Friday, November 9, 2012

The Jackpot

Dedicated to my mother, Mildred Reeh.

     “I didn’t do it,” Opal told her daughter, Kat. Each word, spoken through chapped lips, took great effort. In the past few months, Opal had lost weight—mentally, physically, and spiritually. Her previously red, swollen legs were now thin and beautifully pale, but too weak to stand. Her voice had grown softer, and her speech slowed. Still, she fought to get the words out as she stared at the ceiling.
     “What didn’t you do, Mamma?” Kat asked again, careful not to lean too heavily on the rails of the hospital bed or cross into her mom’s line of sight. Opal didn’t like that.
     “I. Didn’t. Do it.” Opal carefully repeated.
     Kat sat back in her chair. She took a deep breath and then released it slowly. “What the hell?” she whispered aloud, shaking her head.
Opal was stuck on another verbal loop. In recent days, she had cried, laughed, and repeated many phrases—oftentimes while talking to people Kat couldn’t see. Opal didn’t seem to be in physical pain, yet a spiritual war was raging. With urgency, she repeated this four-word phrase to Kat, nurses, doctors, and the woman who came in once a day to empty the trash and retrieve soiled linens. No one understood what Opal meant, and no one could provide relief.
Typical, stubborn Opal. She’d been fiercely independent since divorcing her second husband 20 years ago. Finally out from under the thumb of a controlling partner, she bought the house she always wanted, cooked her choice of meals, and in the summertime ate dinner in the recliner while watching Texas Rangers baseball games on television. If she felt like going to the local game room, she hopped into her minivan and went. She was determined to never again have to ask a man for permission to do anything. She was determined to never ask for help, either. If she couldn’t reach something in the cupboard, she didn’t need it. If she couldn’t perform a chore around the house, it didn’t get done. When she became weaker with age, neighbors innocently offered to mow her grass. She wouldn’t have it.
“Nope,” she said. It was her standard response any time she thought she was being an inconvenience. Opal wasn’t resistant only to neighbors offering a helpful hand. Family members were rejected, too.
“Mamma, we bought you a microwave so that you can heat up leftovers,” her oldest daughter Nell said one Christmas. “It’s faster than the oven.”
“I didn’t ask for it. Take it back,” Opal barked. “I won’t use it.”
Nell’s cheeks reddened, but she didn’t respond. She didn’t return the microwave, either. Instead, it sat on a kitchen table next to the stove for two years before Opal finally heated up her first frozen dinner.
“That microwave comes in pretty handy,” she told Kat one day.
Opal was an introvert, most comfortable listening than talking. She loved her family but was suspicious of strangers. She wouldn’t even consider attending Kat’s wedding celebration. She was happy for Kat and her partner, Mary, who flew to Toronto one September to get married. But Opal she wasn’t about to attend the party the girls planned upon returning to Austin.
“I won’t know most people there,” Opal said. “I don’t see any reason to go.”
Kat nodded and tried to understand. She knew any pleas would be futile.
Opal preferred life in the background and was more comfortable helping rather than being helped. She’d sit alone on bingo night at the local VFW hall and wouldn’t speak to a soul. But if she saw an elderly player struggling to carry his cards and good luck gear to his seat, she’d pop up and lend a hand.
“Why do you do it?” Kat asked one day.
Opal paused. She always delayed answering questions, as if she was unsure that even her own thoughts and beliefs were correct. “So that I can have lots of stars in my crown in heaven,” she finally said.
It was an odd declaration. Opal never wore jewelry. She wasn’t interested in designer clothes. Didn’t drive a nice car. Didn’t attend church, either. The closest she came to spirituality was listening to gospel tunes Sunday mornings on the radio. Still, she spent a lifetime quietly trying to help others—all for stars in a crown that no one but her would see in an afterlife some in her family weren’t sure existed.
