Old Woman
The old woman lay on her deathbed. Her hospital room was cold. The chill of death lingered in the air, ready to claim her as she took each labored breath. Why she kept on fighting to stay alive, she didn’t know. No one was there to comfort her. No one came to visit. No one held her hand. Her only companion was death and she pushed it away, just as she had everyone else. This was the one companion for which she didn’t pine.
She wheezed as she sucked in a breath. It was like the air was made of molasses and didn’t want to enter her lungs, though they continued to expand and contract the way they had done her whole life. The most basic of instincts was becoming more and more difficult, and the woman knew her days were numbered. It could be any moment that death would take her, and she would plunge into the vast unknown with no one by her side. She tried not to think of her difficulty merely breathing, and closed her eyes. The stillness wrapped around her as memories of her life began to surface beneath her eyelids, like a movie had begun playing of its own volition. She did not want these memories now. She was suffering enough. But they came nonetheless.
The snow fell in blankets as the woman, a youthful ten years old, stared out the window. It was like a wonderful, magical land outside. It was freedom. She longed to be out there, frolicking without abandon. But she could not. She was bound to this house, enslaved to her fear. She turned from the window wistfully, surveying the filth she lived in. There were stains all over the living room carpet. Cigarette burns littered the furniture. A stench lingered in the air, stale and volatile to her nostrils. No matter how long she lived in this place, the smell still assaulted her senses just as much as it had the moment she stepped into the doorway. That was the last time she had been outside.
This was not her real home. This was just a stop along the road of many, many different foster homes. As a baby, she had been abandoned in a dumpster, rescued by the barking of stray dog. Sometimes she wished she had died then, so she wouldn’t have had to live as a rejected and tortured soul. She had never been able to find a home. There were just places to survive. She was never able to live.
The hospital room was bare and stark. There were no cards or flowers or cheery teddy bears wishing her a speedy recovery and telling her how much she was loved. She was not loved. Not a day in her life had she believed love existed, even now. Especially now. A nurse brushed in with a curt, “Good morning,” and proceeded to check monitors and change the bedpan. She uttered not another word to her patient, who had been mean and spiteful since the moment she had arrived. The woman glared at the nurse, as if her private sanctuary of death had been breached. She did not care for the staff at this hospital, with their painted smiles and hushed gossip. She was rude to them with every interaction, her loathing emanating from every single word and look. She did not like people in general, even her own child.
Another memory involuntarily washed over her, plunging her to another time she had been in the hospital on her own. She was giving birth to a daughter, and her fear had made her more angry and vicious than usual. She did not know how to be a mother, neither did she desire it. She had never had a mother herself, and the worthless piece of garbage who had gotten her pregnant didn’t even have the courage to show up for the birth. She was forced to fend for herself, as usual. As she curled her arms around her belly, breathing through a contraction, her eyes caught sight of old scars that marked her skin - cigarette burns, razor marks, and one, long angry scar that ran from her elbow to her wrist. No, she did not like people. People were horrible, disgusting animals who only wanted to inflict pain. And now she was being forced to care for one, who would inevitably end up as miserable as herself. Pain wracked her body again, and she could focus on nothing but the intake of breath.
For some reason, the woman couldn’t bring herself to give her baby away. She didn’t know why. Maybe it was the paycheck the child brought in, or maybe it was because, whether she wanted it or not, this baby was a part of her. Either way, as she carried the little bundle away from the hospital alone, she had a warm feeling in her heart for the first time in her life. She would care for the child by herself. She didn’t need anyone else, especially not the girl’s good for nothing father.
The woman continued along this vein of memory, hearing the crying of an infant ringing in her ears, the laughter of a toddler, the tantrums, the first time her daughter had uttered the words, “I hate you mommy.” She had tried to love the child. She had fed her and changed her diapers. She had worked two jobs to make ends meet so the little urchin could have a roof over her head. But she had never been maternal. She provided for the child’s needs, but could not express what was in her heart. She had allowed herself to love the girl, and was repaid by hateful words and endless stress. The girl had been rebellious as a teenager, and had run away from home, stating that her mother was heartless and unloving. She had seen her daughter over the years from time to time. She had kids of her own now, but remained distant and cold. The woman did not know her grandchildren well. She had been abandoned by the one person she had ever really loved, and now, as the time of her end hastened, she realized that she had many regrets.
