“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”
To my shock, other voices are praying with me at the end. My father and Aiden and even Ryan, hovering at the foot of the bed with his elixir of Mountain Dew.
“Perfect,” Mom says breathlessly. “Again, please?”
She doesn’t have enough air to pray it along with us, but she mouths the familiar words as we go, holding my hand tightly, and something starts to break open inside of me, something aside from the poignant pre-grief permeating the room.
I’d always thought real prayer, real religious expression, had to be unique. Individualistic. New and tailored for the person expressing it because otherwise what’s the point?
But for the first time, I feel the power of praying words alongside someone else, the power of praying words so familiar and ancient they come from some hitherto unknown part of my mind. The part of my mind that isn’t consumed with accounting and finance, the part that isn’t even rational or entirely civilized. It’s a part of me so deep, so elemental, I can’t even name it. But it responds to the old words like trees to wind, rustling awake, stretching roots deep, deep down. The words don’t care about my feelings, about my petty sulks and mortal frustrations. The words are there anyway, just as the humanness inside me is there anyway, and for one clear, shimmering moment, I understand.
I understand how you can convict God of terrible crimes and then go to evening prayer.
I understand that hate was never, ever the opposite of belief.
I understand that belief isn’t a coat to be put on and worn in all kinds of weather, even the blistering sun.
Belief is this. Praying when you don’t feel like it, when you don’t know who or what is listening; it’s doing the actions with the trust that something about it matters. That something about it makes you more human, a better human, a human able to love and trust and hope in a world where those things are hard.
That is belief. That is the point of prayer. Not logging a wish list inside a cosmic ledger, not bartering for transactional services. You do it for the change it works on you and on those around you; the point of it is…itself. Nothing more and nothing less.
We pray together, mumbling, muttering, a chorus of men praying for a woman, to a woman, about a woman. A chorus of men praying for prayers. And with each and every turn of the words, something inside me loosens and loosens. A screw unscrewing itself and falling dead to the ground, leaving nothing but a buzzing, tingling awareness in its stead.
Mom pumps my hand as we finish another prayer, and I look down at her, expecting she’ll say enough prayer, it’s Mountain Dew time, but then the door whooshes open and I’m looking up because I’m sure it’s Tyler, but it’s not Tyler.
It’s Zenny.
Zenny in her jumper, Zenny with her large dark eyes and soft loving mouth and her nose ring winking cheekily in the sunlight.
It’s Zenny, here, and I forget how to breathe.
“I don’t mean to intrude,” she says. But she doesn’t get to what she does mean to do because my mom is waving for her to come up to the bed, waving with a trembling hand and a heaving chest. The Bell men part to let her through, and Mom gestures at Zenny to lean in close, which Zenny does.
Whatever she says, she says in a stertorous whisper that I can’t make out from my position on the other side of the bed. Zenny says something back, low and musical, and my mother nods, smiles, puts a dry, gray hand to Zenny’s cheek. Another hoarse murmur, something that makes Zenny’s mouth pinch and crumple and tremble, and I watch as tears spill out of her eyes and she and my mom pull each other into a hug.
And that I can see this, just this once, the woman I love hugging my mother like she’s family—I’m speechless with it. It’s a gift I never expected to have. It’s a miracle.
Thank you.
The words flutter out, easily and without labor, flying up to the ceiling. That I would be thanking God for anything at my mother’s deathbed would have struck me as impossible a mere hour ago, but somehow it’s true and right that it’s happening now. That there would be small moments of joy tucked into this hulking, bashing loss.
Zenny straightens up, tucking some of my mom’s hair behind her ear, and for a minute I think she’s going to go, and I can’t let her. It’s selfish and horrible and a garbage thing to do, to ask her to stay here and witness this. To stay and be strong for me because I can’t be strong for myself.
I don’t care. It makes me awful but I can’t be otherwise right now. I need her, and she can leave me all she wants later, but for now—for now I need her.
I reach out for my little nun, and she doesn’t hesitate, coming to my side of the bed and sliding her arms around my waist like she belongs there, which she does. I bury my face in her hair, holding onto her like a man holds on to the edge of a cliff. And just once—it’s terrible I know, clingy and entitled and unwanted—I kiss the top of her head, letting my lips feel the ticklish brush of her curls, letting myself have that one small comfort.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come earlier.” Zenny says it in a barely audible whisper. “I…I wasn’t sure if you would want me here. After what happened.”
“I’ll always want you,” I say, because I’m too raw to be anything but honest. “Always.”
When I look back to my mother, she’s looking up at Zenny and me holding each other close. My mother lays her head back and smiles, as if this were more than she could have asked for, as if her work as a mother is done. And then she wheeze-asks for the Mountain Dew, and at long last, she gets to drink it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Chapter 31
I’ll spare you the gritty details of what comes next. Death, even surrounded by family, even with prayer and morphine working in tandem, is hard. There’s no do-overs, there’s no rehearsals.
Tyler arrives in more than enough time to have a moment with Mom. He does a better job of leading us through prayers than I did, and I gratefully relinquish the role to him, so relieved to have at least one thing off my shoulders.
At one point, Zenny whispers to me that this is like birth in a way, and she shows us Bell men how to lovingly doula Carolyn Bell through a different kind of labor. We rub her hands and feet, we stroke her hair. We pray and talk constantly, even when her eyes start drifting closed and her breathing shudders into a series of jagged moans and gasps. We never want her to feel alone, not even for a second.
The sun beams in, and without the constant drone of the ventilator and the incessant pinging of the monitors, we can hear the September wind whipping warmly by, a comforting late-summer sound.
It takes less than three hours, all told.
At the very last, the room lights on fire. It quartzes itself into an infinite glittering moment. It floods with vivid pain and joy and love and grief and I am opened up, I am melted away, and I feel God. For a blinding, breathless, reckless moment, I touch my fingertips to eternity.
And as I do, I also touch my fingertips to Mom in this place. As she is hovering, flashing, brilliant, a soul on her way to wherever bright souls go.