Opal didn’t ask for help. She was always the helper, so it was quite uncharacteristic one day in May when she called Kat to report that she was in an ambulance bound for the hospital. Kat couldn’t remember her mom ever being sick. Opal hadn’t been a hospital patient since the late 1960s, when she suffered a miscarriage. She didn’t like or trust doctors, and these days she only went to the clinic to get her blood pressure medication refilled. This was different, though. Her right leg had grown swollen and angry red from a staph infection. She’d always limped on that leg, a side effect of having polio as a child. But now, Opal couldn’t walk at all.
Once in the hospital, doctors pumped her full of antibiotics, but relief was elusive. Opal was obese and rarely exercised (unless you count speed dobbing bingo cards as a sport), but her daughters thought she was otherwise healthy. X-rays and blood and respiratory tests revealed a different picture. Her body had been lying to her for years. She had a myriad health issues beyond the staph infection: congestive heart failure, irregular heartbeat, and chronic bronchitis and emphysema.
“Does your mom smoke?” a doctor asked Kat while Opal took a nap in the hospital room. All the lights were on—some shining right in Opal’s face—yet she snored soundly. “I’m asking you because your mom doesn’t seem very forthcoming.”
“She’s weird like that,” Kat said. “But no, she hasn’t smoked since my sister Nell was born. That was ’57.”
“Well, she has COPD,” the doctor said.
Kat’s forehead wrinkled.
“Stands for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. It’s a lung condition. Could she have been sneaking smokes?”
“No, no, she’s not a smoker,” Kat said, pausing to think. “But she’s spent a lifetime around second-hand smoke in bingo and dance halls. And her sisters and brothers are regular cigarette smoke-stacks.”
“Well, that’ll do it,” the doctor said as he scribbled notes in his chart.
Longtime exposure to secondary smoke had indeed compromised Opal’s lungs. Despite the antibiotics, one month later she developed pneumonia. She had to wear a big, clunky, and creepy oxygen mask that looked a lot like the extraterrestrial reptile stuck to John Hurt’s face in the film “Alien”. At the same time, her kidneys shut down, and it took a four-hour dialysis treatment to revive them.
Before the end of summer, Opal logged in hundreds of hours in three different hospitals and two rehabilitation centers. She quietly persevered through every health crisis, but with each new ailment, she grew mentally, physically, and spiritually weaker. Now bedridden, she wasn’t happy when nurses inserted urinary and rectal catheters. She was even more displeased when the catheters were removed and she had to wear a diaper.
“I’m not a baby,” she told Kat one day.
“I know, Mamma. This is just temporary,” Kat said, praying she was right. She wasn’t.
Opal loved sitting in the lobby of the rehabilitation center in her wheelchair. Even though she sat in the same spot for hours, the chair represented the freedom to which she was accustomed. But more and more, she rarely got out of bed. She’d lost a lot of weight and strength and was desperately afraid of falling. True to her character, she didn’t trust her rehab therapists to help her from bed to wheelchair.
“Look at them,” she told Kat one day. “They’re little bitty things. Too small. They can’t support me.”
“Mamma, they have technique,” Kat said.
“They’ll drop me.”
“No they won’t. They know how to move people of all different sizes. You just need to trust them.”
Opal shook her head.
“Nope.”
Kat knew she wouldn’t win the argument. When Opal dug in her heels, she was immovable.
Therapists eventually started using a Hoyer Lift to get her in and out of bed. That’s when Kat noticed the first of many attitudinal shifts.
“I’m not a baby,” Opal said one day. “I should be able to get up outta bed on my own.”
“I know, Mamma. I know,” Kat said, patting her on the hand. Opal wasn’t a touchy-feely woman, but she’d grown accustomed to her daughter holding her hand—clinical as it was. Because of the staph infection, Kat had to don a yellow gown and cold, purple rubber gloves each time she entered the room.
Opal weakened further, and soon struggled to simply swallow food. She was relegated to a bland, puree diet and mourned the loss of fried chicken, butter-slathered corn on the cob, pecan pie, and hard candy. And she grieved another blow to her independence.
“I’m not a baby,” she said. “I shouldn’t have to eat baby food.”
