The Seeds Of A Daisy: The Lily Lockwood Series: Book One (Women's Fiction) (29 page)

I nod. Somehow I know she is telling me the truth. I fully accept it. It is as if, in those couple of minutes, I have been given the knowledge of what life truly is about. We sit quietly for a few minutes, rocking away and enjoying each other’s company.

“You’re going to be an author, you know,” she says simply.

“A writer? Mom don’t be ridiculous, I can’t put two words together—you’re the writer, not me.”

“Well, you will be, and you’ll start by writing a novel about everything you’re going through now,” she replies quietly.

“I don’t know about that.” It’s highly unlikely that I can write a story, much less a novel. Acting is my forte; writing is hers.

“Have I ever predicted anything in your life that failed to come true?” she challenges me.

“Well…no. But…” I say hesitantly.

“But what, young lady?” she asks, in that Mom voice I have loved and hated all my life. “After all these years, I’m not about to start giving you wrong information, that’s for certain. Don’t you worry—I’ll be around to help you through that and so much more…” She stands up. She is getting ready to leave.

“How will I know you’re around?” I start to get nervous that she is leaving me again.

“You’ll absolutely know I’m around—I promise.” With that she kisses me and says, “And for heaven’s sake, please stop beating yourself up over our argument. That’s all it was: an argument between a mother and daughter. Had I not gotten into the accident, we would’ve made up the next day and moved on, like it was nothing.”

I am incredibly relieved. She smiles. “Remember, you’ve got to be the glue that holds the family together,” she says as she walks down the porch steps toward the beach.

“Family? What family? There’s just me, Mom.” I stand up and walk toward her.

She laughs, “Just you? Hardly, Lily of the Valley. You’re going to be the glue that keeps everyone together—wait and see. Now go back inside, it’s going to start raining again.” She turns to walk away, then stops and walks back to me. She looks very sad and there are tears in her eyes. She hugs me and whispers, “I want you to be prepared, honey. It’s going to happen a week from Wednesday.” She kisses me and walks away. I strain to see her, but I am having a hard time focusing.

The sun hides behind a dark cloud and I hear a roar of thunder.

I open my eyes—I am back in the living room, seated on the overstuffed chair. The wind and rain are thrashing the roof. Yet I feel indescribably happy and joyful. I believe I just had a visitation from my mother and she was able to show me a glimpse of another dimension.

I start to second-guess myself. Maybe it was just a dream, a wonderful and comforting dream. But I know that’s not the case. I feel a shift. Everything is crystal clear to me. It’s as if I’ve been living in a dense fog and wasn’t aware of it until now. I am able to see more clearly and sharply than ever before. This moment is the product of the convergence of everything that has happened over the last couple of weeks. I am amazed that each piece of the puzzle has been revealed, but not until this very moment have I am been able to put it all together. My mother has been controlling everything. Trying to tell me a story—step by step—little by little—revealing each segment. Just waiting patiently for me to gather all the pieces and put them together.

And yet, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m missing something. I think back over the last couple of weeks—over everything that’s happened with Jamie and Nasty Natty, my mother’s car accident, the diaries and the discovery of Steve Santini, the text from Natalie, finding out about my mother’s pregnancy, discovering that I too am pregnant, meeting my half-brother, and finally my mother’s brain damage. I have more than a nagging feeling that there is another piece to this puzzle. What am I missing?

Almost as soon as I ask myself that question, I figure out the answer. I run upstairs and walk into the back of my mother’s closet. I pull out the silver box again, open it, and rifle through her papers. Finally—there it is—the missing piece!

I read it over and over again, and understand how integral this piece of paper is going to be for the future of the family. I hold on to the paper and say, “I got it, Mom. I understand.”

I must get dressed quickly, because I have to get to the hospital as soon as possible. I close the silver box, shove it back into its place in the closet, and walk out.

As I head to the shower, I see it. I stop and stare. A few minutes earlier, I was so eager to get to the silver box in the closet that I walked right past the bed without giving it a second glance. Now I am transfixed. The bed that I left in a mess this morning is now neatly made with Daisy’s favorite bedspread and ten beautiful little designer pillows, all perfectly positioned.

M
y car won’t start, and I end up getting it towed to the repair shop and have to wait for the car service to pick me up. By the time I get to the hospital, Mom has already been moved to a new room. The unit is different than the rest of the hospital. The rooms on the hospice floor look like they belong in an upscale hotel. The atmosphere is more homey, more comfortable—it’s even beautiful.

My mother’s room is painted sage green with lovely floral drapes framing two windows that overlook a pretty garden. The wide window sills are covered end to end with stunning arrangements of flowers and plants from friends and business associates.

I meet with the hospice nurses and the social workers, who are incredibly kind and understanding. They take time to sit with me and explain the whole process and what I can expect. We cry and even laugh together. I show them the document I brought to the hospital, and they assure me that the proper department will be contacted, and that they’ll be up to see me soon. I come away with a deep respect for them. It takes special people to be able to give comfort, support, and dignity to a dying patient and the family. Both my mother and I are in good hands.

