T Incorporated

I drove. It’s one thing to be 15 and pull up to basketball practice with your mother in the passenger seat, new permit beaming from your back pocket, it’s quite another to be 21 and driving because she no longer can. The three of us, my dad drove separately, pulled into the Kaiser Interstate Medical Office parking lot in Northeast Portland. I pulled into the turn out and dropped her and my sister off and went to park the car. We’d been here a few times before but this was different—it was the first time all of us were going together.

It was your standard Kaiser building; off-white outside, funny doctors office smell on the interior, and those funky overstuffed chairs “randomly” scattered throughout. Maybe they figured people enjoyed hanging out here. It always seemed odd to me.

Stwa was in the waiting room already. On time is late, early is on time, he was his standard fifteen minutes early today. He was briskly flipping through one of magazines on the table.

We go in one at a time, in pairs, or as a whole group. I guess this allows you to feel comfortable with saying whatever you need to. My Mom and Dad head in first, while Annie and I walk down the hall to a special waiting room. We’re up on the third story of the building staring out the window into an industrial area. It’s just up from the shipping yards on the Willamette River, so there isn’t much of a view. We stare anyway not knowing what to say.

“You’re lucky you’re away at school,” she blurts out.

“I know, it’s different,” I replied, but knowing I didn’t really understand.

“It’s going to be so different when she’s gone, well, if…”

“Yeah, it’s hard to know what to say anymore”

“Mom stays so positive with it all I don’t know how she does it.”

“C’mon in guys!” Stwa bellows from the back room with a loud false confidence.

We glanced at each other and head back.

Izetta’s office is a funny room designed to make you feel at home. The florescent lights are turned off in favor of accent lighting. The chairs aren’t the standard Kaiser garb and there’s even a bean bag chair on the floor. It’s family counseling so toys in bins are scattered around the room. Izetta, an unimposing woman, is sitting in a chair by her desk and the rest of us are positioned in the room. I’m to the right of my mom and my sister is in a bean bag chair on the floor. My dad’s on a chair next to Izetta. The room is trying too hard to be what it’s not: home. It feels false.

Since we’ve all been here before Izetta skips the niceties.

“What do you want to leave behind?” she asks my mom.

My mind wanders and I try to think how I’d answer that question. What would I say?

There’s a box of tissue and a glass of water to her left on the coffee table.

It’s late in the afternoon as the sun hides behind a building across the street. She starts coughing and takes a sip of water. It doesn’t help and she keeps coughing. She starts hawking up more and more of this green flem and a pile of discarded tissues starts growing next to her. I’ve seen it happen before but not to this extent, and everyone in the room tenses up. Everyone wants to help, wants to make it stop, wants to make the disease stop, make it go away, but all we can do is watch helplessly. It finally lets up, her face a deep maroon her eyes watering. You can tell that she’s embarrassed, that she doesn’t want us to see her like this. She apologizes.

I go and get the car and pull into the turnout. My sister walks with my mom down and she steps gingerly in. My Dad’s already at the Widmer brewery when we park at the bottom of the hill. We all order food although my mom doesn’t eat much.

It’s the last meal we all had together.