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139 Chapter Forty-three Another Chance to Hope We’ve been in our new house less than a week and Mom is already in the hospital. It seems like Mom’s new home has become these long corridors which simultaneously echo in pained voices and voices of boisterous doctors , trying to appear confident. There are always visitors running out of a room, weeping, racing to the bathroom, unable to smile any longer. While one dies of cancer, the other dies of pretending. Every time I visit, Mom pleads, “I want to go home. Please get me out of here.” But I never wheel her to the car and let her come home to die. I just repeat, “Tell me what to do, Ma,” knowing it only takes a confident push past the main desk and the assertive statement: “We’re tired of waiting for the doctor’s release. We’re going home.” Instead I close the door of her room, walk down the long corridor, listening to the moaning, knowing my mother is crying now that she is alone, and I’m going home to sleep in my own bed. Mom and I were each other’s witnesses for donating our organs. It’s an easy thing to do at the hospital with all the papers and doctors right there. When the patient dies, the doctors will be ready to remove their organs and perform that autopsy. Convenient. Mom and I promise to not tell anyone else, knowing the rest of the family will be upset, thinking we’re obsessed with death, giving up on hope. “Remember to make sure they give my eyes to someone. It’s all I got left that’s any good.” “And don’t you forget the same, in case I die before you, Ma.” “You won’t die before me. You have a long life ahead of you. Don’t even think about it now.” She pauses awhile, lets the silence speak, then adds, “At least we know our bodies won’t be going to waste.” Another break with silence. Silence. Something we have rarely shared. “I should be with Grandpa now.” Then she looks out the window at the freeway, trying to hold back tears. Grandpa’s in another hospital. In three days it’s Christmas but neither Mom nor Grandpa may make it home. 140 Burning Tulips Today’s silence is filled with unattainable hopes, yet we keep hoping, pretending a miracle is possible. I sit next to the bed, holding Mom’s hand while she sleeps, looking at the bruised veins attached to IVs, wondering if God is ever going to perform a miracle. Mom looks content, and this frightens me.The only time she looks like she isn’t suffering is when she’s sleeping, wearing the appearance of death. Her breathing rumbles, as if it passes through hollow tubes. Hearing it at least assures me she’s still alive. Mom came home for Christmas. There’s a large front living room window that overlooks a street lined with houses of people who are strangers, not neighbors. Even the friends who stopped by tried to act as if nothing was out of the ordinary, that everything here was just the same as at our old house on Seventeenth Street. It didn’t matter that there was an artificial Christmas tree looking as unreal and exhausted as how we felt; no festive cookies, breads, or Christmas music; and Mom never got dressed. She did take off her scarf and put her wig on, but she hasn’t worn her dirty red polyester bathrobe in front of other holiday guests before. She’s always thought it felt better to be dressed and look well, but her energy is draining fast. Now her face is pale and swollen, yet she keeps smiling, trying to look as if she is enjoying the day. Mom and Dad are more affectionate now, holding hands, embracing, gestures that seemed to have disappeared long before we kids were born. The other night at dinner, Dad decided to pray and started crying, unable to say one more word to God. All he could say was, “I’ve been a horrible husband and now it’s too late to make it up.” No one disagreed or offered comforting words. We only listened as if he were praying to us, not God. Mom has made it clear that she doesn’t want to return for any more treatments, but Dad disagrees...

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