The nurse moves like a spirit, without touching anything, without making a sound, so that Cohen doesn’t realize she’s there until he sees Kaye sit up straight in her chair. She does that when people come into the room, even though it makes her uncomfortable. She doesn’t last long in the chair, so she stands and walks loops around the room, circling past the window that looks out over the bright afternoon, out over the city. She steps gently over Johnny, who has been sleeping off and on. She passes Cohen and arrives at the foot of the bed where their mother has been sitting all these long hours. Kaye rests her hand on her mother’s shoulder.
“How are you?” Kaye asks the nurse.
The nurse gives her a kind smile, and immediately Cohen thinks she has lost someone recently. He can always tell. Maybe it’s from his job, but he can always see it in the eyes. There is something calm there, something placid, as if a great disturbance has passed by but now the surface has regained its balance and is even more calm for the trouble it has gone through.
“Good morning,” the nurse says. She wears tan slacks and a white collared shirt. Her graying brown hair is pixie short, and her dark eyes are full and round. “I know you’ve signed all the paperwork, but I’d like to talk you through what I’m doing, if that’s okay?”
Kaye nods, her hand fleeting once again to cover her mouth. Cohen swallows hard. Their mother sits up, an almost imperceptible straightening.
“First I’m going to remove your father’s breathing tube. This will disconnect him from the ventilator and alleviate any discomfort the tube may be causing him.”
Cohen stares at his father, at his chest rising and falling, lifting the sheet and lowering it. It’s a movement so predictable, so monotonous, that it seems like it could go on and on into eternity. Cohen remembers coming into the living room late on a Saturday afternoon when he was a child, before his parents divorced, before everything that happened. His father was asleep on the sofa, his fingers still green from cleaning out the lawn mower, shards of grass clinging to his scalp, his ears. He was wearing a white T-shirt and dirty jeans, and his socks were on the floor beside him. His bare feet were a ghostly white. Cohen had stood beside his father for a long time, watching his chest rise and fall.
“Will he stop . . . breathing?” Kaye whispers from behind her hand, as if she does not want her mother to hear the question.
“He might,” the nurse explains in a kind voice. “Or he may go on breathing for some time.”
Kaye nods a jerky okay, wipes a lone tear from her cheek. It leaves a wet mark, a glistening smudge. Cohen covers the distance between them, reaches up, and wipes away the remnants of her tear. Kaye puts her hand on his shoulder, gives him a half smile, and looks down at their mother sitting in front of them.
That’s when he hears it: music. Is it singing? Is it coming from the television? He looks over his shoulder, but the TV is off. He looks around the ceiling for speakers but doesn’t see any. He realizes his mother is singing softly to herself, barely moving her mouth. He turns his head so that his face is toward Kaye and his ear is closer to his mother. What is she singing?
“While we walk the pilgrim pathway
Clouds will overspread the sky,
But when traveling days are over
Not a shadow, not a sigh.
“When we all get to heaven,
What a day of rejoicing that will be!
When we all see Jesus,
We’ll sing and shout the victory.”
Kaye looks over at him and they lock eyes. He mouths a question silently. “Do you hear her?”
Kaye leans closer, nods, smiles, more tears rising.
“Okay,” the nurse says. “Your father is disconnected from the ventilator.”
Kaye’s glance changes quickly to panic. “He is?”
Cohen and Kaye move as close as they can to their father. This is it. This is the end.
Seconds go by. Minutes pass.
“Is he still breathing?” Kaye asks.
The nurse bends down close to Calvin, placing one hand on his chest. She turns her ear so that it’s only inches from his mouth. “He is still breathing, yes, and he doesn’t seem to be labored by it.”
Kaye looks at Cohen. He smiles and nods at her.
“I’m also going to remove his feeding tube.” When the nurse says this, Cohen’s mother’s voice seems to go up a level in volume. Barely noticeable, but louder.
“I know this has been a difficult decision for you,” the nurse says quietly, her hands busy. “But it won’t put your father in any pain. Often, receiving food in your last days or hours can only cause more discomfort.”
“We are dead to the world and its pleasure,
Our affections are centered above,
Where we own such a wonderful treasure,
’Tis a home in the city of love.”
Cohen clears his throat gently and looks at Kaye, hoping she’ll say something to their mother, maybe ask her to quiet down a bit. He knows she won’t listen to him. But Kaye is staring at their father, lost, somewhere else.
“When we get home we’ll shout and sing
The praises of our Redeemer and King,
And make the heavenly arches ring
With the songs of home, sweet home.”
Cohen glances at the nurse, embarrassed that she might hear. He puts his hand on his mother’s shoulder, hoping to stir her out of her singing reverie, but when his fingers find the soft fabric of her shirt, a pulse of memory and sadness works its way through him. He can feel her slender collarbone, the hollow in the cleft of it. She is fragile. He has never realized this about his mother before, never once seen her as anything besides steel and iron and cold, hard rock.
And then, as he becomes more and more conscious of the feel of his mother’s clavicle under the pads of his fingers, another realization comes. She will die. Her stony countenance will fade into a placid resignation. And it will be only him and Kaye.
He is not a middle-aged man anymore, not in that moment—he is a little boy comforting his mom. His hand, which he first lifted to chide her, remains there, and instead of embarrassment at her singing, he feels a certain acceptance, as if for the first time in many years she is giving him a gift he has the ability to accept.
“Yes, we’ll gather at the river,
The beautiful, the beautiful river;
Gather with the saints at the river
That flows by the throne of God.”