The girl had fallen and scraped her knee. She must have been three or four years old. She was crying; large tears dropping on her clean shirt. The woman was always particular about keeping clean, obsessive even. She brushed the tears from the girl’s face quickly, before any more could fall and told her, “Suck it up.” This girl needed to learn how to be strong in a difficult world. There was no time for tears. She had not held the child or comforted her. She had roughly grabbed her hand and pulled her along the way, willing her to stop crying. It would make streaks on her face.
The old woman snapped back to the present, awakened from her memory by silent tears running down her own cheeks. She had no use for tears, and wiped them away with her sleeve. Tears did not solve problems. Tears showed weakness. But she did regret the fact that she hadn’t been warm and affectionate with her daughter. Truth be told, she didn’t feel capable of it. She had not felt warmth for any person other than her daughter, except as a wide eyed and trusting child in her first foster home. This was when she learned that people didn’t actually care about her.
She had been placed with a family of four; a mother, father and two boys. At first, they seemed wonderful. The old woman had been about five years old, and she had desperately wanted someone to love her and take care of her. The mother’s warm smile welcomed her in and allowed her to bring her guard down. For a while she was happy there. The family was nice, and they fed her well and she had a warm bed of her own. Then she started to have nightmares. Night terrors they called them. The mother didn’t know how to deal with them and would just cry. The father, understanding at first, got fed up with waking in the middle of the night day in and day out. The foster parents grew tired of her, and when she started taking their things and hiding them, they decided she didn’t belong with them. They discarded her like trash. At least she hadn’t done that to her daughter.
The sound of the phone ringing brought the old woman back to her chilly present once again. She tried to shift in her bed, but it was too difficult to move on her own anymore. Her bones were brittle and her muscles didn’t work the way they used to. She could hear the nurse at reception answer the phone. “Palliative Care, Joanna speaking. How may I direct your call?” Then there were hushed tones, and she heard the words prognosis and days maybe. She wondered if someone were calling to inquire about her, but quickly dismissed the thought. She had contacted no one to tell them she was sick. She had had cancer for three years, and hadn’t told a single soul. She had pushed away everyone who had ever tried to get close. Her solitary life left her without friends, family or even concerned neighbors. She didn’t even have pets.
All of a sudden, a wave of loneliness washed over the dying woman, and she wished for a different life. She had been so sure every person had ill intentions that she had not allowed herself to open up to anyone. Once in a while people came along who were convenient, and she let them in, but still kept them at arm’s length. There was Bill for instance, who had proposed to her five different times and been rejected over and over again. He had only been able to take so much of it, and eventually he had left. He and all the others. The woman had been attractive, and there was never a shortage of male attention. After the first few bad relationships, she knew it wasn’t worth her effort. The first black eye had been a reminder that she didn’t need men in her life. All the others didn’t stand a chance.
All these years on this earth, and the woman had no one to call. She had driven her daughter away with her coldness. Bill had left her long, long ago. Neither of them would care if she died. She had been a cruel woman. She had known only cruelty. Death mocked her as she lay immobilized by her illness.
There was a gentle knock at the door, and the doctor let himself in. He pulled her chart off the wall and looked it over. He then stowed it back in its place on the wall and came over to the bed to check the old woman’s vitals. She allowed him to lift her wrist, probing for her pulse. She turned her head, and looked into his eyes. He was smiling gently as he gently placed her hand back down on the bed. His hand remained on her arm. It was warm – such a contrast from the room.
“Ma’am, I know you’ve already said no, but is there anyone I can call for you?” The woman smiled weakly, wistfully, and shook her head.
“There is no one to call Doctor. I was born alone and I will die alone.” The doctor shook his head.
“I don’t think you understand. You don’t have much longer. Is there really no one you want to say goodbye to?”
The woman lay in silence for a moment, thinking of all the people in her life that ever mattered. There were very few of them, and the one that kept coming back to her mind was her daughter. She always felt that she had done right by the girl, and the girl had still abandoned her. She had never been included in her daughter’s life. She hadn’t been invited to the wedding. She hadn’t been invited to her grandchildren’s first birthdays, or any subsequent ones. She had been completely excluded. Why would she want to call the girl?