“I know, Mamma. I know,” Kat said.
Opal, her family, and even her doctors were baffled by her swift decline. It was as if she was allotted a predetermined number of days on earth, and her body was simply throttling down on schedule. Every three weeks, another infection raged that required Opal to become more dependent on staff at hospitals and rehabilitation centers. With every new condition, more of Opal’s spirit evaporated. Depressed and irritable, she refused to go to rehab. Bed sores developed. All Opal wanted to do was sleep.
“I’m too tired to go to rehab,” she told Kat, who at first tried to understand. When she saw her mom continue to decline, though, the youngest daughter took a stand.
“Mamma, you’ve got to get up and get out of your room,” Kat demanded one day. “Try your best to do the exercises if you can, because pretty soon, this bed won’t be your friend.”
Kat braced for the usual “nope,” but instead of stubborn resolve, Opal appeared indifferent. She wasn’t lazy or intentionally uncooperative. She was just tired. And it didn’t matter what anyone said. The death march had silently begun, and even Opal was powerless to stop it.
Day by day, Opal became more confused. Or more conscious, depending on the perspective. During another hospital visit in late August for a urinary tract infection, Opal began the verbal loops, repeating short phrases for hours at a time.
“Don’t have much more time now,” she grieved. “I thought I had more time.”
Kat, who had spent her life as a detached journalist, held her mom’s hand. When feelings bubbled up, she promptly pushed them down.
“Try to relax,” Kat coaxed in a matter-of-fact way.
Opal wouldn’t close her eyes, afraid that if she went to sleep, she wouldn’t wake up. Finally Mary arrived with a smart phone tuned to a country music station on Pandora[1]. In her younger years, Opal loved to go country western dancing, and she often spun Kitty Wells, Charlie Pride, Patsy Cline, and Marty Robbins records on the turntable stereo at home. As the station randomly played songs from her youth—from better, healthier, and happier times—Opal began to relax. She still wouldn’t close her eyes. Instead, she uncharacteristically talked. And talked. Periodically, Kat urged her to get some sleep (she needed sleep herself). Each time, Opal refused. No longer the shy and quiet woman of her past, Opal had a lot to say. It was the most anyone had heard her talk in her entire life—and it was an honest, sometimes painful life review that Kat found both sad and fascinating.
Opal began the first verbal loop at midnight.
“Nurse!” she screamed.
“What is it, Mamma?” Kat asked.
“I need the nurse!”
“O.K., hang on,” Kat said, stripping off the rubber gloves and ripping off the yellow gown. To keep the staph infection contained, visitors had to don the protective gear when entering the room and remove it before leaving. Kat darted out of the room, looking up and down the hallway until she found the nurse assigned to her mom’s unit.
 “She’s calling for a nurse. She won’t tell me what’s wrong.”
The nurse, a tall, confident, and calm woman appropriately named Grace, followed Kat in a brisk walk back to the room. Opal’s calls for “Nurse!” got louder the closer they came to the room.
“Miss Opal, what’s wrong?” Grace asked as she quickly threaded her arms through the yellow gown and pulled on a pair of rubber gloves.
“What time is it?” Opal asked.
Kat’s shoulders and jaw dropped. She shook her head with a sigh and then mouthed to Grace, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s 12:10 in the morning, Miss Opal,” Grace replied.
“Oh. O.K.” Opal said, then continued staring at the ceiling.
Grace checked Opal’s blood pressure, took her temperature, and soon left the room. Five minutes later, Opal again cried, “Nurse! Nurse!” This time, Kat tried to handle it herself.
“Grace is with another patient, Mamma. It’s almost 12:15 in the morning. She’ll be by again soon.”
Kat’s words were a temporary but effective band-aid.
“Oh. O.K.,” Opal said, then added, “Don’t have much time now.”
An hour later, Opal changed the tape.
“Help me,” she pleaded. Kat again pulled off the gown and gloves and went on a mad search for Grace.
“She’s pleading for someone to help her. I don’t know what’s wrong.”
