Eighteen hours into my birthday—my seventieth birthday—and my uniform smelled of antiseptic and suffering. My feet throbbed in white orthopedic shoes that had stopped providing comfort somewhere around hour fourteen. But my hands, these hands that had bathed infants and comforted the dying for nearly five decades, remained steady as I slipped my key into the front door of the suburban American home I’d spent thirty years paying for.
The house was dark except for the porch light.
No surprise. No one had remembered what today was.
Anyway, I set my nursing bag down quietly, not wanting to wake Camille or Vincent. My daughter and son-in-law had moved in with me “temporarily” five years ago, after he lost a job with good benefits at a midwestern manufacturing plant and she was still recovering from medical bills.
Now they occupied the master bedroom while I slept in what used to be my sewing room.
Just one of many small surrenders I’d made in the name of family harmony. The kitchen beckoned. I needed water—perhaps tea—before I could sleep.
As I approached, voices drifted through the partially open window facing the back patio.
Camille and Vincent were outside, the ember of his cigarette glowing in the darkness. Out here, in this quiet little American cul-de-sac where flag bunting still hung from the last Fourth of July, sound carried easily in the night air.
“We can’t keep living like this,” Vincent was saying, his voice carrying clearly. “Your mother is slowing down.
She’ll need more care soon, not less.”
I froze, glass halfway to the tap.
“I know,” Camille sighed. “But what can we do?”
“We’ve discussed this. She has to go to a facility.
The house is worth at least four times what she paid for it.
We sell it, find her somewhere affordable to live out her years, and finally start living our own lives.”
The water overflowed in my forgotten glass, cold against my fingers. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.
“Mom would never agree to that,” Camille protested, though her tone lacked conviction. “She doesn’t have to love the idea, but she’s seventy now.
Today, actually.
It’s the perfect time to start the conversation about her future care needs.”
Even in the darkness, I could imagine Vincent’s condescending air quotes around “future care needs.”
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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