Red plastic drinking glasses are kept in the second cupboard to the left at my mother’s home. Checkered coffee mugs with cows on them are in the corner. Silverware is in the center drawer. I know this by heart now. I have spent the majority of the last five days there, some times morning through late night. And I have gotten comfortable with helping myself to the kitchen.

Wednesday I got “the call” to come say good bye, so my dog went to the kennel, my kid went to the neighbor’s, and I went to my mother’s home. And sat with my family. And waited. Many things have happened. We said lots of goodbyes and thank yous. The staff stopped in many times to hug us and tell us it has been an honor to care for our mother, and to show us their scars where she bit or scratched the shit out of them. We told stories and sang dozens and dozens of songs. No one acted like a jerk. We drank over a fifth of liquor and a couple sixes of hard cider. We ate chips and other crap. And waited. We cuddled her, and held her hand, and told her she was beautiful. So did the staff. They got in bed with her and held her while we all gathered in her room, the temperature in there becoming stifling and suffocating as we all packed in there, afraid to walk away. We learned to dress in layers as we waited.

She struggled to remember how to swallow, so giving her drugs orally was a horrible thing to witness. Then her drugs were given rectally, and that was even more horrific. “I’d rather just die than have anything stuck in my butt,” her nurse told us. So we decided to stop everything except the morphine, including the anti-seizure medicine. Then we waited for her to have a seizure. It didn’t come. It may.

She perked up and inched away from the edge of death, and had moments where she made eye contact and attempted to smile. She was angry and frowned. She made nonsensical sounds and we wondered if she would say anything important. “Oh yeah,” she said this morning as I stroked her hair. She trembled. We sat and watched. We became exhausted. We stopped singing and telling stories.

I came home.