I answer the door the first time the hospice nurse comes to visit my parents’ house. My mom is perched in the salon and my dad is making lunch. The kids are playing Wild West out in the yard—riding two tipped-over garbage cans as horses and wielding lassos. “Eat my dust, partner,” Freddy is yelling. Benny is squealing and neighing.
“Oh my!” the hospice nurse says, with a smile that suggests she is more used to the hushed version of her job. “Ms. Riggs! It’s wonderful to meet you. I didn’t realize you had young kids.”
She thinks I’m my mom. She’s noted the baldness and the surgical drain hanging clipped to my shirt that had to be reinstalled when my mastectomy site kept filling and refilling with fluid.
“Oh no, I’m the daughter,” I say. “Sorry. I know it’s confusing.” Her smile wavers and also softens a little. “I’ll show you to my mom.”
Imagine this: Even hospice nurses retain a sense of the way the world should work.