Note from Patti:

I wrote this scene for Always Green, thinking Louise would redeem her cancer experience by taking in hospice patients. I created Randi Beedleman (where do I get these names?) as a means for Mibby to deal with her mother, grow as a care-giver, and to love sacrificially. I decided that Mibby had plenty of opportunities to do these things with people already close to her, so the Randi storyline was deleted. In this scene, Mibby stays with Randi while Louise and Randi’s mother, Susan, run some errands.

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FROM THE DELETED SCENE FILE...

“I look like a bloated canary, don’t I?”

Randi’s skin and eyes were tinged yellow, like she’d been dipped in some ghastly brew, but I couldn’t bring myself to agree with her. I expelled what I thought would be a laugh, but it sounded like I was choking. “No way.”

Blink trotted into the room and straight to Randi’s bed. Only one leg remained on the floor when I caught him by the collar. “Down, boy!”

“It’s okay,” she said. “He sleeps with me whenever Ky brings him over.”

I released Blink’s collar, and he stepped over Randi to nestle into her back. “He ain’t a man, but he’s warm,” she said.

In the three days since I’d last seen Randi, her face had puffed like rising dough, softening the hard lines of her life.

“You do see it, don’t you?” she asked. “My liver ain’t working so good.”

“Are you okay?”

Randi rolled her eyes. “Not really.”

“That was a pretty stupid thing to ask.”

“Sit down.”

I pulled a chair close to her head and picked up a book from the nightstand. “Want me to read?”

She looked at the ceiling for a long time. “I hated my mother. Nothing I did was good enough for her. She didn’t like my friends. My grades disappointed her. She took all of my clothes into the backyard and burned them. Whenever I walked into the house, I got a choky feeling, like I couldn’t breathe, so I left.”

I returned the book to the nightstand.

Randi closed her eyes. I watched her chest rise and fall.

She opened her eyes. “You should have seen her in the hospital. She doesn’t think they were trying hard enough to get me well. I could hear her screaming at the nurses’ station from the end of the hall. I told her I didn’t want to be there anymore, and she got me out of there in less than an hour. She knows how to get her way.”

Randi ran her tongue over her teeth, so I offered her a drink.

“When I was young,” she said, “I wanted a mother who was soft and laughed a lot, so I asked the lady down the street. She gave me some cookies and sent me home. But I can’t imagine that lady doing what my mother did for me in the hospital. I guess God gives us the mother we need.”

It had to be written somewhere that it wasn’t polite to argue with the dying, but someone had to tell her that only one exception to her rule nullified the rule. I did not get the mother I needed.

“Mom’s so scared. She’s losing me all over again. I tried to tell her about Jesus and how we could be together always. But I couldn’t say it right.” Randi’s eyes closed and lingered there before opening again.

“You’re so tired,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere. If you want to sleep, we can talk when you wake up.”

“I want to go home.”

“I know. I know.”

“I want my mother to be there.”

She closed her eyes and soon her snores melded with Blink’s. It was a strange thing to be envying a dying woman. The veil between life and death had parted for her, and on the other side her home awaited. It was one continuous reality, no seams or welds. Being in one place was being in the other. It made Scott seem so close and my mother so far away.

I tried to read a magazine, but being that close to the passage between the temporal and eternity made political races and war news seem trivial. A great expectation excited me, like the beginning of a journey to an exotic place. It had always been my job to prepay the utilities, stop the paper, and most importantly, unplug the iron and turn off the oven, so the Garrett family, namely Scott, could enjoy the vacation without some undone job tickling at him. Randi was preparing for her trip.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“About four.”

“They’ve been gone a long time.”

I offered her a drink, but she refused it. “Maybe we should pray,” she said.

I held her hand and bowed my head.

“You better do it,” she said. “If I fall asleep, keep going.”

I had no idea what to pray for, so I thanked God for Susan’s fierce love, and for Louise’s bold spirit, and for Blink’s warm body. Randi squeezed my hand. I thanked Him for heaven and for making such careful arrangements for our arrival there and for never giving up on us. “Please, please, Lord, help Susan hear your love song and respond with an open heart.”

I put my head on the bed and waited for inspiration. Randi rested her hand on my head and prayed. “Bless Mibby real good. Amen.”

 

© Patti Hill  2006-2008, All Rights Reserved. 

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