Kat and Grace raced to the room.
“Hello, Miss Opal,” Grace said in a loving, gentle tone. “What’s wrong? Are you in pain?”
“Not really,” Opal said calmly.
Grace looked at Kat, who sighed and shrugged her shoulders.
“What do you need help with?” Grace asked. “Do you need a pain pill?”
“Nope.”
“O.K.,” Grace said, pausing. “Well, you let me know if anything changes, O.K.?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Opal said politely, and then continued staring at the ceiling.
Grace handed Kat a remote control device. “Here, push the red ‘call nurse’ button if she needs anything. I’ll come to you instead of you having to search for me.”
“Yes, I know. I’m sorry,” Kat began. “I don’t know why I keep forgetting it’s here.”
“You’re tired,” Grace said softly, patting Kat on the shoulder. “It’s O.K.”
As soon as Grace left, Opal turned toward Kat. With a wild, desperate gaze, she pleaded, “Help me. Help me, please.”
Kat didn’t know what to do or say, so she began a tape of her own.
“We’re doing the best we can, Mamma,” she said, patting her mom gently on the forearm. Opal relaxed—for about 30 seconds.
“Help me. Please help me.”
It was disturbingly painful for Kat to hear her mom beg for such unspecified yet urgent help. She felt powerless. No one could appease Opal. The best Kat could do was pull on a pair of the now-familiar purple rubber gloves, hold her mom’s hand, and utter gentle reassurances.
The result was always the same: For a few seconds Opal would breathe easier, then she’d jerk awake, as if she’d been asleep, and fearfully plead, “Help me.” Neither Opal nor Kat understood what was happening, and both were terrified.
At once, the “Help me” tape stopped, and Opal took on a peaceful demeanor. “Do you see that bright light? I wonder where it’s coming from?”
Kat tried not to panic; she’d interviewed a man years ago who had a life-after-death experience. He described seeing a white light as he lay dying on an operation table.
“I don’t see it, Mamma. What’s it look like?”
Opal didn’t answer. She just kept staring at the ceiling.
“Help me,” Opal suddenly demanded.
“We’re doing the best we can, Mamma,” Kat repeated. She was about to burst into tears. “I’m going to get some coffee.” She quickly ripped off the gloves and gown. She started to hyperventilate. “Be back soon.”
In perfect timing, Grace met Kat at the door. It was time to take vital signs.
“My mom says she sees a white light,” Kat tearfully blurted. “Have you heard of stuff like that?”
Grace nodded gently, put her arms around Kat’s shoulders, and led her into the hallway. “Many times,” she said softly.
“She’s been so afraid,” Kat cried. “She’s been pleading for me to help her. I don’t know what to do.”
Grace embraced Kat, who was now sobbing hard. Grace held her, not caring that snot was smearing the shoulder of her nicely pressed Garfield smock.
“Soon, your mom won’t be afraid anymore. Trust me. We see this a lot on this floor,” Grace said, rubbing Kat’s upper back. “It might be time to call the chaplain. You’ll love her. She’s a really great woman.”
“I don’t know,” Kat said once she caught her breath. “Mamma’s never been a churchgoer. She’s not a particularly religious person.”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter. Besides, this is just as much for you as for her. Do you want to talk to someone about what’s happening?”
Kat thought for a moment. She didn’t want to inconvenience anyone. Then she realized that that’s what her mom would say. “Yes,” Kat said emphatically, “please have her come by when she can.”
By late morning, Opal was on another loop, this time repeating “thirteen”. Eventually, she began citing “thirty-six”. At first, Kat had no idea what the numbers meant. By the afternoon, though, she suspected that her mom thought she was playing bingo. In Opal’s reality, she was blotting numbers and covering bingo cards faster than a woodpecker’s morning reveille. She needed B-13 and N-36 to win, and she was perturbed that the caller wasn’t pulling her numbers for the big jackpot.
“Thirteen!” Opal screamed. “Thirty-six! Thirteen! Thirty-six!”
Suddenly, that tape stopped, and Opal heard bells ringing.
