After ten years of being her sole caregiver, my dying mother looked right through me and told the doctor to let my brother, who had just flown in, handle everything.
He arrived from his carefree life abroad with a perfect tan and a thousand-watt smile, ready for his starring role as the devoted son.
He posted poignant selfies of him holding her hand for likes while I was the one up at 3 AM with the morphine. He charmed the nurses and spent her last dollars on useless, expensive gifts to show how much he cared.
Everyone called him a saint. They saw his five-star performance of grief and never noticed the decade of grim, thankless work I did every single day.
He wanted the lead role in her final act, but he never understood that the real power wasn’t in holding her hand for the cameras, but in being the one who held all the receipts.
The Long Goodbye: The Tuesday Meds
The tiny white pill looks identical to the six others. I know this one is the beta-blocker because it’s Tuesday, 8:00 AM, and it sits in the slot marked with a black ‘T’. My fingers move automatically, pressing it out of its plastic bubble and into the small paper cup with the others. Ten years. For ten years, I have been the keeper of the pills, the master of the schedule, the translator for the endless parade of doctors and specialists.
My phone buzzes on the counter, vibrating against a stack of mail I need to sort. It’s Mark. I let it go to voicemail. He’ll ask how I’m doing, and I don’t have an answer that isn’t a lie. A second buzz. A text from my daughter, Lily. ‘Thinking of you, Mom. Love you.’ I stare at the words, a small, warm pinprick in the vast, gray numbness.
The house smells of rubbing alcohol, stale lavender, and the faint, metallic tang of sickness that clings to the furniture. From the back bedroom, the oxygen concentrator emits its rhythmic, percussive hiss—shush-thump, shush-thump—the soundtrack to our lives now. It’s the sound of my mother’s lungs failing, a slow, metered retreat from the world.
I’m a project manager. My job is to take a chaotic blueprint of steel, concrete, and a hundred competing contractors and wrestle it into a cohesive, functional building on time and under budget. I am good at it. I am good at breaking down overwhelming tasks into manageable steps. This, right here, has been my longest, most difficult project. The budget is my mother’s meager savings account, which I guard like a dragon. The deliverable is… what? A good death? A peaceful end? The blueprint for that doesn’t exist.
I pick up the cup of pills and a glass of water, the condensation already slick on my fingers. Time for the morning dose. Time to start the day.
The Convertible in the Driveway
A flash of candy-apple red slices through the drab Ohio morning. It’s so out of place in the quiet, beige neighborhood that I actually stop and stare out the kitchen window. A Ford Mustang convertible, roof down despite the damp chill, crunches to a halt in our driveway. The driver’s door opens, and out steps Ethan.
Of course.
He looks like he’s stepped off a plane from a much better life. He’s tan, his teeth are impossibly white against his sun-kissed skin, and his dark hair is artfully messy. He’s wearing a linen shirt and expensive-looking jeans, and he pulls a small, trendy duffel bag from the passenger seat. My own uniform consists of seven-year-old yoga pants and a faded t-shirt with a barely-visible logo from a 5k I ran before all this began.
I open the front door before he can knock. He drops the bag and envelops me in a hug that smells of sandalwood and airplane air. It’s a performative hug, strong and brief. “Sarah. God. You look exhausted.”
It’s not a question. It’s a diagnosis.
“I’m here now,” he says, pulling back and holding my shoulders, his gaze intense. “I got the first flight I could. You don’t have to do this alone anymore. I’m here to take over.”
The words are perfect. They are exactly what a loving, responsible son would say. But his eyes are already scanning past me, assessing the state of the house, the scuff marks on the walls, the pile of medical supply boxes by the door. He’s a tourist here. A visitor on a grief safari.
“I just had to come,” he says, his voice dropping to a confidential, earnest whisper. “Mom needs her boy. I couldn’t live with myself if I wasn’t here at the end.”
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