2014-362 Arts - Compass Center for Women and Families for Spring 2014 Arts Grant Agreement $1,500

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w OcclUSlon I sat with her for three straight days. It had been six-and-a-half weeks since the doctor told us the news,he gave her less than four months. The cancer had traveled to her brain, there was nothing that could be done. So we waited. I held her hand until I couldn't take the way it felt- gnarled and hard- veined, like trees dying under kudzu's choking coils. I listened to her sleep, the rattle of her lungs punctuated by her gasps and whimperings of pain.This woman who had led me fearlessly through all the agonies of childhood laying now in a cloud of helplessness. Laying my head against her gaunt cheeks,I breathed her in. She didn't even smell like herself anymore.The stench of stale cigarettes had finally worn off,eroded from her rice-paper skin by so much time in this sterile place, all steel and bleach and fluorescent lights. It seemed as though she herself was becoming just another part of the tapestry of the home,just another empty plastic bin. We waited for seven weeks exactly,she and I. On the last day,the last hour, that moment where I knew it was over and that I would be left waiting alone.... in that last catch of our shared breath,the door opened and a woman walked in. My mother. I hadn't thought she would come. She held my hand in hers as we waited for that one last minute.The three of us.