After Three Years at Her Mother's Bedside, Someone Cared for Her

My name is Ci Ye (alias). My mother has been bedridden for three years, and I am the family's only full-time carer: turning her, feeding her, washing her, up three or four times a night. My waist and shoulders hurt so constantly that the pain has become background. I always believed I had no right to rest — my mother has no right to rest, so what right have I? It was my younger sister who submitted the application for me. Places are limited and applications are reviewed; she nagged me for days before I confirmed, during one of my mother's naps. When the approval came and the address was sent to my phone alone, I stared at it a long time, thinking: just this once. Just so I can care for her longer.

The first time, I could not settle — phone at my side, glancing at it every few minutes. But the ritual at the door held me first: slippers set at my feet, my flat shoes with their worn-down heels taken softly away, warm tea placed in my hands. I changed without doing a thing myself — I, who have served everyone else for three years, stood there being dressed in a robe by gentle hands and did not know where to put my own hands. The bath was attended throughout; the warm water rose over my shoulders, my hair was gathered aside for me, and in that instant my nose stung. Three years. It was the first time anyone had done that for me.

I put the phone on silent, within reach. Warmth settled first at the back of my neck, and then the warm, silky Nuru liquid covered my thin shoulder blades — and that was when I broke. I cried with restraint, shoulders shaking in small movements. In three years, everyone asks how my mother is. Nobody asks whether I am tired. I had nearly forgotten myself that I am a person who can be tired, who can hurt. The warmth and glide travelled down my spine, to my waist, to arms bent over a bed a thousand times, to the soles of my feet; the rhythm was steady as a tide. I slept, briefly and rarely, and woke saying: so this is what being cared for feels like. From scalp to toes I had been cherished slowly, whole — no part of me skipped for being unimportant.

At first I declined the final passage, the Yoni private care — not from fear, but because I felt I did not deserve it. Yet the longing in me would not lie: I wanted, once, to be tended gently and patiently as a woman, not as a pair of hands. I set my terms first: stoppable at any moment, and if we stop, no persuading me. The answer was soft. As the warmth approached slowly, my tears came again — not from grievance this time, but from a loosening: heaven did not fall, and nothing went wrong at home, because I gave myself away for a little while. In those few minutes I set down three years of holding-on, handful by handful.

People who care for the sick carry a smell on them — disinfectant and ointment compounded over three years, until even my own nose stopped noticing it. That evening's scent carried me somewhere far older: light, warm, like the quilts my mother used to sun on the line when she was still well and I was still small. Lying in that scent, a tiny picture surfaced — my mother, young, tucking the corner of my blanket in for me, her hand warm, her movements exactly this slow. That is when the tears came. What I have spent three years trying to hold on to is not only my mother. It is also the girl who was tucked in, who was allowed to be in charge of nothing. Everything that evening was slow to the point of luxury: tea first cooled to a drinkable warmth, a towel exchanged the instant it cooled, even the blanket my sleeping feet had kicked loose — back in its place when I woke. To be remembered in details like that, by someone whose whole work is remembering you: I, who have remembered everyone else for three years, felt my nose sting again and again.

Nobody hurried me at the end; a hot towel over my hands, warm water finished, and only then did I sit up slowly. I booked the next visit before I left. Looking after myself is not selfish — it is how I will be able to care for my mother for longer. I asked about the travelling ritual, too: if my mother ever stays overnight in San Diego for a follow-up, I want this same care booked into the hotel room beside the ward, so that on the night I keep watch at her bedside, someone keeps a little watch over me.

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