Tel Aviv was overnight and she hadn’t slept a wink. We hugged. I loved having my sister around and always boasted that since the time she married and left home, we never had an argument. We had this brother and sister bond; we were tight and I was so thankful that she was here. On the way to her friend Dianne’s house, Myrna insisted I tell her everything, once again “without leaving anything out.” I told her mostly what I’d told her before on the phone and everything that had gone on since. She listened without interrupting, except when I told her about Sandra. “I phoned her,” she said. “I’m pleased she went to the hospital.”

     When I handed Myrna the living will she read it without saying a word; just let it drop in her lap as she reached for a tissue to wipe her tear-filled eyes. We drove in silence almost all the way to Dianne’s house, then she reached across and rested her hand on my arm, “I wish I knew what to do about this.”

     Myrna showered and changed. We had tea and biscuits with Dianne and then left for the hospital. Myrna was chatty and felt a lot better. She told me about her ceramics class and that her art was exhibited in a small gallery in Herzliya with a couple of other artists in her class. They were no longer students she said; now they were artists whose work warranted a showing in a gallery. Fantastic! I wished I’d have been there on the opening night to share that moment with my sister. We laughed about my brother-in-law’s gout and by the time we arrived at the hospital, we both felt pretty upbeat.

     I knew the way to the recovery ward, so I led Myrna down the stairs along the corridor into the ward. We walked to where I’d last seen my mother. There was no one in the bed. It was made up and empty. Myrna grabbed my arm. “Oh my God!” she cried.

     I looked around. Nothing had changed. The old guy in the bed next to my mother’s was still there. It was like in the movies. The bed was empty. The bed was made up. The patient had died. Christ! Had they lost my telephone number again? “Nurse! Nurse!” I yelled as I rushed back to the nurses’ station.

     We found my mother in a private room sitting in an armchair at the side of her newly assigned bed next to the window. Her head was slumped forward onto her chest and she had a number of tubes attached to her arms leading to different drips. I went over to her but Myrna, who was near hysteria, left me and went looking for a doctor or head nurse who could tell us what the hell was going on.

     “Mom?” l leaned in close to her face. “Can you hear me?” She grunted something and I breathed a sigh of relief. At least she was still alive, although, believe me, she looked as if she had died sitting up. I took hold of her hand and she tilted her head to one side as if she were trying to see me through her marginally good eye.

     “Mein zun,” she said in Yiddish, calling me her son. “I want to go.”

     “What?” I moved closer so that I could hear her. She didn’t reply, or couldn’t; her lips were quivering as they had done since her strokes and soon she gave up the struggle to say anything. I’m not sure what she wanted; did she want to go to the toilet, or did she want to go home, or did she want to leave this planet altogether? Any one of the three would be a good guess and as I went to find a nurse I noticed the drip bag hanging next to her. I could raise the window sash, step back and with a head high kick, send the drip bag flying off the pole and through the open window. Maybe that’s what she wants? Maybe cutting off this vital supply would end it all?

     I stood there for a moment, slipping back in time to my being a patient in hospital in Beverly Hills. I must have been in my early forties, had moved from London, and was living in Los Angeles. One of my new friends, JR, a wonderful guy, soon to be a great friend, was a graphic designer who had what I assumed was adult ADD. The man was always on the go, always hyper, never relaxed. I suppose it was because he was an artistic genius and the energy that coursed through his veins never slowed down. We all know a guy like that, forever pretending to fight you, punch you or kick you, and JR was amazing. He’d step back and shoot his foot in the air, head high, a perfect kung fu, or karate, or fighting kick. And he was accurate. He could lash out, yet stop a mere inch from his target, sometimes your head, or a door or a branch on a tree, anything that could be kicked at that height.