When the girl was twelve, she spat at her mother. They were fighting. The ungrateful girl was always trying to hurt her mother by making messes and leaving them. She left her clothes all over the floor. She spilled juice and did not wipe it up. She missed the garbage. On this particular day, the woman had come home early and caught the girl smoking in front of her bedroom window. Startled by her mother’s sudden entrance, the girl dropped the cigarette on the pristine carpet, burning a hole in it before the woman could scoop it up and throw it out the window. She wound up and slapped the girl hard across the face, leaving a hand print in her wake. The girl’s hands went immediately to her face, angry tears welling up in her eyes. She screamed at her mother in rage. This was not the first time she had been slapped. She was always explaining away the welts to her friends and teachers, but this one had five prominent fingers. They argued. The girl spat in her mother’s face and ran out of the tiny apartment, screaming her hatred all the way down the hall. The woman did not go after her. The girl returned this time, but after a few more years of the same, she left and never returned.
“Are you alright Ma’am?” the doctor was saying. He had a concerned wrinkle across his brow. The woman opened her eyes, not realizing she had even closed them.
“What are you still doing here?” she asked, confused. She wanted to be alone with her death.
“I was asking you if you wanted me to call someone.”
“No doctor. I already told you. No one wants to know that I am dying. They don’t care.”
“Who doesn’t care?” the doctor asked. But the woman was already slipping back into herself.
Bill was on bended knee, a beautiful diamond ring in his hand. The woman was sitting at the kitchen table in her tiny apartment, rolling her eyes. She told him to get up and put that ring away. She would not ever marry him. Stop asking. Bill stood up, expression grim. He slammed the ring down on the table and walked out of her life. She never saw him again. He was a decent man, and he was nice to have around, but she didn’t love him. She had no idea why he loved her or wanted to marry her. She had no interest in marriage. After he left, she felt a pang of regret. Perhaps she should have humored him. It wasn’t like she was going to fall in love with anyone. But she brushed away the feeling and remembered that she didn’t ever want to rely on any person, and marriage meant you had to rely on someone. So Bill was forgotten.
The woman took a shallow, labored breath. She felt her head swim from lack of oxygen. Her room was so cold that her fingers and toes felt as though they might fall off. She opened her eyes but everything was distorted and foggy. She felt death approaching. An overwhelming need to sleep washed over her, and she closed her eyes and let it come.
She was under water, or at least it felt that way. The voices around her were muffled. She could hear the sound of wheels across a floor, metal clanking. The old woman was sad that death hadn’t taken her yet. All this remembering was beginning to wear at her heart, or what was left of it. She could only think about her regrets. She searched her swimming mind for things that had made her happy in her life. Fleeting moments were all she saw. Flowers in a field, where she sat as a young girl with her foster family, before they had given her up. Swings at the playground at her elementary school that made her think she could fly away from the cigarette burn scars and black eyes. The sound of her baby girl, before hateful words could spew from her mouth. Her face was wet as she pushed her way through the water, desperately trying to come up for air.
The woman’s eyes burst open to reveal two heads staring confusedly staring down at her. Her face was still wet, and she realized she had not been swimming, but crying. Her heart, long cold and hard as stone was full of pain of the realization that she had pushed away the one person she had truly loved. Her baby. Her girl. That girl who had burned her carpet and spat in her face. That girl whose last words to her were, “I hate you. Don’t call me.” That girl who, through her tears, the woman could see hovering over her, whispering concerned words to the doctor.
The girl, now a grown woman, was just as beautiful as her mother had been, except she had something in her eyes the old woman had never had. Warmth. Love. Compassion. Hurt. The girl was crying too, whispering, “No, no Mom, please don’t go yet. I have so much to say.” The old woman tried to clear her head so she could hear what her baby was trying to tell her.
“Baby,” she uttered. “My baby.” The girl sobbed and grasped the old woman in an embrace, burying her face in the soft, gray hair.
“Mom, I’m sorry I didn’t try. I’m sorry. I realize now that you didn’t know how to show me that you loved me in a way I could understand.” The girl sniffed and kept on going. “I always loved you and only ever wanted you to love me back. I never thought you loved me.”
The woman slowly brought her hand up to her daughter’s cheek, as she had done a million times before in anger. She stroked it gently and looked the girl in the eye. Then she said what she had never uttered in her entire life to the girl whose heart she had broken.
“I love you, daughter.”
And then death came for the old woman. Her last feeling was that of contentment and happiness, knowing that she had not been alone in this world after all. All the pain her life had brought her dissipated in the instant she said those words. And then she was gone.
The old woman lay dead, under a stark white hospital sheet. The cold of death had taken her from a life of heartache and pain. The doctor and the girl whispered to one another, as if the woman could still hear them.
“Why did you call Doctor?”
“She was alone. No one should die alone.”
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