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She woke up again, and I helped her to sit up. “Hi, dear,” she said in her usual strong voice. “Hand me that water, please, my mouth is so dry.” She strained forward to grasp the cup in her hands and took a sip through the straw.

  I had come early to the hospital so I could spend time alone with her, knowing friends from church would soon arrive after the morning service. The day before, I had pulled the doctor aside and asked the frightful question: “How long does she have?”

  While I wanted to hear him say, “She is going to be fine; it’s just a little hump to get over,” I knew that was a fantasy. He responded instead, with the chilling words, “Probably six months.”

  I asked if we should make arrangements for hospice, and he agreed. Nodding his head as an indication he really needed to get someplace else, he turned and left me standing there.

  I walked over to the window and looked out at the parking lot. The world appeared so orderly from the fifth floor looking down—automobiles were aligned in perfect rows, the roadways leading up to the hospital looked like veins leading to the heart, small cars motoring on them like blood pumping life into the monolithic structure in which I stood. Everything inside of me felt disorderly, like a trashcan blown over in the wind. The only positive thing was that we would have more time.

  Though my mother wasn’t present for that conversation, she was aware her days were numbered. More pragmatic than anyone I knew, once she had the facts of any situation, no matter how grave, she was straightforward in her acceptance, without question and without drama.

  She sat up straighter in the bed and in her usual animated way said, “I’ve had a great life, you know, and haven’t we had fun?” She grinned and shook her head, reminiscing about the time she relented and bought me a saber saw for my birthday, when she would have preferred to give me a new dress. And the time she caved, after my relentless pleading, to buy me hiking boots for Christmas instead of the faux pearl necklace she had in mind.

  “What about the diet doctor?” I chimed in. “And those great corned beef sandwiches at Billie’s? And remember when you hung my Raggedy Ann doll in the overhead light that burned all her hair off and you performed a skin graft operation on the kitchen table?”

  “What about the time you went on a bike trip to China?” she countered, making a frightful face. “And when you quit your teaching job and went back to graduate school? You’re something else,” she added, with a half smile as she pointed her index finger at me and shook it as though she were scolding me. I had witnessed that gesture often, a mixture of alarm and admiration for my risk-taking nature: a final acceptance of the ways in which we were fundamentally different.

  Then she stopped laughing and grew serious. “You know, when you told me you were gay, I told Dr. Barnard, the minister at my church, and he said not to tell anyone because they wouldn’t accept you.”

  She had never mentioned this to me before, and I hadn’t known that she had ever told anyone. Then she went on, eyes fixed on mine.

  “I want you to know, honey, that I didn’t need for you to be with a man to be a better person than you are—I needed that for me.”

  I stood there not knowing what to say. I had waited fifteen years to hear some version of those words—to know that in her heart my mother had always seen me for my character and was proud of me as her daughter.

  “As long as you accepted me, that was all that mattered,” I said quietly, returning her gaze.

  “I know that now.”

  I walked to the side of the bed and touched her hand, then silently traced the river of veins on top as I slid my palm beneath hers. She looked at me for a moment and then closed her eyes. I closed mine, too, and felt the slight weight of her hand in mine.

  The boy-doctor had said it would be six months, but it was less than a week. My mother came home from the hospital in an ambulance one day after our conversation, climbed up on the hospice bed that we’d placed in the living room of her home, and started her departure to the world beyond. It was so like her. I could almost hear her say, “My time is up. I’m leaving now.”

  I was settling in for a longer vigil, weeks and months to sit by her side and together remember all the special moments of the past. We would have time to drift apart slowly, and I could let go a little more each day. But it seemed like only hours before she began floating in and out of a coma, prompting me to call my brother, Jim, in Georgia. I told him the time was short and he needed to come.

  I reached out to my closest friends in Seattle and California, as well as the ones nearby, and they assembled in random shifts around the clock for the next three days. I sat on the yellow-patterned sofa during breaks from the bedside and reflected on my mother’s life. Flashbacks streamed before me like snapshots on a slide carousel out of control: my brother and me in the little red wagon when we were three and five; her baking, cake batter all over the counter and the smell of chocolate chip cookies beckoning me forward; her voice calling me home at night from ice-skating in the park at the end of our street; her pride in my losing forty-three pounds when I was fifteen; the look on her face when I gave her a hundred-dollar bill to pay off her charge card for Mother’s Day; my sweet-sixteen party; her surprise eightieth-birthday celebration.

  Waiting for death was like living in a Salvador Dali painting, each transition both expected and surprising. I watched her drift back and forth in and out of consciousness and listened for the rattle in her breathing that comes when death is imminent, leaping up from the couch each time her rhythm shifted. I was wearing the same clothes I had donned two days before, fearful she would depart if I left even for minutes to take a shower.

  Late on the final day, she stirred and in a whisper said, “My feet feel like they are tied together.”

