My wife was able to visit Nana nearly every day, and I stopped by at night on my way home from work. Panting weakly most of the time, Nana had lapsed into an uneven delirium, in which she complained about the food and then said that she’d seen red roses growing out of the wall. If she wasn’t in bed, then I would find her in the dayroom, slumped over in her wheelchair, tied up in order that she not fall out, with a dozen other women, many with urine bags under their seats, all asleep or staring at the wall-mounted television. Her eyes would be half-open and she would slowly lift her head at my touch, the corner of her mouth caked with gummy white stuff.

Had we done this to Nana? Were we—was I—to blame for this suffering? I was not sure. Had she never moved from Los Angeles, Nana would still have suffered heart failure. But somehow this was no consolation. She was here, now, in human torment. I looked around. They all were in torment, strapped into their wheelchairs, being spoon-fed soft food by the attendants.

There was absolutely nothing noble or redeeming or virtuous about my visiting Nana. It changed nothing, except that I could tell myself and my wife that I had visited. I did not go with a glad heart. I often resented it, I sometimes resented Nana, I resented myself, and most of all I wanted it to end. I wanted my suffering to end. Perhaps in later years I would have undertaken this duty with more charity and perspective and patience. But that wasn’t the case then. I was tired, working all the time, fed up, sick of trudging from the subway each night. I wanted Nana to die, yes, I did.

Then came the last hospital stay, when the nursing home called an ambulance. My wife and I arrived at the hospital and I noted the lack of urgency in the manner of the nurses. They had seen this moment many, many times. My wife and I made the decisions, we signed the forms. Do not resuscitate, do not tube-feed.

Always we would remember the way Nana looked in the bed at the end, chin high, mouth open, eyes half-shut. Life leaving her. Her emaciated chest barely rising. Born in Shanghai in the nineteenth century, dying in Brooklyn 91 years later on a hot August afternoon, a mercy.

In the end, I consoled myself, all the parts of the deal were upheld, if imperfectly. Nana died with her great-granddaughter delivered into the world. And we had a big, warm house that was made, we realized now, for a family.

Copyright 2005 Colin Harrison. From the anthology I Married My Mother-in-Law, edited by Ilena Silverman, to be published by Riverhead Books in January.

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