Lisa Geichman Prosek

Four years ago today I felt my mother’s touch for the last time.

I walked into the hospital room where she was undergoing treatment for a ruptured brain aneurysm to see an arc of doctors stationed around the foot of Mom’s bed trying to determine what to do about her inability to breathe. Even with the breathing tube placed down Mom’s throat and the ventilator pushing oxygen and pulling carbon dioxide, the doctors and respiratory therapists hadn’t found the right settings to allow my mother to breathe comfortably and efficiently.

A few moments after I arrived on the scene, a phlebotomist stood on his tiptoes to gain leverage as he rammed a needle into Mom’s wrist to pierce an artery and measure blood gasses. He poked her arm with the intensity of a thirsty vampire. When he experienced difficulty hitting the target, instead of withdrawing the needle to meet the artery dead on, he kept the needle submerged in Mom’s skin and fished.

I realize now that the guy’s knees were probably shaking as mine were and that his heart was undoubtedly pounding with adrenaline, as mine was. But at the time I thought him the cruelest man I’d ever met. The alarms in my head sounded louder than the alarms on the medical equipment signaling Mom’s respiratory insufficiency.

I knew the repeated quest to have the needle meet the artery had to be excruciatingly painful for my mother because I’d had that test before. The wrist is poked at its most sensitive point, in a line right under the thumb, where hand joins arm.

Of course, Mom couldn’t talk around the breathing tube, but, to make it worse, with arms tied down to either side of the bed, she couldn’t even gesture to register complaint.

I couldn’t take it any more. All the sorrow and frustration and juxtaposed hope and hopelessness of the previous three weeks welled up and erupted.

“She’s had enough!” I said, without realizing the import of my words. “We’re done with this! She’s done with this!” And then I went further: “Mom, we’re going to take out the breathing tube.”

This meant my mother would die that bright July Tuesday in 2008.

My family and I had been going back and forth about the mere thought of removing Mom’s life support as her condition worsened and improved and worsened and improved. We were to meet later that morning to discuss the matter with palliative care specialists. But I couldn’t wait, and I unilaterally promised Mom her suffering would be over.

And then my mother squeezed my hand three times.

Squeezing three times had been one of Mom’s trademarks. I suppose it meant “I love you.” She squeezed our hands three times after the blessing at dinner and other times, like at Christmas when she’d take our hands and kiss our cheeks.

“I love you.”

I’ve replayed the moment over and over again in my mind since that day we lost my mother. The last time she communicated to me. Her last chance to mend a ruptured relationship. Her understanding that I’d done my best to ease her.

But even with this poignant memory of my mother, even before I knew my sister Beth would die of cancer, it was the image of Beth’s face that I remembered most clearly about that day. Her uncharacteristically pursed lips and furrowed brow. The tenseness in her jaw. Her eyes hidden in a grimace so extreme it seemed to presage a scream. Her clenched fists. All this set against the signature perkiness of Beth’s blond ponytail underscored the absence of my younger sister’s usually bright demeanor and evidenced her breaking heart.

I remember thinking at the time that I wished I could have saved Beth that pain.

Today I’m reliving that wish.