Lightly buttered toasts, with strawberry jam by Andrea Lius

I turned on my side when I heard the gentle flick of the light switch. The sudden brightness of the cool, white overhead fluorescent lights would’ve startled me more had I not only been pretending to sleep. My mother sat on the edge of the bed, holding a bottle of pills.

“I don’t have to leave you, you know,” she said.

I blinked a couple of times, adjusting to the light. I stared across my bedroom, listening to the whirring noise from inside our twelve-year-old air conditioner. Has it always been this loud?

My mother extended the bottle towards me.

“Let’s go,” she said, sounding eerily cheery. “We can both join him.”

Since my father passed away unexpectedly two years before, my mother had been asking me to help her find a painless way to end her life. She always made her pleas over text or by phone because I was attending college nearly ten thousand miles away.

“Don’t leave me,” I told her the first few times.

But then that started to feel selfish. And then I just wasn’t sure if I meant it anymore. So, I stopped saying anything. But I did help her look.

Her request for something painless immediately ruled out hanging. Or wrist-slitting and bleeding out in a bathtub. Which would’ve ranked much lower on the list anyway, since she had promised me not to choose anything messy.

“So people won’t judge you,” she said.

I knew she wanted pills, so I considered introducing some alcohol into her teetotal life. Pills and alcohol. How very anti-climactic and Hollywood-like, it’s almost elegant.

“Accidental overdose,” people would say. Tragic, but accidental. So people won’t judge her.

My mother also mentioned Dignitas a few times. So I thought about what I could write to try and convince the organization that she was living with an “unendurable disability.”

To whom it may concern,

I am writing on behalf of my mother, who is unable to find a single reason to go on living.

Sincerely,

Her loving daughter

Of course, I never told her about any of these methods. I didn’t want her to feel compelled to try. And possibly fail. But I had to be able to give her options. Just in case she ever really really needed it.

And if she ever did, really really need it, where would she do it, and when? Would she leave any hints beforehand? Would she say goodbye, and to whom? Would she give me a chance to save her? Would I try to save her? What if I saved her? What if I didn’t? How long would it take before someone found her? Who would break the news to me? Would it catch me by surprise? Would I be mad or sad or neither? Would my grandmother blame me? Would I blame me?

As my mother stood up, I felt the edge of the bed creak. I heard her bare feet squeaking across the too-clean floor and the gentle rattling of her pill bottle, then another gentle flick. Darkness. I wanted to get up and leave. Or scream. Or cry. Or laugh. But I couldn’t remember how. It was as if I were frozen, yet strangely warm. It was the closest I’d felt to my mother in years.

Why did it take her this long to ask? Had she always known that I’d just turn her down? Was she too late, or did I simply not love her enough?

A tear rolled down my cheek. I finally understood her desire to leave me behind.

The next morning, I saw my mother in the dining room eating toast. Two slices, with light spreads of butter and strawberry jam. Her usual. She looked up at me as I was coming down the stairs.

“Good morning,” she said, smiling.

I forced a smile back, but I couldn’t meet her eyes.

I retreated to the privacy of my bedroom and booked a flight home without telling her, cutting my visit two weeks short. I put my passport, phone and forty dollars cash in the zipped inner lining of my backpack. I asked my mother for a ride to the gym, and when she dropped me off, I gave her a kiss on the cheek. A traitor, just like Judas.

As soon as her car was out of sight, I took a cab to the airport. I couldn’t think about whether I would ever see my mother again, so I fixed my gaze on the raindrops pattering against the windshield. I listened to cars zooming past and horns honking and puddles splashing.

My phone vibrated.

It was my mother.

I switched off my phone.

It wouldn’t matter now if my mother lived or died — I’d always be the one who left.

Image Credit: Flickr Creative Commons/Joshboyd Studios