Can I get you anything?

In the summer of 2001, my mother, who had outlived my father by fifteen years at that point, was under hospice care in a convalescent home in Concord, CA. Her kidney function was at 10%, and she had extreme hypertension and what appeared to be chronic pneumonia. 

The prognosis would not have been good even if these were all being treated aggressively, but in fact, Lilyan had refused treatment. Since she was also experiencing increasing dementia, I had made sure to look her in the eye and ask her, "Ma, do you understand what all this means?"

She paused, then started to say that she'd been missing her mother more and more these past few months (her mother who had died when Lilyan was forty, more than forty years ago at that time); she then looked at me with a calm expression and stated, "I guess I won't be missing her much longer now."

So, she was mostly immobilized by pain and morphine, waiting for the lights to go out. But I still needed to visit every few days, if only to sit by her bed while she drifted in and out. In any case, between her cataracts and atomized attention span, she could no longer read or even watch TV, or conduct a meaningful conversation for that matter. But still, before I left each time, I would always ask, "Can I get you anything?"

I rarely got any answer beyond a weak shake of the head and a murmured, "no". But one June Saturday afternoon, she looked over at me when I asked that same question, and said, in a much clearer voice, "Yes. I would really love a vanilla milkshake".

 I was initially stunned, since I had long before given up any hope of an answer and had only been asking the question as another step in the visiting ritual. So, I responded, a little warily, "Really? A vanilla milkshake?" "Yes. That would be nice".

I drove back to Oakland, to the Claremont Diner, where my daughter and I had being going for milkshakes since she could balance on the stools at the counter; ordered a vanilla to go, and sped back to Concord.

My mother drank that shake with all the concentration and delight of a five-year-old.

Lilyan died about a month after that, deep in a morphine dream, but my grief was lightened by the fact that I had been able to grant her at least one last wish before the end. 

And it was all because I remembered to ask that question one more time.