Dear C—,

Had you asked about her, I would have told you immediately, but it’s been nearly seven years now so I think I should tell you, anyway. Our mother is dead.

I was with her her last week, the first four days of which she was lucid. On the fifth day her focus turned inward, and even when I said her name, or mine, her eyes remained fixed on the wall. She blinked now and then. She was ready.

On the seventh day, I held her clawed hands and told her I loved her as her breathing slowed, then stopped. Her eyes were already closed. I don’t think she knew I was there.

We buried her in the family plot in F—. She has a small headstone with her initials and dates, 31 December, 1947–31 December, 2017, as she requested. I’ve planted narcissuses and tulips.

This might be all you want to know, and you can stop reading at this point if you like.

She’d been hospitalized a few times in her last years. Blood clots in her iliac- and left coronary artery, and a series of mild heart attacks. I’d flown over each time. She was prescribed blood thinners and other medicines. She felt fine. She still drove her car, a gold Camry, and while she backed and bumped into things now and then, she would not hear of selling it. It’s a good car!

Gradually, however, she began to lose her energy and appetite and became all but bedridden. She could move, she just didn’t want to. She began sleeping a lot and wearing diapers to prevent messes. She developed a fungus on her tongue. Her doctors couldn’t figure out what it was. For a while help came for meals and washing, but she did not like people fussing around in her apartment, she didn’t like the food they brought, and eventually chased everyone away or simply refused to buzz them in.

Her doctor found her a bed in Amandelhof, a nursing facility. On the phone Mam told me not to waste money on a plane ticket, to come when she wasn’t so tired, so I’d gladly stayed home. I was satisfied that at least she’d be taking her medicines properly; I’d learned from her doctor she often forgot.

She had been there for two months when her doctor advised me to come. I booked tickets for a ten day stay. I brought a birthday present—a bottle of maple syrup; you know she loved it—but permitted myself the unconscionable wish that she would nevertheless die in that time so I wouldn’t have to return. I took the train and the bus from Schiphol and was permitted into Amandelhof well outside of normal visiting hours. You’re R—’s daughter, said the receptionist. I can tell right away. (Only strangers say that. The more someone knows me, the less they see the resemblance. I wonder what you’ll think when you see me again; last time was sixteen years ago. Y— was three.)

Mam was in the last room down a long hall of closed doors. She was propped up on pillows, her bed tilted so she could see out the window. She was so thin I could barely tell her body from the folds in the blanket. A puff of colorless hair on her head. Mam?

When she saw me she reached her bony arms up to me from the depths of her bedding. Child, she said, her voice raspy. I braced myself, my hands in fists against the mattress in order to touch as little as possible, as she held me for a long kiss, her lips papery against my cheek, her breaths faint. You can sell my car, she whispered in my ear.

I began emptying her apartment as soon as I arrived that evening, dumping out drawers, emptying closets, tossing things into heaps. She had thrown away very little in her forty years there, and pretty soon I had to step on and over things to get from room to room. She’d kept all the evidence that we were once a happy family, our stuffed animals, textbooks, sporting medals, puzzles and games and such, as though someday we’d start over.

I didn’t want any of it, which made the process easier. Donate. Sell. Curb. But it was still a hellish task. All the appliances had to be removed. Fortunately, washers, stoves, and refrigerators were an easy sell for a few euros in an enormous apartment complex. Her big screen tv, stereo, speakers went quickly. Cameras. (I kept all the Super 8 reels; my husband wants to make them into a movie. I’m not so sure.) I peeled three layers of vinyl from the kitchen floor, and scraped away the glue. I arranged for two men with a big truck to collect some of her furniture, dishes, and clothes for a second-hand warehouse. You know it; we’d gotten things there in the past. It’s mostly junk, now.

But the biggest effort was the mountain of stuff I hauled down in elevator-sized loads and put on the curb. It grew higher and wider until it threatened to spill into the street. Someone said, You’ll get fined. My mother is dying, I said.

I called the ANWB road service and a nice man in blue overalls with the name tag Klaas came and jumpstarted her car. I asked him what it was worth and he shrugged. He said it was a fine enough car but it had a lot of cosmetic damage, noting every one of the panels and mirrors was dinged or scraped. It drove well, otherwise. I put a sign in the window.

In her lucid days, we went through Mam’s mobile and called everyone. She wanted me to snuggle next to her and I forced myself to do it for a minute, then I sat in the chair. I propped my elbow on her bed and held the phone to her ear because she could only hold it with two hands herself and would accidentally turn it off.

I’m dying! she rasped enthusiastically when someone picked up. If anything she was funny, but she wore out quickly and didn’t talk for hours anymore, or even minutes. Don’t be sad! Goodbye. Bye-bye!

Had she asked, we would have called you, too, but I wasn’t going to bring it up. I don’t think it was because she wasn’t thinking of you. She never stopped thinking about you. Perhaps after thirty years of silence she allowed herself the fantasy that, on her deathbed, you’d return her calls. She must have left thousands of messages over the years.

I know you’ve spent nearly half your life trying never to think, speak, or hear of her. But I don’t believe it works that way. It’s not that easy to forget the person who ruined your life.

By the end of the week, garbage trucks with tremendous steel jaws came and swallowed all her things in a series of terrifying cracks, bangs, and squeaks in a matter of minutes. I swept up the last of it with a broom. A man called about the car, offered half, and to his astonishment and delight I accepted. Mam would have been furious. He was a well-dressed man who winked and said I should improve my bargaining skills. I said my mother just died and I would have given it away, so the way I saw it, it was a win-win and he could have gotten a better deal if only he’d bargained.

He didn’t know what to say after that and drove off quickly.

You may have noticed that Mam died on her birthday. It’s no coincidence; she chose it. She thought it made a nice, round life. The doctors administered a sedative and Pancuronium; I think she was gone before that. It was peaceful.

C—, I have to tell you that for a long time I envied your distance, your capacity for it. At times, I despised you for leaving me alone with Mam. I don’t anymore. Since she died I’ve felt a lightness I remember from once when we were little, playing under Oma’s dining table. Only now I know how fragile that lightness is. And if I feel sad it is because I don’t feel sad at all. Perhaps someday you’ll feel the same.

Love,

Your sister