“Do you hear that?” she asked Kat.
“Here what, Mamma?”
“The bells. The ringing bells.”
Kat was caught off guard for a moment that her mom actually answered her question. She played along.
“They sound like slot machines to me,” Kat said.
Opal smiled and never mentioned ringing bells again.
Hours passed. By evening, Opal’s other daughters, Nell and Sarah, finally arrived.
“What’s happening?” Nell asked, struggling to tie the ends of the yellow smock behind her back. As the oldest daughter, Nell was a self-proclaimed caretaker. She was well-rested and ready to take charge. “Does she have kidney stones?” she asked, trying to fit her stubby fingers into the purple glove’s one-size-fits-all slots. “Because that can make you delirious.”
Kat paused and took a deep breath. “She’s dying. That’s what’s happening.”
Nell pushed past Kat without a word. “Hi, Mamma,” she said. “Are you eating? You need to eat. Want some Ensure[2]?”
Opal didn’t respond. Instead, she began having short, oftentimes loving conversations with The People Unseen.
“Hi,” Opal said, staring at the ceiling.
“Hi, mamma,” Nell replied.
Opal jerked as if she’d been asleep, turning toward Nell with a look of confusion.
“Hi,” Opal said again, this time to Nell, then returned her gaze to the ceiling.
Kat’s sisters thought their mom’s one-sided ramblings were drug induced. They always answered her questions.
“Love you,” Opal said a few minutes later as she stared at the ceiling.
“We love you, too, Mamma!” Sarah said in a booming voice.
Opal jerked and gave her a bewildered look.
“What?” Opal asked.
“We love you, too, Mamma,” Sarah repeated, a bit softer this time.
“Oh. O.K.,” Opal said, and then returned her gaze toward the ceiling.
Over the course of days, Opal talked more and more to The People Unseen, and through these conversations, her daughters learned things about her that she’d never before revealed. She called out for love ones who had died long ago: her mamma, daddy, and big sister Rosemary.
“Mamma, do you see grandma? Kat asked late one night. Both had become less afraid, more curious. “Is she here?”
“Nope,” Opal said, pausing, “she’s not here anymore. She just left.”
A chill bolted through Kat’s veins. She didn’t expect such a clear answer.
Sometimes Opal answered direct questions from the living. Sometimes she was silent. Eventually, she became less interested in what real people were talking about and more interested in the conversations and activities of The People Unseen.
Finally, Opal closed her eyes. Kat watched closely, hoping that she was falling asleep, but afraid she was about to die. She kept one eye on the heart monitor next to the bed and the other eye on her mom’s rising and falling chest.
“Woo!” Opal suddenly yelled as she jerked awake.
Kat nearly fell out of her chair in shock.
“They almost got me that time!” Opal said, then gave a sly, satisfied grin. “But I was too fast for them.”
Opal did this several more times, and each time, Kat’s tense shoulders dropped in relief—and a strange impatience and frustration set in.
During her hours of rambling, Opal repeatedly referred to “that man”—who the girls finally figured out was their daddy. Opal and her husband, Abe, divorced long ago. His alcoholism and her high blood pressure were incompatible. As resentful payback for his drinking, Opal spent a lot of time and money in bingo halls, stamping randomly called numbers with tall, colorful dobbers. Opal used the dobbing as therapy, pushing the color sponges hard on the paper bingo sheets. She didn’t want her marriage to end, but all Abe wanted to do was drink. She fought him every staggering step of the way. One day Abe backed his dinged brown Cadillac out of the driveway, drove off to work at the brake shop, and never returned. Thirty years later, Opal was still grieving the loss.
Throughout her life, Opal was determined to never let anyone see her cry (she despised funerals for this reason), but that night she let tears of regret and heartache flow freely. Her tears were moving. Her daughters cried too. And Kat was honored to be present for such an extraordinary event.
Opal wept off and on throughout the night, and morning brought a new loop:
“I didn’t do it,” she softly and slowly repeated.