  I came close to her bed and touched her on the shoulder. “They aren’t, Mom,” I said softly, “they probably just feel that way.”

  It was the first time I heard a hint of fearfulness in her voice. She was the most radically stoic person I knew. In spite of all the strength she demonstrated throughout her life, it occurred to me that beneath her deep belief in God and heaven and life beyond the physical plane, there was still a vast unknown yet to be discovered, and in this moment, she might not be so sure she could trust what was next.

  I climbed up on the hospice bed, lay down next to her, and stroked her forehead as I spoke. “I am going to go with you all the way to the other side, Mom.”

  She turned her head toward me, her eyes still closed, and whispered, “You can’t buy love like that.”

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Writing a book is a community effort, and I couldn’t have done it without the support of my family, friends, mentors, and colleagues who read early chapters, offered helpful feedback, encouraged me when I was lost, and never doubted I would finish.

  Special appreciation goes to the following:

  My parents, for modeling strong character and unshakable courage in everyday actions—for showing me how to do hard things with love.

  Archer Christian, the love of my life, for your fierce belief in my story, your keen editing eye, and your ability to quell my fears with your unwavering belief in me.

  Mauree McKaen, my lifelong friend. You told me forty years ago that I should write a book because you thought I had something to say. Thank you for holding that vision until I caught up to it.

  My mentors—Jacob Levinson, Diana Hume George, Maddy Blais, and Suzannah Lassard—who called me a writer and made me believe I was one.

  Kay Gould Caskey and Jim Johnston, for creating safety and offering courage for emerging writers to find their voice.

  My book club pals—Jane Dutton, Laurie Lachance, Rita Benn, and Amy Saunders. You insisted we read my manuscript and wowed me with your feedback and encouragement—even before the wine.

  Brooke Warner and Linda Joy Myers, for having an online course called Kickstart Your Memoir, which gave me the courage to start and the tools that helped me finish.

  Magic and R. K. for
bringing light, laughter, and beauty to each day—for showing me what it means to belong.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  photo credit: Anne Keesor

  Carol E. Anderson is a life coach and former organizational consultant. She has traveled the world extensively for work and pleasure—most recently to Kenya on a photo safari and to the Democratic Republic of the Congo on a philanthropic mission. She holds a doctorate in spiritual studies, and master’s degrees in psychology, organizational development, and creative nonfiction. She is the founder of Rebellious Dreamers, an eighteen-year-strong non-profit organization that has helped women over thirty-five realize dreams they’d deferred and women of all ages come into their own. Anderson is the author of the essay “What Is it About Memoir?,” published in The Magic of Memoir, and coauthor of “Deeper Power,” published in Enlightened Power: How Women are Transforming the Practice of Leadership. This is her first memoir. She lives with the love of her life and their sassy pup in a nature sanctuary in Ann Arbor, MI.

  SELECTED TITLES FROM SHE WRITES PRESS

  She Writes Press is an independent publishing company

  founded to serve women writers everywhere.

  Visit us at www.shewritespress.com.

  Uncovered: How I Left Hassidic Life and Finally Came Home by Leah Lax. $16.95, 978-1-63152-995-5. Drawn in their offers of refuge from her troubled family and promises of eternal love, Leah Lax becomes a Hassidic Jew—but ultimately, as a forty-something woman, comes to reject everything she has lived for three decades in order to be who she truly is.

  Blue Apple Switchback: A Memoir by Carrie Highley. $16.95, 978-1-63152-037-2. At age forty, Carrie Highley finally decided to take on the biggest switchback of her life: upon her bicycle, and with the help of her mentor’s wisdom, she shed everything she was taught to believe as a young lady growing up in the South—and made a choice to be true to herself and everyone else around her.

  All the Ghosts Dance Free: A Memoir by Terry Cameron Baldwin. $16.95, 978-1-63152-822-4. A poetic memoir that explores the legacy of alcoholism and teen suicide in one woman’s life—and her efforts to create an authentic existence in the face of that legacy.

  The S Word by Paolina Milana. $16.95, 978-1-63152-927-6. An insider’s account of growing up with a schizophrenic mother, and the disastrous toll the illness—and her Sicilian Catholic family’s code of secrecy—takes upon her young life.

  The Space Between: A Memoir of Mother-Daughter Love at the End of Life by Virginia A. Simpson. $16.95, 978-1-63152-049-5. When a life-threatening illness makes it necessary for Virginia Simpson’s mother, Ruth, to come live with her, Simpson struggles to heal their relationship before Ruth dies.

  Times They Were A-Changing: Women Remember the ’60s & ’70s edited by Kate Farrell, Amber Lea Starfire, and Linda Joy Myers. $16.95, 978-1-938314-04-9. Forty-eight powerful stories and poems detailing the breakthrough moments experienced by women during the ’60s and ’70s.