橘香飘飘,情意切切.docVIP

橘香飘飘,情意切切 　　Death, and the notion of aging, has always hung over me like a heavy cloud. I have sought ways of avoiding the topic. But here I find myself visiting my mother, recently confined to a 1)home. All around me, I hear death 2)hissing through the 3)clang of 4)bedpans and squeals of wheelchairs, through the endless 5)drone of 6)catatonic dining companions. Amid the vacant eyes of childlike faces, the tired bodies 7)draped before the dinner trays, my mother sits facing me. She glances at the gift of oranges I have brought her and nods her approval. 　　 　　I have come 3,000 miles to be with her, but silence forms a wall between us now. 8)Advanced 9)Parkinson’s has already claimed her voice. Her legs, long withered,10)dangle uselessly. I wheel her into her small room, still 11)stupefied by the disease that chains us both to these white walls away from life. 　　 　　My mother’s eyes are luminous, glistened pearls. Once they flashed 12)indignantly at the thought of being in a nursing home, then accusingly, then 13)beseechingly. Now they simply look at me with 14)resignation. Sometimes they stare into a far off place. 　　 　　I watch her helplessly as the minutes tick by. My mind races to fill the space taken up by silence. I think: if only she had been diagnosed earlier, if only I were not so far away. Then hope, not guilt, would be a visitor. I remember the warmth of her back when she carried me, my small arms 15)wrapped around her like a shawl. How, when I was red with fever, she rocked my 16)blistered body until I fell asleep. The hot nights on the rooftops of Kowloon eating watermelon seeds and watching the 17)neon lights twinkling in the streets below. The first days in America when I clung to her like a shadow. The dark times, too, when I 18)cowered in a corner before her 19)wrath. These thoughts I hold onto like photographs in an album, stilled images of the mother I no longer have access to. 　　 　　She points a 20)gnarled finger at the orange I left on her