Kat held her mom’s hand and tried to reassure her. It was no use asking what she didn’t do. Her mom had always been a mystery, and it was too late for details.
“We know you didn’t do it, Mamma,” Kat said lovingly.
During a painful regrets phase, Opal blamed herself for not getting out of bed to do physical therapy. Kat sobbed hard. Neither of them realized that her body just wasn’t able to exercise. Neither of them realized that her end-of-life clock was winding down.
     A few hours later, Opal entered another phase, sharing moments of clarity and joviality. Always a serious woman, she was now on a comic roll, reviewing good, funny memories from her life: diving into the Llano River even though she couldn’t swim, playing kick the can all the way home with her big brother Max, fishing for catfish on the Colorado River until early morning, and summer afternoon card games with her eight siblings. She and her daughters laughed so hard that at times Kat thought she’d pee her pants.
Through it all, Opal continued having periodic conversations with The People Unseen—one of whom was a long-dead friend named “Pookie”—and she was the happiest when they were present.
“Hi,” she said, pausing. By this time, her daughters knew not to answer. “I know you,” she said, smiling. “Love you, too.”
Opal didn’t know all of The People, but she was surprisingly willing to meet and talk to them.
“Hi,” Opal said in the quiet of 3 a.m. “I don’t know you,” she said, at first with a frown. Her daughters remained silent, watching. After a long pause, Opal’s forehead wrinkles eased. “Oh. O.K. Love you, too.”
Even in dying, Opal wasn’t a people person, and soon she’d had enough of The People Unseen—some of whom were annoying her by sitting on the edge of her hospital bed.
“There’s too many people in this room,” Opal yelled. “Y’all need to leave.” Kat looked around the empty room. Her sisters had left 10 minutes earlier to call their husbands. It was just the two of them. Kat looked up at the ceiling and around the room and with a flick of her hand shooed away The People.
As days passed, just as Grace predicted, Opal became less fearful of death—yet more worried.
“How am I going to get across if I have no legs?” she cried. She hadn’t walked on her own since the day she called the ambulance. “How can I walk that last mile?”
“Mamma, where you’re going, your legs are gonna work just fine,” Kat said. Opal was unconvinced.
Kat prayed for the intervention of big, strapping angels—spirits who could convince a ferociously suspicious woman to let them gently guide her to the other side.
For hours more, Opal repeated, “I’m so tired. How am I going to walk? I don’t have legs.”
“Let them help you, Mamma,” Kat repeated.
Opal simply stared at the ceiling.
At mid-afternoon, the chaplain arrived. Kat braced for the possibility that her mom might kick the woman out of the room. Opal was suspicious of religious folk. She never answered the front door when missionaries came knocking with pamphlets and good cheer. Opal had been mute on religion when her girls were growing up, and her only spiritual refrain was an angry “God damn him!” when Abe staggered home from work. Opal was adamant: “When you girls grow up, you pick your own religion.”
Surprisingly, Opal embraced the woman immediately, and slowly, her daughters realized she’d kept a strong faith all these years.
“Lord, Jesus, thank you,” Opal said softly to Betsy, a portly, red-headed woman who wore a subtle, silver cross necklace. The chaplain held Opal’s hand and told her what a wonderful woman she was—of what a great life she’d lived.
“I can tell you have wonderful daughters who love you very much,” Betsy said.
“I love my three daughters,” Opal replied. “I’m proudest of them.”
“What else do you love?”
“I like to play bingo,” Opal offered. “Boy, I sure wish I could go again to the casino in Louisiana. I go there for my birthday every year. Don’t think I’m gonna make it this time.”
Betsy smiled, and a few minutes later, she was leading Opal in songs of praise. The daughters stared at each other in amazement, and Kat had the urge to touch Betsy to make sure she was real.
