Baptizing the Toothpaste Cap

All I knew was that I couldn’t just sit in a hospital waiting room and chitchat while mama was trying to die. Everybody else seemed content to do just that. I excused myself with having to pick my kids up from school and running some errands, with a promise that I would be back as soon as I could. I felt like I was moving in a dream. Nothing was real. I could probably have walked through the hospital walls to get to my car, but I remained calm and took the long corridor. What errands did I have to run? I couldn’t remember. I needed to brush my teeth. Would that count? I would make it count. I brushed the normal five times around my mouth, then the roof of my mouth, then my tongue. I rinsed and gargled twice, rinsing my toothbrush each time. Then I reached for the toothpaste and noticed the cap had toothpaste in it. How did that happen? Maybe one of the kids had used my toothpaste. I could not go on this way. Tears began to fall into the sink. I didn’t dare look up. This needed immediate attention. I could no longer ignore it. I ran hot water mixed with tears into the cap, using the tip of my toothbrush to gently, but firmly, clean out all that did not belong. When I finished, it was the whitest toothpaste cap I had ever seen. I gently screwed it into place and cleaned my face. I felt a sense of control. I was going to be okay. Then the phone rang.
They were saying I needed to hurry up and get back to the hospital. I drove. I parked. I used the corridors again. This time they were all congregated in a patient room just across from mama’s room. I stood by the door so I could breathe. The doctor stepped just in front of me staying close to the door. I guess he needed breathing room, too. Surprisingly, to me, his voice faltered as he announced she had moments to live.
“Immediate family members should go on in now. Everybody else can wait here.”
We walked single file into the ICU room. The machine was breathing. Her eyes were closed. Some say she was already gone at this point, but the heart monitor was still bleeping. There were enough of us to encircle her bed completely. I ended up directly in front of her at the bottom of the bed.
My daddy was on her left side. He made eye contact with my brother-in-law directly across the bed and nodded his head just like he did when giving someone the go ahead to bless the food at a meal. Vince began to pray. There were murmurs of other prayers. I could not close my eyes. She was choking. You could hear the gurgling. She was going to drown right in front of us! They were praying as if they were trying to save her from death. There was no stopping it. Her legs began to jerk. I looked up and saw my mama running through a meadow filled with wild flowers about ankle high. She was laughing! She was running toward something or someone, and she was happy! She was running! I couldn’t ever remember my mama being this way. Tears were rolling down my cheeks, but I was smiling. The voices had stopped. It was over. This life that she had had with us was no more. That was our sorrow to bear, but she was in a new life now. It seemed to be better than this one could ever have been.