Honestly, there was nothing to see — just two women, mother-daughter-friends on a mid-summer day, tangled hands on summerhouse cushions, pinked apple blossoms drifting — I must have been dreaming of the sweet ripe apples coming later this summer, something to look forward to because so far this spring there were mostly hard days but not impossible days mind you, so we were talking together looking forward to the fruit, was any of it important or memorable or regrettable? No, just our new normal (we were lucky this day, a few small laughs, the smell of mowed land) nothing that told me to run for the phone or add a blanket so you can see why, when my mother looked up, raised a shaky finger, bangles sliding down her fatless arm, pointed behind me and whispered in a small exhale
say hi to the rat in the hat
why I just frowned, turned away from her, a little confused, searched the fields around us, only saw a raven circling above, a cow bent to the field, the new yellow roses trimming the house and then missed it — the infinitesimal moment it took for her to slip through the space between morphine and dying, taking her blue eyes and frail body and that damn fancy rat, only twenty-five years together then leaving me standing alone over her upturned face dusted with petals.
Alexandra Dane writes what lies deep in the marrow of our bones: life, disease, memory and hope — always hope. Winner of the Annie Dillard Creative Nonfiction award from The Bellingham Review in 2023, Alexandra Dane is also published in River Teeth, San Fedele Press’s American Writers Review and Two Hawks Quarterly among others. Her manuscript-in-progress explores coming of age, twice, at the mercy of cancer; once as a young caregiver for her mother and then as a patient herself. She explores the tiny big things that happen at www.alexandradanewrites.com. A mother of three, Alexandra Dane writes by the sea and when stuck, makes cake.