The chaplain gave everyone a much-needed spiritual lift, but as soon as she left the room, Opal deflated. She was exhausted from four months of ever-present health problems. In the latest hospital stay alone, she’d had blood sugar finger pricks, IV insertions for antibiotics, daily shots of a blood thinner in her fatty belly, a stint inserted for dialysis treatment, and most recently, shots of insulin to balance out a whacked out blood chemistry. Periodically, a vein carrying IV fluids would collapse, and nurses (sometimes three at a time) would have to dig around her arms for a minimum of 20 minutes to find a new, stable line. Splotches of bruises ran up and down both arms. After days of incoherent ramblings, Opal had a moment of lucidity. She turned suddenly to Kat early one morning and said quite clearly, “No more shots. No more needles.”
Kat didn’t want her mom to suffer, but she and her sisters knew the gravity the request. Without Grace’s well-timed poking and prodding, without needles or IVs, there wasn’t much more modern medicine could do. The latest infection would rage. Opal could have a stroke at any minute. Her blood sugar levels would continue to yoyo, her kidneys would eventually shut down, and her heart would beat irregularly—and maybe stop altogether. The girls weren’t sure they were ready to let her go. But years earlier, Kat promised her mom that in the end, she would honor her wishes. It was hard, but the next time Grace came in to give an insulin shot, Kat intervened.
“My mom doesn’t want any more shots. No more needles,” she said gently.
“O.K.,” Grace replied, pausing awkwardly. “I’ll have to let the doctors know.”
“Tell them to talk to me.”
Grace looked at Opal, who had moved on to a happy loop.
“You have pretty teeth,” Opal told her.
“Why thank you,” Grace said with a smile. Then she turned to Kat, nodded lovingly, and wrote an update in Opal’s chart.
When medical science can do no more at the end of a life, the conversation typically turns to hospice.
“Mamma, do you want to go to this place?” Kat asked, handing her mom a brochure. “It’s called Christopher House. It’s like a hospital hotel.”
Opal looked at the pamphlet.
“Hospice? Nope.”
Two years earlier, Opal watched her sister Ellie die in a hospital-run hospice, and the painful memory was too fresh. All Opal remembered was how afraid her sister was—and how the hospice folks wouldn’t let Ellie wear her dentures. In her prime, Ellie dolled up to go to the mailbox. All she wanted in her last days was to wear her teeth—to look pretty. She didn’t get that wish. Kat tried to reassure her mom that this would be different.
“Mamma, I’m a black belt in Taekwondo, remember? I’m gonna make sure you get great care. This place isn’t like the one Aunt Ellie was in. You just have to trust me on this.”
Opal wouldn’t budge. She wouldn’t sleep, either.
“I’m so tired, girls,” she said in that familiar, pleading, “help me” voice.
“Close your eyes and take a nap, Mamma,” Kat said. She refused.
By this time, Opal was beyond delirious. She had one foot in one world, and one foot in another, now repeating a childhood rhyme:
Puddin' n' tain
Puddin' n' tain
Ask me again
I'll tell you the same.”
     Grace tested Opal’s cognizance.
     “Can you tell me your name and date of birth?” Grace asked.
Puddin' n' tain, Puddin' n' tain. I won’t tell you my name,” Opal said in a childlike tone.
It was clear: Opal could no longer make decisions for herself—and now she was complaining of pain. Kat had to decide whether to transfer her mom to an in-patient hospice, where medical staff could keep Opal comfortable in her final days.
“Could she get better?” Kat asked the shift doctor in another hallway conversation. She bit her bottom lip, hoping for an easier, softer solution. Even though she knew her mom was slowly crossing over, Kat didn’t want to give up.
“We have the ability to eliminate your mom’s latest infection and maybe, eventually, balance out her blood sugar levels,” the doctor began. Though young, the doctor’s voice conveyed an aged wisdom. “But with all the other ailments, it will eventually be too much for her body to fight. She’s already worn out. We’ll just be prolonging the inevitable.”
Kat and her sisters agreed: They all wanted their mom to be comfortable—for however many days she had left.
It was one of the hardest decisions Kat ever had to make, but she signed the order papers for transfer to Christopher House.
