The Hymn My Mother Still Knew
She opened her mouth and sang.
She came in exactly where Marcy’s humming was, in the middle of a line, and she had the words. Her voice was not the voice I grew up with. It was thin as thread. But it was dead on the note, and every word was there.
Marcy turned around with the pitcher still tipped. Water ran over the top of Walt’s glass and onto the tablecloth, and neither one of them noticed.
Mom finished the first verse and took a breath in the right place and went on to the second.
By then the room had gone quiet. You do not know how noisy a dining room is until it stops. The dishwasher was running back in the kitchen, and that was all there was, the dishwasher and my mother.
Walt took off his cap. He held it against his chest with one big spotted hand.
She sang the third verse.
Nobody knows the third verse of anything. I have been in church my whole life and I could not have given you the third verse of that hymn for money. My mother, who could not find the right end of her fork, sang it straight through without one stumble.
Then the fourth. All the way to the end.
On the last word she held the note for the full count. She did not let it drop off early the way a congregation does when it is ready to sit down. She held it, and then she closed her mouth, and that was that.
She sat down. She picked up her fork, the wrong way around.
“Is there pie?” she said.
There was. It was sour cream raisin, and it was already sitting by her plate.
I went to slide it over to her and I could not do it. My hands were shaking so hard the plate rattled against her water glass. Marcy came and did it for me. Her eyes were as wet as mine.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “Did I upset her? I didn’t mean to do anything.”
I shook my head. I meant to say, no, honey, you did not upset her. I meant to ask her the one thing I wanted to know. Nothing came out.
Then a call light started going off down the east hall, and somebody at the nurses’ station said her name, and she squeezed my shoulder and went.
I sat there and watched my mother eat her pie.
She ate every bit of it. She pressed the crumbs up off the plate with the back of her fork, the way she always had, because you do not waste crust.
When my forty minutes were up I kissed the top of her head.
“Thank you for coming,” she said. “You tell your mother hello.”
“I will,” I said.
I made it to the car. I did not make it out of the parking lot. I sat behind the wheel for twenty minutes with the engine off, and I called the dental office where I work the front desk and told them I would be late coming back, and Jan who does the scheduling took one listen to my voice and said, “Take the time, Anne.”
I ought to tell you who my mother was. Otherwise it is only a sad story about an old woman in a home, and she was never that.