Every Precious and Fragile Thing

by Barbara Davis

For me, death is just one leg in an infinite journey. None of us knows for sure what’s out there, but hope makes the unbearable bearable, and so I’ve chosen hope.

I like scarred things. They’ve lived interesting lives—hard lives—and managed to survive.

but wise enough to know we didn’t fit in and needed to be careful. You learn it early when you’re different. How to cloak yourself in sameness, how to hide in plain sight.

But the first step in healing after any tragedy is to look our pain in the eye and accept the fact that it’s a part of who we’ll be going forward. Maybe this is an opportunity for you to do that, to go back and face all of that stuff. I’m talking about digging deep, letting yourself cry it all out, until it can’t hurt you anymore. You’ve never done that work. And you need to. We all need to.”

Things changed between us that day, like a door closing. Little by little she began to distance herself. And I was so busy that I let her. Years later, here we are, polite strangers, tiptoeing around one another as we eat our lunch. And me, at a loss as to how to bridge the gap.

Suddenly, the room felt small and stuffy, too crowded with all her yesterdays.

That’s what real music does. It gets people to listen long enough for you to say what you have to say. It doesn’t have to be some lofty thing played by a string quartet. It just has to reach people, to speak to them.”

She drags me to mass every week and forces me to go to confession. I never know what to say to the priest and find myself wondering if the things I confess are actually sins against God or just sins against my mother.

I’d hate to lose you—you’re a caring professional with so much to offer—but the old adage about securing your own oxygen mask applies here. You can’t help anyone until you help yourself. That’s where we are now, at the help-yourself phase.

When we’re young, we think we know exactly where we’re headed. We map it all out and then burrow in, telling ourselves it’s best to stay safe. But sometimes life has something else planned. Something better.”

Mallory nodded. She knew firsthand how hard it was to not be doing the one thing you did well, the thing that gave you your worth and sense of self.

This is the business of dying well. The sorting out of what’s worth the fight and what’s not. The peeling off of old resentments. The laying down of arms. It’s a time of reckoning, of balancing our books and paying those we owe.

“I’m flesh and blood, just like you, Estelle, a veritable font of mistakes.”

and generous and warm. The image startles me. That’s the thing about seeing people stripped of their pride—it humanizes them in ways we’re often not prepared for. We suddenly see our sameness, our connection, our ties. And once seen, they can never be unseen.

“Mothers are complicated. You grow up thinking you know who they are. And then something happens and you realize they have all these layers, pieces of themselves you didn’t know were there—because they’ve been carrying around stuff you knew nothing about. But maybe it goes the other way too. Maybe mothers don’t always see their children as they really are.

I helped her die. It’s not the same thing. But yes, it was a crime. It may even have been a sin—the church would certainly say so—but when you’re forced to watch someone you love being devoured cell by cell, you don’t give a damn about sin. Because deep down you know the real sin is to let the suffering continue when it’s in your power to end it. I spared her a few days of agony, a week at most. If I go to hell for that, so be it.

Mothers aren’t supposed to have yesterdays. To our children, we’re blank slates, patiently awaiting their appearance so our lives can finally begin. In their minds, we’ve kept no secrets, dreamed no dreams, committed no sins. But few of us come to motherhood unmarked by life. We’ve had pasts and passions—and yes, regrets.

For so long, I worried about choosing my moment carefully. Now I see that there was never going to be a right moment.

None of us knows why bad things happen, or what good might come out of them when they do.

“I didn’t realize dying was a full-time job. But in a way, it’s been good. I’m seeing things clearly for the first time in my life. Ironic, isn’t it? Figuring it all out just as I’m getting ready to make my exit.”

Aiden scowled but let the remark pass. He’d made it clear that he didn’t appreciate her gallows humor, but it helped sometimes to laugh at it all. Perpetual sorrow was so exhausting.

Everyone was given their portion in life and she’d had hers. Some of it—perhaps most of it—she had selfishly squandered. But in these last few months and weeks, she’d finally come to understand why each soul was sent out into the world. It was to love—and to leave the mark of that love on the world when the time came to leave it. This, at long last, she had done.