Book club moves from the living room to the salon so my mom can lie down on her couch while we discuss. We have just read a graphic novel we all loved—chosen in part because she is struggling to focus when there is too much text—but I can’t relax. All I can think about is the part at the end of the discussion when we pick a date for our next meeting.
I know that everyone in book club knows that the hospice nurse has suggested that given her status, my mom probably has about a month to six weeks left—but I’m wondering if they remember. I am panicking at the thought of choosing a date that she isn’t around for any longer. I feel like I’m six years old and about to be caught in some horrible lie—hurtling like an egg through midair. And I’m shocked at my inability to say something out loud to confront it, diffuse it even: So do they have book club in the afterlife?
I am positive that the possibility that she won’t live to see our next meeting is not lost on her either, but she seems distracted tonight—disconnected from the discussion.
“Are you okay?” I mouth to her.
She nods, but then winces. “Can you ask Dad to bring me in my pain pills?”
Then quickly to everyone else: “Don’t go, don’t go! This is just a new version of me having another glass of wine.” She never wants the party to end.
Anne saves the day: “Seems like many of us will be unavailable for the month of August with summer vacations and all. Wouldn’t it be easier to leave the date open-ended for now?”
Linda saves it again: “And maybe it would be fun for each of us to just come and report on our favorite book from the last year, from book club or not.”
Tita nudges my arm as we stand to leave. “Call me when you get home if you want to talk.”
Of course they all remember; of course it is not only me, trying to both preserve and crack open the lie that time doesn’t pass, that loss isn’t a blade so sharp that it can make you bleed long before you ever feel the sting.
My mom stays curled up on the couch, her tiny body somehow seeming to have become a little smaller over the course of the evening.
“You all be good,” she is saying, starting to doze. “I love you.”
These are the things we all say at the end of book club now: I love you. Of course we do. Why haven’t we been saying that all along?