Comfort Measures Only
– Nonfiction by Deb Blenkhorn –
Second Place in the 2024 Dreamers Micro Nonfiction Contest and featured in issue 17 of Dreamers Magazine

Postponing the inevitable moment of entering the hospital room, I go in search of the woman that the reception desk tells me is my mother’s new nurse: the name is unfamiliar to me, nothing I am confident I could pronounce, so I simply look, as directed, for the one in pink floral scrubs.
Those first couple of weeks when my mother was in hospital, I expended considerable time and energy convincing social workers and medical staff not to return her home to me, but to place her instead in a care facility. At one point, the social worker said, “We can’t go ahead and make arrangements for your mother’s long term care until her condition stabilizes–it wouldn’t be fair to her.” Who cares what’s fair? I thought: I just can’t take care of her anymore. It’s not possible. So much baggage, so much bitterness. We were never close. Were we? She never offered me much comfort in my troubled youth, and I have none for her now.
Maybe it’s time to let go.
And now she’s dying. And she wants to: she’s tried to tear out her feeding tube three times, apparently. Although not since the nurse in pink scrubs was assigned to her case.
I find the nurse: she is standing in the hallway chatting with another staff member, telling a story that includes wild hand gestures, and she catches my eye with a merry wink. Soon I have her undivided attention, and I look apprehensively into her sparkling eyes, which meet my tentative gaze.
“Your name?” she barks, pleasantly enough.
I tell her.
“Well!” she exclaims. “Mother is quite low. Not much change from yesterday. But you will see.”
The nurse shepherds me into the room, where, to my amazement, she cheerfully announces my arrival to my mother, prone but bright-eyed, propped up on her pillows; the doctor has told me over the phone that mom is virtually paralyzed and pretty much non-responsive, “comfort measures only,” but this nurse apparently did not get the memo. Her tone brooks no denial.
“Look! Look! Who is this? Who has come to visit you? Look! MOMMA! Wave to your daughter! That’s right, wave!” (My mother waves). “And a smile!” (My mother dutifully smiles). The nurse turns to me apologetically: “Not much, I know. But we make a start.”
At that moment, so distinctly that I can almost hear it, something
inside me snaps. I let go of letting go.
It’s not about comfort. It’s something much harder. But maybe not impossible.
“Hang in there, Mom!” I whisper fiercely.
And, somehow, she does.

About the Author – Deb Blenkhorn
Deb Blenkhorn’s storytelling life began around beach bonfires, in New Brunswick, Ontario, and BC. Her stories have appeared in literary magazines including Blank Spaces and Queen’s Feminist Review as well as in the Howe Sound regional collection, This Island, We Celebrate. She contributed several entries to the Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada (U of T Press), and her book reviews have appeared in Canadian Literature Quarterly. Check out here website here.
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