Decaying Apple

And at some point, I have to write of the death, and not the aftermath. The days that ripped me to pieces.

And at some point, I have to write of the death, and not the aftermath. The days that ripped me to pieces. Days I lied to myself to get through it, and still cracked smiles at sympathetic relatives and exhausted doctors. Days I rode CitiBikes to the MET when ICU visiting hours closed between 6 and 8, heat stuck to my skin, crying loudly and openly in July heat, tears fogging the view of the bike lane. Ordering packaged mochi ice cream to the waiting lounge because goddamit, it’s still summer, and my mom might be dying in there, but it’s still summer and there must be a sliver of joy budgeted for even those in the thick of the worst of it! That July, I used to thank the universe that my mom chose the summertime in New York City to get sick, where we could walk freely in the Upper East Side with a tennis skirt and a tank top and not assaulted by a January cold, or a suburban boredom. Those 15 minute walks in the New York City heat saved my sanity.

 But I take back all that gratitude.

That summer - all of New York was dancing and my mom was a prisoner in a hospital room. I hate the paradox of so much joy skating alongside so much pain. It is the paradox of our time - of war, of ICE detainees, of hospital beds in New York City.

A summer I’d pay to forget. A summer where I couldn’t even catch up to the reality of the ways in which I was forever changing.  

———— 

I have this idea of home, that it should smell like bread and honey. That everyone on earth should have a garden, and a warm bed, and a feeding mother. On those withering days, I realized home is a series of habits. When habit is gone, it is oh so aching and loud. I look for you at home at 9:15 AM, grinding cloves in the mortar & pestle for your chai, gritting your teeth to the sound of stone, in a purple fleece sweatshirt. In the end, what aches most is the lost archive of habits. 

We are three, living out of a studio seven blocks from the Cancer Hospital (The Grim Reaper). Me, my dad and brother. Home, and our habits, are 55 minutes too far away. We must be available for a tornado of new information, new grief on 69th street at the drop of a hat. 

We press a twin air mattress against a queen bed and have 3 feet of space in front of us for a small table for takeout dinner. The apartment is $1750 a month and we are a puddle of gratitude for the closeness it provides to my mother and The Grim Reaper. We lie about our occupancy to the owner of the apartment. 3 might honestly be above the fire limit for a room this tiny. We trade nightly on who gets to sleep on the majestic Queen Bed. There is toothpaste stuck to the sink and no more than 4 eggs in the fridge, sympathy leftovers, and a decaying apple. We have no habits, no familiar joy - we are all chaos, grief, survival. Days blurred and bound by the boundaries of the ICU visiting hours. 9 AM-6 PM, two at a time. 8PM - 6 AM, just one of us. Useless facts embedded in my brain now like an ancestral wound. Everyday in the ICU a battlefield. We do not read or listen to music in the free time; we hold our breath in a delusional hope that fades lighter every day. We read enough about kidney cancer to minor in Nursing at the medical school next door. We are filled with useless facts that do nothing to revive her. We talk of Germany, spending life savings on a medical plane to take her there, childhood memories, water intake, bowel cleanings, pressure wounds, the possibility of a last resort acupuncturist. As if she needed one more needle. 

What was the joke we’d say between fighting with nurses, or heating up 2 day old curry in the hospital cafeteria on day 29?

And don’t EVER say we weren’t in the trenches!!!

And even now - look at me. My memory can only let you enter the studio 7 blocks form the hospital, or the waiting lounge, or the cafeteria. It can’t trace back to the nurses on the 11th floor, or her bed that never was allowed to face the sun, or her cold, withering body. That memory lives in a block of ice; only for me and my therapist to pick through. I cannot write about that place in my memory with poetry. Only with gluttonous tears. She deserves better than to be remembered like that… like a sad painting at the center of the ugliest days of our lives. 

My mother, the epitome of beauty. Chained to a bed, no water and no food by the mouth for 37 days. Fed through a plastic tube, reduced to limbs that couldn’t even lift an inch off the bed. Every day, lying to ourselves, that a funeral was not in the cards for our family. My beautiful, strong Reena. Her name that means song; her eyes notes of coffee, brown silk, wet earth. Reena, who wore blue sweaters to school, who knew all the answers, who spoke of Punjab with love, even when it turned on her. Reena, who refused to grow old with me. Reena, who’s laugh is a room I’d like to enter again. Reena, who’s life I will only allow to be remembered by sweet words & poetry.