Mother’s Day (Prose)
She used to watch me play Zelda,
couldn’t work the controller herself,
but she had to know how the story ended.
I finished the whole damn game for her.
I was sixteen. She made me coffee
and asked before I’d even sat down—
“Are you going to play this morning?”
We were poor. Dad drank the money.
That’s not a metaphor. That’s a Tuesday.
But Mom saw something still alive in him
from before my memories started,
and she was right. Cancer dried him out
and the man she married came back
just in time to die.
Tennessee was supposed to be the fresh start.
She walked those fields just to walk them,
Lake Ontario traded for mountains
she’d never seen. Campfires in the yard
and nobody calling the cops.
I saw her smile for real.
Then a splinter. A goddamn splinter.
She hid the infection because we had no insurance—
we never had insurance—
and some ER doc shrugged and said “diabetes foot”
and sent her home. I’d punch him
if I knew his name.
The black spread. The gangrene spread.
Heart attack the night before the specialist.
They took her leg. Then her birthday
in a hospital bed. Then kidney failure.
Then bed sores. Then me
sleeping in the lobby for weeks
because I didn’t drive and couldn’t leave.
But even then—
the dietitian, cute, and I was flirting,
told Mom she’d be running the halls soon.
Mom looked at her dead straight and said,
“Really? That would be amazing.”
Pulled the blanket back. Showed the stump.
The girl went white. Mom laughed
till she cried. Told her she just had to do it.
I don’t think the dietitian ever came back.
The ambulance wouldn’t take her home.
No insurance, no ride. A nurse said fuck it,
got her own SUV. I argued with Mom
about eating. Empty stubborn words
from two stubborn people. I didn’t know.
I swear I didn’t know.
Then her blood pressure bottomed out
and she said help me, help me,
I can’t breathe, and they dragged me
out of the room.
A doctor asked me to choose—
let her feel like she was drowning,
or painkillers that would slow her heart
and shorten what was left. I stopped them
for one day so she’d come back to me.
She did. She talked about going home.
She talked about my niece starting school.
I told her she wasn’t going home.
She wouldn’t answer that.
She talked about the invisible cat
from the morphine days. She talked
about the weather.
Then she napped.
Two weeks later my niece started school.
I told Mom. I don’t know if she heard.
Two days after that, she died.
She didn’t see the first day
but she lived long enough.
That’s good enough for me.
I went to the wake. Not the funeral.
I’ve seen her grave once. It was 2007.
Her friend had all boys and Mom
convinced my sister it was because
the husband’s girl testicle got removed—
cancer, one ball, only boys. Made sense
if you didn’t think about it.
My sister believed her.
Told the friend. The friend believed her too.
Even in the worst of it, we laughed about that.
Boy and girl testicles, Zelda, and laughing.
And I smile.
Goodbye Mom. Sleep well.