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.”
The Golden Boy
We walk toward the back bedroom, my worn sneakers silent on the hardwood, his fashionable boots making a soft, authoritative clumping sound. The shush-thump of the oxygen machine gets louder. I push the door open gently.
Mom is a frail shape under a thin floral quilt, her face turned toward the wall. For the past week, she’s been mostly asleep, lost in a fog of pain and medication. Her moments of lucidity are brief, confused flashes. I’ve been spoon-feeding her broth, reminding her of my name, holding a cup with a straw to her pale, cracked lips.
“Mom?” Ethan’s voice is soft, but it cuts through the room’s stillness like a bell.
Her head turns. Her eyes, which have been glassy and unfocused for days, flicker and then sharpen. They land on Ethan. A slow, radiant smile spreads across her face, a smile of pure, undiluted joy that I haven’t seen in years. It’s like watching a withered plant suddenly bloom in fast-motion.
“My boy,” she whispers, and her voice is shockingly clear. “My golden boy.”
Her hand, thin and mottled with age spots, lifts from the quilt and reaches for him. He moves to the bedside and takes it, his other hand stroking her hair. She ignores me completely. I am standing by the door, holding my breath, suddenly as substantial as a ghost. The past ten years—the emergency room visits, the battles with insurance companies, the nights spent sleeping in a chair by this very bed—vanish into thin air. They are erased by a single, dazzling smile for the son who just arrived.
He is the sun. He flies in from Bali or Thailand or wherever he’s been “finding himself” for the last decade, and she turns toward him, soaking in the light. I am just the satellite, the one who does the thankless work of keeping the planet spinning on its axis.
The First Usurpation
Later that afternoon, Karen, the hospice nurse, arrives for her daily visit. She’s a kind, no-nonsense woman in her fifties who I’ve developed a quiet, professional rapport with. She’s checking Mom’s vitals when Ethan swoops in.
“Karen, right? I’m Ethan, the son,” he says, extending a hand and a thousand-watt smile. “I can’t thank you enough for everything you’re doing for my mother. It’s a godsend. I just flew in from Bali to be here and see this through.”
Karen’s professional demeanor softens instantly. “Oh, how wonderful. It’s so good you could make it.”
He launches into a charming, funny story about him and Mom getting lost on a road trip when he was a teenager. It’s a good story. I’ve heard it before. As he talks, he picks up the can of ginger ale on the bedside table. I’d established a strict rule with the nurses: water only, with an occasional sip of diluted juice. The sugar in sodas was making her agitated.
“A little joy won’t hurt, right?” Ethan says to Karen, already popping the can open. He pours a little into a cup and holds the straw to Mom’s lips. She sips eagerly. He looks at the nurse, a conspiratorial wink in his eye. “Sometimes you have to break the rules for the ones you love.”
Karen smiles, completely won over. “A little sip is just fine. It’s about comfort now.”
I stand in the doorway, my fists clenched at my sides. My carefully constructed routine, built on doctor’s orders and a decade of experience, has just been dismantled with a wink and a can of soda. I am the warden. He is the fun-loving savior.
That night, after Ethan has gone to bed in the guest room, I’m walking past the living room and hear Karen on her cell phone, her voice low.
“He’s just a saint, her son is, flying in from halfway across the world. The daughter… well, she seems a bit stressed. You know, very high-strung. You can tell he’s a comfort to both of them.”
The Performance of Grief: The Curated Agony
I wake up not to my alarm, but to the insistent buzzing of my phone on the nightstand. It’s a cascade of notifications from Facebook. I squint at the screen, my mind still thick with sleep. Ethan has tagged me in a post.
I tap it open, and the breath catches in my throat. It’s a photograph, professionally filtered in dramatic black and white. It’s a close-up of Ethan’s hand holding Mom’s. His hand is strong and tan; hers is frail and threaded with the IV line Karen inserted yesterday. The lighting is soft, artistic, like something out of a magazine. It’s a beautiful, poignant image of suffering.
The caption is what makes the rage begin to simmer.
“Being here for my amazing Mom in her final chapter. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I wouldn’t trade this time for anything. She held my hand when I was small, and now I get to hold hers. Feeling heartbroken but so grateful. #FamilyFirst #EndOfLifeCare #MothersLove”
I stare at the phone. The hardest thing he’s ever done? He arrived yesterday. He slept for eight uninterrupted hours in a comfortable bed while I was up at 2 AM and 4 AM to administer the sublingual morphine that keeps Mom from crying out in her sleep. I was the one who, just an hour ago, changed her soiled linens and gently washed her with a warm cloth. There is no black-and-white filter that can make that reality beautiful.
The comments are already flooding in. Dozens of them. Aunts, cousins, his endless supply of friends from around the world.
‘Ethan, you are such a good son. Your mother is so lucky to have you.’
‘This is what family is all about. Sending you so much strength.’
‘Thinking of you during this incredibly difficult time. You have a beautiful soul.’
I click the phone off and place it face down on the nightstand. My own difficult time has been happening in silence for 3,651 days. His has been happening for less than twenty-four hours, and it’s already a public spectacle.
About the Author