I sit with her while they remove the feeding tube and intravenous drip. I had imagined that it would be a lot harder to watch—more traumatic—than it actually is. After the “dream” I had, for the first time since the accident I feel that my mother is no longer there—not in her body, anyway. It is such a strange feeling that the essence of my mother—her spirit—has already departed. It is my goal to honor her and be with her through the next phase—the last phase— of her earthly life. I want to be present and in the moment for her and
for myself. She is a unique, wonderful, and special woman and deserves to be treated as such, to the very end.

The nurse leaves the room. I take my mother’s hand and softly tell her, “Mom, I love you. You have been the most amazing mother anyone could have. You took fantastic care of me, my whole life. It’s time for me to take care of you, now.”

The nurses gave me a palliative care handbook. I start to read it and am surprised that there is a term called “active dying” that describes the last stage of life. It isn’t until I start to read further in the handbook that I understand a person actually goes through different physical phases during the dying process. Their breathing changes and so does their color. There is more. I try to read about it so I will know what to expect when the time comes. After a few minutes, I put the book down and start crying. I decide to use this book as a reference only when I really need to understand what is happening to my mother, when it’s happening.

I walk into the waiting room to call Auntie D. Neither of us can believe that Daisy’s journey, which we both have had the privilege to be part of, will soon come to an end. I tell Auntie D. that now is the time for Daisy’s close friends to say goodbye to her. That it should happen in the next couple of days. The doctors said she could live a week, maybe a little more, after the tube is removed. Auntie D. tells me she will call Tommy and Fernando, and they’ll let everyone know.

I tell her about the document I found in the silver case and what I plan to do with it. She cries and says, “Oh, honey, that’s perfect. Knowing your mother, it makes sense that’s what she would want. You understand her wishes, and you, my darling, are taking it to the next level.”

David is not in his room. His nurse tells me he is in the dialysis unit and will be there for about two more hours. She also tells me that usually they don’t allow visitors while patients are having their treatments, but she said if he’s there by himself, she’s pretty sure they’ll bend the rules.

I go into the dialysis unit, which is behind two heavy, slate gray doors. It takes me a couple of seconds to push them open. I walk into a very long room.
Along one wall there’s a row of blue lounge chairs, each one next to a large gray machine. The room is almost empty; all the lounge chairs are in upright positions except for one at the very far end of the room. David is reclining in his chair, hooked up to a large machine next to him. I start walking over to him. A short nurse in paisley pink-and-green scrubs runs interference and stops me in mid-step. She’s a short woman with a frizzy blond “throwback to the 80’s” perm.

“Excuse me, no visitors are allowed in this unit,” she says sternly. Before I can answer, her face changes dramatically. “Oh, you’re Daisy Lockwood! Oh my God. I’m a huge fan of the show. I’ve been watching since the very first episode.” She stops talking and smiles self-consciously.

She extends her hand. “I’m Molly.”

“It’s nice meeting you, Molly. I’m actually here to see David.” I point to the only patient in the room.

She glances over to the sleeping patient. A puzzled look comes over her face. “He has an open port where the dialysis machine is connected. We have to be careful of infection while the port is exposed.”

She sees that I am disappointed and continues, “But since he’s the only patient here, if you promise not to touch him, I don’t see any harm in letting you stay for a bit. He’s sleeping right now, but you can pull a chair over and sit next to him. He’ll probably wake up soon. I have to check his machine in a few minutes, and when I start fussing, the patients usually wake up.”

“Can you tell me what the machine actually does?” I ask, as we walk over to David.

“Well, the abbreviated version is that it actually does the same thing that our kidneys do.”

“And that is…?” I ask.

Molly’s voice takes on the tone of an instructor talking to an addle-brained student, which in all honesty, is quite fitting. “The kidneys are sophisticated reprocessing machines. Every day a person’s kidneys process about two hundred quarts of blood, sifting out about two quarts of waste products and extra water. The wastes and extra water become urine, which flows to the bladder, which stores it and then releases it through urination.”

When I was on the sitcom
New to Jersey
, the on-set tutor spent hours trying to drill into our heads the function of our organs. It was useless. The class
consisted of two students: me and Benjamin, the actor who played my brother on the show, and the guy I had a huge, larger-than-life crush on. It was very hard to concentrate on anything. The only organ I kept thinking about belonged to Ben, and it certainly wasn’t inside his body.

“And so, the long and the short of it is, the machine mixes and monitors the dialysate. Dialysate is the fluid that helps remove waste products from the patient’s blood. It also helps get the electrolytes and minerals to their proper levels, and monitors the flow of the patient’s blood while it’s outside of the body.”

“Outside of the body?” I gasp.

“Yes.” She points to a tube and says, “This carries the blood from his access port to the dialyzer. The tubing is threaded through this blood pump.” She points to the middle of the machine. “You’ll see the pump turning in a circular motion. The pumping action pushes the blood through the dialyzer and back into the patient’s body.” I feel my own blood rush to my feet and the room spins. I sit down quickly in the seat next to David. I hope I’m not going to pull what is quickly becoming a daily ritual for me: swooning and fainting.

An alarm on the machine goes off, and Molly puts on her gloves and starts hitting buttons. “There, that’s better,” she says. The phone rings and she walks across the room to answer it.