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Day 1: You’re at your job, and flying out to see your mom in San Antonio the next morning, something that you’re little nervous about. Not because it’s your mom and you have a complicated relationship with her, but because it’s flying during the day. You prefer red-eye flights because a few years ago, flying through the Rockies, you and an airplane full of strangers experienced the worst turbulence you ever had in your collective lives, and after that you refused to board a plane for a few years. You could only go as far as you could drive or take a train, so your traveling circle was pretty myopic. You eventually had to travel for work, so you went to a doctor, described your fear in tangible physiological terms, got prescribed what you now laughingly describe as horse tranquilizers. They were way too powerful for casual travel, so you’ve since downgraded to Xanax, which helps you sleep on red-eye flights, but again, this is different. This will be a daytime flight, you probably won’t be asleep. Ugh.

You haven’t seen your mom in a couple of years, because you are a Bad Son. She has a theory that you’ve secretly visited your dad in New Mexico since then, more times that you’ve seen her. You can’t tell if this theory is real or a joke. It was your mom’s birthday a few days before, and all she wants for her birthday is to take you out to a gay club the day you arrive. There’s nothing more unsettling and heartwarming than your 70-ish year old mom texting you “There’s a DJ! And no cover, and go go dancers!”

You’re still at work when you get the message: mom’s in the hospital. She’s been there since the day before. It’s pancreatitis, and she’ll have surgery the next day. She can’t talk on the phone since she’s silly with painkillers (you wonder vaguely if she feels any effect like you did on the horse tranquilizers).

They ask you to fax a copy of your Power Of Attorney document. This is the document that gives you the right to make decisions on her behalf in matters related to her health. Gives you the right to decline procedures, to pull strings, to pull plugs. It won’t come to that, but you marvel at the ceaseless march we’re all on. You wonder if someone will be faxing their Power Of Attorney for you someday.

You can tell you’re preoccupied with the news because you almost forget to pack your rubber horsehead mask that night.

Day 2: You take an Uber at 3 a.m. for a 5:00 flight. Your flight takes off just as your mom is going into surgery two time zones away. You land in San Antonio and your sister picks you up. You’re still Xanax-groggy but you get coffee, go to the hospital. You enter the room quietly, friends are there to see mom too. She’s out cold, but the surgery went well. She looks so small, so wan and flat in that hospital bed, under the fluorescent lights. She’s wearing compression cuffs on her legs, all sleek and neon-lined, that look like Tron props.

You hear about how her enzyme levels are off, and you lose the details, but now it’s a waiting game to make sure her levels get normal again. If they don’t then there’s a risk that the cells in her pancreas that are normally used to digest food, will start digesting the organ itself. You’re fascinated at this poetic idea, and it’s true: why aren’t we digesting ourselves all the time? We’re just meat, after all. What makes other meat different than us, how does our body even know to not eat itself, out of hunger, or (more likely) boredom?

Mom wakes up, smiles groggily, can chat for minutes at a time before sleeping again. Things are going to be okay.

Day 3: Or maybe they won’t. Overnight, her night shift nurse, capable and communicative, saw her in pain and distress, gave her a generous dose of painkillers. She doesn’t wake up almost the entire day. You and your sister keep watch over her, adjust her oxygen mask when it falls off, you rub her swollen hands to get the blood flowing elsewhere.

When you’re not at the hospital, you’re on a Tex-Mex food tour with your sister, and you’ve never eaten so much iceberg lettuce in your life. It’s all amazing food though, and more than once you find yourself getting the food sweats after a meal. You can’t help but chuckle every time you pass the barbecue place near the hospital with its slogan proudly emblazoned on the front wall: “You don’t need no teef to eat our beef.” It would make a good pickup line for a geriatric dating site.

Someone comes into the room. She’s slender, has curly hair, has a bible clutched to her chest. In a quiet voice she explains that she’s one of the hospital chaplains, is available for prayer or any other support if you wish it. You went to Catholic schools in your younger years, and while not traumatic, they weren’t fun either. You’re one of those people who says you’re “spiritual but not religious” (ugh). You and your sister thank her, decline her offer.

Day 4: When you’re not at the hospital, you drive around, but reluctantly. You’re in your mom’s car, naturally, since you’re staying at her place and she’s clearly not driving. But it still has The Plates on it. You’re not a fan of The Plates. These are the license plates that are on every car that mom has had in the past few years. They are simple, they have the number 18, and the words “Congressional Medal Of Honor” on them. Your mom has them because she was married to Richard Rocco for years before he passed away, and the plates were a subtle benefit of his receiving the Congressional Medal Of Honor for his heroic and selfless actions to save companions from a burning helicopter in wartime.

But the plates elicit reaction in the heavily-military San Antonio. People crane to see the hero who is driving, they nudge the person with them and point at the plates, they salute them. You sense their disappointment when they look over at a stoplight and see this person, this skinny guy who is clearly not a hero, driving the car. You drive around San Antonio in this car with the constant feeling of disappointing everyone. It’s like you’re with your mom after all.

She’s doing better on this day, waking up for long stretches, in a bit of pain but declining more pain medication in order to get up and running faster. You drive back from the hospital that night in better spirits, listen to mom’s preset radio station that plays easy listening, Mancini strings, and about 10 different versions of “You Belong To Me”. You absently notice that there’s a Christ The Redeemer church on almost every block in San Antonio.

Day 5: Mom’s awake and giving guilt! She’s so lively and back to normal and it’s a huge relief. She’s keeping her pancreas, which is now working fine, and won’t miss her gall bladder at all. It’s kind of like the gall bladder is a made-up organ to sell more greeting cards. You and her talk a bit about how good the timing of your trip was, about how David’s doing in New York. You talk about your brother a bit. Your sister is there in the room, and a friend shows up too.

Another chaplain comes in, a different one than before. She extends the same offer of prayer to your mom. It shouldn’t surprise you but it does anyway when she accepts eagerly. You realize as the chaplain takes her hand, closes her eyes in prayer, that she doesn’t know what’s wrong with mom, doesn’t need to. She just knows that your mom needs to have faith that she’ll continue to get better. She starts the Lord’s Prayer and everyone, even your sister and you, bow your heads, close your eyes. In the early morning light of the hospital room, you mutter the prayer you haven’t prayed in years like it was yesterday.

And as your flight back to Portland takes off, the chaplain’s words echo in your head. “Deliver us from evil…” Evil isn’t Satan, evil isn’t a demon with horns. Maybe evil is a broken heart, evil is a body that decides to fail us when we need it most.

In that case, deliver us indeed. Deliver us all.

I used to actually be a funny writer! Read about me turning the Age That Shall Not Be Named, and that time I went on a 30 Day Dating-App Cleanse. Let’s be horrible people together.