I honestly don’t think a lot of people can say that they have been to most of the hospitals in Manhattan. But I can. It’s not like its an accomplishment or anything, it’s just something that I can say. I don’t even remember some of the hospitals I’ve been to because I was really young when my mother was first diagnosed with breast cancer. But through the years, I’ve gathered memories of all of them. They all sort of blend in to one big sad dreary building. Except for Beth Israel Medical Center, where my mom spent her last weeks before she passed away in November of 2011.

There’s a special unit in Beth Israel where they take intensive care patients if you pay just a little extra money. It has a sitting area, computers, and rooms spread all around. My mom stayed in three out of the nine rooms there. The first room she stayed in was when she broke her leg when I was 8 years old. We didn’t know it at the time while she was staying there, but the reason her leg had snapped in the first place was because her cancer had spread to the bone and broke it. The second room was close to the end of her life when she had been throwing up blood and my dad thought it was time to take her to the hospital. She only stayed one night in that room, but I still remember it. The last room, was the room she passed away in. She stayed there for two weeks. And during those two weeks she slipped away more and more everyday.

Before my mom died, I was able to spend a full day with her. I missed school and I got there early in the morning and stayed there late into the night. We had breakfast together. She sat up in the hospital bed and I sat next to her in a big chair. We ate oatmeal. Then she took a nap and I went out into the sitting area and played on the computer. Throughout the day, my mom had visitors. My friend Naomi’s parents came that day to spend some time with her and I think in a way, they were saying goodbye. Before they left, they gave me big hugs and told me everything was going to be okay. At the time, I just didn’t realize how intense this situation really was. For me, my mom was just in another hospital again, and she was getting out soon. But in the back of my mind, I knew that wasn’t the truth.

We then had lunch together. My mom was a choreographer and she will always stay in my head as the healthiest person I will ever know. Even in her last weeks of being alive she stayed healthy. For lunch that day she had vegetable soup. I had a burger. We were eating in silence, not really saying anything to each other when suddenly she said to me, “Ava! Stop chewing with your mouth open. I swear to god it is just ridiculous.” And then she continued to open and close her mouth aggressively making fun of me. I admit that I don’t have the best manners, but that day I wasn’t chewing loudly at all. It was the first time I realized that she might have been starting to lose herself and her mind.

In the afternoon my mom was taken down in a gurney to get fluid drained out of her lungs. I came with her. While we were going down in the elevator, we all stood there in silence. My mom, me, two nurses just standing there in a big elevator exchanging awkward glances. I thought about how I should have brought my phone. The elevator stopped and the nurses rolled my mother into this room where other patients were waiting to have some type of procedure done to them as well. It reminded me of an emergency room. After ten minutes, they took my mother into a small cramped room and they didn’t reappear until an hour later. The door opened and the nurses and I started to walk back towards the elevator to take my mom back to her room upstairs. Suddenly my mom made us stop and screamed, “Wait!! My daughter - she left a red bag in the room. Ava, you have to go get it, get your bag, you can’t just leave things down here.” I’ve never owned a red bag in my life. But I said okay and I went back into the room and saw no red bag. I came back and told her that I got it. We went upstairs.

Later that night, my dad came for dinner. If it wasn’t for me, he probably would have been there the entire day but he let my mother and me have some alone time. We all had a nice family dinner and watched a movie in silence. I then went out back onto the computer. A half hour later, I saw nurses and doctors running towards the direction of my mother’s room. I didn’t really know what to think so I just followed them to see where they were going. I looked into our room, and I saw my mom’s naked body turned away from me sitting up. My dad came outside and let me know that she had had a bowel movement and blood was all over the floor. She really had lost control of her entire body. I felt numb. I had seen my mother in horrible conditions before, but never like this. All I said to him was, “Okay.” And I went back onto the computer. An hour later, everything was cleaned up and my dad walked me to get a cab to take me home. My grandma was waiting for me there. I didn’t say goodbye to my mom that night, I didn’t want her to know I saw her like that. She would have gotten upset. One thing my mom never wanted was for me to think she was weak.

Five days later, on November 19th, my mom passed away. After she was a choreographer, she became a writer and for 5 years she was working on a book about her life. She never finished it. But recently, my dad took what she had of her most recent drafts and put them together into a book. He only got a few copies printed and bound. I’ve been reading it.

Last night, I took the subway home from Brooklyn. It was late so hardly anyone was on the train. While I was reading my mom’s memoir, I felt like she was right next to me. For a second, I didn’t feel alone on the F train at 11 pm at night. I was reminded of how I felt on that last full day I spent with her. She wasn’t fully there, but she was next to me.