Las Vegas Weekly

January 16, 2010 · 11:06 AM

Mom is comatose, and yoga is not helping

By Justice

It is about 7 p.m. on Friday. I’m beginning to get ready for work. I’m not even sure where I’ll work tonight. I’m doing a variety of scattered tasks. Pairing matching sets of eyelashes and thigh high stockings while doing laundry, among other things. I’m trying to do yoga at home but I find it tremendously pointless so I’m listening to the instructional video playing in the other room while writing. The new age music, the slow breathing, it kills me every time but once in a while I give it another shot. It’s like a friend you don’t really like that much but sometimes you answer the phone when they call. Then you’re trying to make an excuse to cut the conversation short.

“Mom” has been in the hospital since New Year’s Day, and I haven’t gone to visit her once. Not a single time. At first I didn’t go because I heard she was too heavily medicated so entirely incoherent. She was asking to be assisted into her home kitchen because she didn’t realize she was even in the hospital. I figured I’d give it a couple days until she could understand that I was actually there.

She is now in a coma and has been for almost a week. I don’t know what to do. I finally had a good cry about it days after I learned. I have a delayed reaction to things that are horrible.

I feel like it would be weird to go visit her now. Worse than before. I’ll be visiting her by myself. Just her, alive by machines, completely unresponsive and probably all puffy. And me, talking to someone who can’t hear me. Like performing a monologue in an empty theater. Worse than talking to a dog, I think. The dog perks up its ears when you say its name. I’m scared I’ll just cry.

The yoga instructor just compared yoga breathing to Darth Vader’s breathing. I bet Mom sounds like that while breathing on machines but I wouldn’t know. I haven’t gone to see her.

Of course my mind has already gone to the next step. She wants me to do her hair and makeup when she dies since I’ve seen her do her own hair and makeup a thousand times. She says she doesn’t want to be buried or burned. She is tremendously claustrophobic. She wants to be put in a tree so the birds will eat her body. I always told her that we can’t just do that with bodies. It’s against the law to just dump those things anywhere. I don’t think she thought it out very well. I’d doll her up with lipstick and mascara and then hoist her up into a tree? What a sight.

I suppose I’ll wash my hair now and doll myself up. I think I’ll wear something with a leopard print tonight. Tacky is always okay at work. I should also pack something to wear to the gym after work. I wasted all that time watching the yoga video when I could have had a real workout.

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