What happened to my life? Is there no hope for me?

Mother and I were sitting side by side on the edge of her bed.
A standard hospital bed with sides that went up and down, and cranks to raise and lower the head or feet, as needed. The bed was in her sunny bedroom in an elegant apartment in the building in which Jesse and I had previously lived for three years. She had been there with me and a caregiver of ultimate worth for several months. We would live together for five more years.

There was a long pause after she managed to articulate those two questions. That she could speak them must have taken superhuman concentration and desire on her part as she had not uttered a complete sentence since becoming ill. The pause was my time to try to compose answers to these profound and seemingly unanswerable questions. Answers that she could possibly understand despite her greatly diminished mental state. Answers that I could utter without choking, gagging or breaking down in any way. Words that would ring true and not frighten her any more than she already was.

I took her hand. “Mom. You’ve been sick. And now you’re here with me and Hannah and we are going to do the best we can to take care of you.”

She did not reply, so I will never know if she understood my answer to her first question. I answered her second question:

“Yes, Mom. There is always hope.”

In these days of dark trial, I think my second response might have been a lie. Or at the least, a hollow truth. I do not know if she understood. Or if I did when I said them. Or now.

To paraphrase and coalesce Barack Obama and Alice Walker, it now does
seem to be true that hard times require the audacity of hope as well as furious dancing.