With hospice waiting in the wings, Grace gave Opal something to ease the pain, and this helped her relax. As Opal’s eyes fluttered and finally closed, Kat whispered in her ear, “Keep an eye out for some really strong angels. And when they offer you their arm, Mamma, grab on.”
Opal nodded, and then slept soundly. So did her daughters. Then, too soon, Opal woke up.
“What happened?” Opal asked. “Did I die?”
“You went to sleep,” Nell said.
“No I didn’t,” Opal insisted.
“Yes, you did,” Sarah said. “We all took a nap.”
Opal didn’t believe them. But as quickly as she jolted awake, she blurted another, “I didn’t do it.”
“I know, Mamma,” Kat said. “You didn’t do it.”
The ambulance ride to Christopher House was uneventful, and when Opal was wheeled into her room, she immediately liked the blue walls.
“Pretty,” she said.
In her second day at Christopher House, Opal started a new loop.
“Is the door open yet?” she asked. Her daughters looked at each other in bewilderment. No one wanted to answer her. There was strong spiritual energy around doors, and it wouldn’t be ignored. While nurses bathed her, Opal mumbled again, “Is the door open yet?” Sarah was startled when the side entrance door slowly creaked opened. This was the same door that moments earlier locked Nell out.
Again and again, Opal asked, “Is the door open yet?” One time she lifted her arms as if she was reaching for something just above the bed.
“It’s open now, Mamma,” Kat said. “It’s wide open.”
Opal never asked the question again, and eventually, she drifted into a coma.
The blue-walled room was quiet. Kat and her sisters talked softly, drank gallons of coffee, ate too much fast food, and took turns keeping vigil, obsessively counting the seconds between Opal’s breaths. No one wanted to leave the room or fall asleep, but as the hours and days wore on, one by one, they each succumbed to exhaustion. Sarah lived farthest away, so she volunteered to stay and continue sleeping on the sleeper sofa. Nell and Kat reluctantly went home to sleep in their own beds. In the evening, Mary stopped by, and she and Sarah channel-surfed until they found a Texas Rangers baseball game on television. Knowing that hearing is the last sense to go, Mary sat next to the bed and gave Opal a lively play-by-play that matched the likes of Harry Caray. Mary was confident that Opal heard everything—even the crack of Josh Hamilton’s bat.
“Opal,” Mary whispered, leaning in close to her ear, “where you’re going, you’ll have the best seat at every Rangers game. You can even sit in the press box if you want. You’re gonna get to trade in this old, broken body for a brand new one. You’ll not only be able to walk again, but you’ll be able to run, jump, and steal home.”
Opal was unmoved. And finally, Mary stood up, hugged Sarah and left, too. The room was still, save for the disturbing sound of Opal’s now rattled breathing. Sarah sat next to the bed, holding her mom’s old and wrinkled hand in her purple latex-gloved palms, and listed every living family member she could think of before finally saying, “They all gave you permission to go.”
A few hours later, Opal took a deep breath, released it, and never took another. She died peacefully, needle-free, and, as requested, with her dentures.
In the course of one summer, Opal began a dying process that was hard, heartbreaking, painful, and at the same time oddly fascinating and magical. Her decline was staggeringly quick, yet in hindsight, perfectly timed. Opal—who didn’t let anyone peek into her thoughts and dreams—gave her daughters a parting gift by allowing them to witness her true spirit in her final days. She’d hid a lifetime of feelings, but in the end was open and candid. All her inhibitions vanished. In her last hours, Opal even made peace with Abe.
Two years later near Opal’s birthday, her daughters drove to one of their mom’s favorite gambling casinos in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and in the water next to the wagering Mecca, Kat and her sisters distributed their mom’s cremated remains.
“B-13,” Nell said, scattering the first batch of ashes on the ground.
“N-36,” Sarah said, scattering more ashes.
“Bingo!” Kat said, throwing the rest of the ashes into the air. “Enjoy your crown, Mamma.”



[1] Pandora is an Internet-based music recommendation service.
[2] Ensure is a protein-rich, meal-replacement shake.