It was one evening last week, I don't know which one because the days and nights were a blur. I was sitting in my mom's room at Hospice House, listening to the sound of her breathing. Her breathing while in the coma was heavy and rhythmic, sometimes more labored and sometimes more shallow. I disliked being alone with her because I was afraid she would stop breathing and it would be just me there, but Mike and Laura were on the nap shift and others were off getting dinner to bring back. So I sat and listened, sometimes getting up to squeeze droplets of water into her mouth with a small sponge, or cool her face with a damp cloth. I would always talk to her about what I was doing, explaining: "Mom, I don't know if I'm helping you by doing this but I'm trying to make you feel more comfortable". The nurses told us that she wasn't in pain, no grimacing and very little restlessness. I still worried about her dry mouth and skin since she'd had no food or water for 5 days.
As I was sitting there, a woman I'd never seen before came and stood in my mother's doorway. She walked in quietly, her purse hanging on her forearm. She smiled and introduced herself. "I'm Ettie and I've been a friend of your mom's since junior high school."
Ettie wore a pink Mary Kay sweatshirt under a plaid workshirt, work boots on her feet and a bandana around her head. She's the only black woman I've ever met in Ottumwa. She said she'd just got off work at the meat-packing plant. She'd heard from one of mom's cousins that Carol was at Hospice House in a coma.
Ettie sat down beside me and told me stories about their girlhood together. She said that she and my mom were part of a group of girls who called themselves the "over the hill gang". Their school was at the bottom of Iowa Avenue, across the street from the meat-packing plant. My mom and the rest of the girls all lived at the top of the Iowa Avenue hill or beyond. Ettie said that their school was not where the doctors' kids or rich kids went. Their school was a tough school, and Ettie says she was a tomboy who liked getting into fights.
Ettie always wanted to do sports, and the Over the Hill Gang once organized themselves and practiced playing baseball so that they could challenge a group of boys from the neighborhood. The girls practiced and practiced, but ended up getting beat anyway. Ettie said that the girls told one another afterwards, "it's the point of it that counts".
Ettie said that while she was getting into fights, Carol was trying to make peace with words. Ettie sometimes got in fights to protect my mom from bullies, and that she often ended up in detention. Ettie could always count on my mom to be waiting for her, sitting on the steps until Ettie got out of detention. My mom would be there, ready to ask Ettie, "
now did you learn your lesson
this time?" My mom was the mother hen of the group, as well as the peacemaker.
Before Ettie left, she went over to my mom and leaned down and whispered. She said "I love you, girl" and told her that she knew mom would be on some paradise island soon, chasing after some cute guys.
I saw Ettie again, at the end of the visitation at the funeral home on Sunday. She came in and looked down at my mom in her casket. It was amazing how good my mom looked, especially her hands. She had lovely hands, even in her death.
Ettie turned around, and I was standing waiting for her. She and I hugged, and I started to sob and said "thank you for loving my mom so much". I felt called to cry with few people over those days of public mourning, but the ones who knew and loved my mom best were the ones who got to me. Ettie and I stood there, our round bellies touching as we held one another and wept. It felt strange to be so intimate with someone I didn't know and who I would never see again. After we'd been crying for a few minutes my daugher came and stood next to us, looking up saying "mom, mom, mom, mom....why are crying with that person?" We ignored the child and kept crying. Then Ettie and I stepped back and looked at one another, and she said, "just know that your mother will always be a part of you. She will always be with you".
