MOVE OVER DANTE

I took a journey through Heaven and Hell.

I visited Mom in her unit of the MICU, (Medical Intensive Care Unit) around lunchtime and had an experience. Feeling better she was getting to be her stubborn self once again and I was paying for it.

The dietician deposited mom’s lunch tray and fled the scene, leaving me holding the bag as they say.

Mom fiddles with her dentures while I lift the cover off her lunch tray, revealing the mystery meat of the day. “Wait for me to get my dentures in place first.”

I lift the cover to her plate finally, and start to cut up her chicken, and potatoes. Mom can’t see well, so she is guessing what is coming. I slip the fork under some peas.

“Peas!  I don’t like peas.”

“Ma, you know why you are getting these peas?’

She doesn’t answer me. “Because as a little boy, you made me eat all the peas in the stew, and I hated the stew, and the peas. Besides, if you don’t eat all your peas, you won’t get the vanilla ice cream!”

“Ice cream?”

“Yup, ice cream.”

I scoop some more peas and bring them to her mouth.

Squinting her eyes and moving her head left to right she says: “NO!” If ‘no’ can be said any more emphatically, I’ve never heard it.

I open up the cup of vanilla ice cream and start the process of feeding Mom.

“Ummm, like Heaven!”

“I don’t know Ma, you shouldn’t be getting this, I had to eat my peas when I was little.”

“So did I!” That ended that part of my fun for the day.

Every time I fed her ice cream: “Ummm, like Heaven!” or “Oh! So good!”

I pause momentarily, and she looks at me like: 'What are you waiting for, move that spoon boy!'

I finally come down to the last spoon full of Mamma’s goodness, and she signs off with another: “Ummm, like Heaven.”

“Well Ma, back to purgatory like the rest of us, you are out of ice cream.”