ADVANCED DIRECTIVE by Renee Cassese

“Did she tell you how she wanted to handle this?” Dr. Barrett asked my sister.

     “No,” Ana said, wiping tears from her eyes.

     Our mother lay comatose in the hospital bed. She nestled between sheets so white they burnt my eyes.

     “No,” I repeated, looking into Dr. Barrett’s hazel eyes that gave nothing away. “We never talked about it.”

     “Then you have some decisions to make,” the doctor said in an eerie neutral voice.  He took his clipboard with our mother’s statistics and walked away.

     Ana and I sat on opposite sides of Mom’s bed. We each cupped one of her hands in ours, the way you would hold a bird. Gently enough not to hurt it but firmly enough to keep it from flying away and disappearing into the blue sky.

     “Do you think she’d want to be like this? Kept alive but not really living?”

     “No.” Was that the only word she could say?

     I let go of Mom’s waif-like hand and walked to the giant window that overlooked the courtyard. Beyond it the skyline grayed against the spring afternoon.

     “Can’t you say anything else?”

     “No.” Then she laughed. Just a little. Not being disrespectful. “I’m sorry. I’m just stunned. Yesterday the doctor said Mom looked like she might come around. Now he’s asking us if we want to terminate her life. How do we know what she would want us to do now?”

     “I don’t know.”

     I went back to my chair and lifted Mom’s hand into my own, kissed it, then settled it onto the white sheet.

     “I can’t make that decision,” Ana said and fled the room. The echoes of her sobs settled into the corners of the pale blue walls.

     I wanted to go after Ana and bring her back here because I wasn’t going to make this decision myself. But I couldn’t leave this room knowing it might be the last time I’d see Mom alive. I picked up the tan phone on the bedside table and called the nurse’s desk.

     “Get me a minister.”

     It seemed like hours, but in five minutes Father Gregory came into my mother’s room. He was tall and lean, his clean-shaven face shiny and rosy cheeked, his slender hand warm when he took mine.

     “I don’t know what to do,” I told him. “I have to decide if it’s time to let her go. She never gave us any instructions for this.”

     “Are you her only child?”

     “No. My sister Ana. She just left. She might still be in the hospital.”

     Father Gregory pulled up a chair and sat down facing me, our knees so close they almost touched. His calm green eyes were like the still surface of a lake I wanted to slip into.

     “Let’s just talk a little,” he said in a voice like sweet cream. “Maybe your mother gave you some clues.”

     Father Gregory asked about Mom. Where did she grow up? Was she happy? Did she have siblings and how did they get along? Did she have hobbies?

     As I answered the questions, I saw my mother teaching in her classroom and stitching the quilts and afghans that decorated her home and homes of everyone in the family. I wondered why I hadn’t thought to bring one here to the hospital, and I cried at my failure to provide that touch of comfort.

     Ana walked into the room. Her face paled, then scarlet blotches appeared on her cheeks and neck.

     “What are you doing?’ she cried. “Mom’s not dead yet. Is he giving her last rites?”

     I went to Ana and held both her hands in mine.

     “Of course not,” I whispered. “I just needed to talk to someone. I don’t know what to do.”

     “Mom’s an atheist. She’d be livid if she knew you brought a priest in here.”

     I escaped Ana’s embrace and led her into the hall where all sounds seemed hollow and muted.

     “I didn’t bring him here for Mom. I want to know what to do. How to make this decision. You’re not mad, are you? I couldn’t stand it if you were mad at me right now.”

     “I was just shocked. How can a priest help us? We never even went to church.”

     “I don’t know. I just wanted an outside opinion. I didn’t want to hear advice from a doctor.”

     “So, did he help you make a decision?”

     “No. But I think I found an answer.” We held hands as I spoke. “Mom had a really full and busy life. She was never bored and she loved getting out with people. I never saw her just sitting still.” I bit my lower lip and tears ran down my cheeks. “Mom wouldn’t want to live this way. Not talking. Just lying in bed unaware of what was happening. Ana, it’s time to let her go.”

     “Is that what the priest told you?”

     “No. That’s what Mom told us all her life. In the way she lived. The way she kept active. Do you think she would want to be kept alive just to sleep here in the hospital? Because if you do believe that I’ll do whatever you wish.”

     Ana bit her lip. She buried her face in her hands, and her shoulders shook with sobs of grief.

     “No,” she finally squeaked out. “No.”

     We kissed Mom’s cool smooth forehead.

     “Get the doctor,” I told Father Gregory.