HOPING NOT TO HAVE TO SLEEP NEXT TO MYSELF

Jim & Eva’s Sunday School Class Led By Gaetano Boccaccio, Eva’s Father

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Hoping Not to Have to Sleep Next to Myself

(This essay was just published by Otherwise Engaged An Literature & Arts Journal. Reprinted with permission.)

I watch a herd of disaffected teens ignore a traffic light near the high school. They slow-walk across the busy intersection. Some wear black hoodies, some wear camo hoodies, a few are bare headed in the drizzling rain. Most stare down at cellphones; all grimly cocooned in separate universes.

Later, on a city road, I watch two young teachers stop traffic, then ferry a flock of four-year-olds to safety. Wearing bright rain slickers, laden with backpacks covered with stickers, the children poke each other, giggle, laugh out loud. They wobble, they skip, they gallop, airborne with glee.

Finally, I arrive at Hospice House, a hundred-year-old, three-story Victorian home. I trudge up the winding staircase. My ninety-five-year-old mother is asleep, her expression placid. I choose to believe her mind is filled with moonbeams and music. In truth, though, when she’s awake, sometimes she believes she’s forty and late for work. She’s frantic because she can’t find her keys. No moonbeams. No music.

My mind flashes to some thirty years ago. Late at night, she and I are standing in the dark in the kitchen of our family home in Connecticut. My smart, vibrant, always impeccably dressed mother is about sixty. I am microwaving a cup of Sleepy Time tea. We stare at the bright numbers counting down on the microwave pane. My mother who is neither introspective nor philosophical, says to me, “With the tick of each second, I am that much closer to death.”

A few weeks ago, I’m trying to persuade my granddaughter (four) to stay in bed and go to sleep. She is a genius at stalling: One more book. A bowl of blueberries, please. A glass of water. One more trip to the potty. Her bottom itches. And finally, “Please…. I don’t want to sleep next to myself.”

I sigh.

My parents belonged to the same church when they were children. I have a picture of them together, one row apart, in a Sunday school class. She’s five and he’s nine.

My father died over seven years ago. Since right after his death and even now at Hospice House, my mother senses my father’s presence, snuggled next to her at night. Not only that, but in the morning, she reports hearing him in the next room, making coffee. I realize that the tender universe is making sure that my mother is not having to sleep next to herself.

On another day, a sunny one this time, I set up an iPad in front of my mother. She is a person who loves musicals. For years, she and my father watched many shows at the Schubert in New Haven. Today, I position an iPad on the bedside tray. I search for video clips from various productions, then settle on Oklahoma. She harmonizes with Gordon McRae: “Oh, what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day, I have a wonderful feeling, everything’s going my way…”

And at this exact moment, which is all we really have, all is well in the world.

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(Note: My mother, Eva Mazzotta, passed away on December 3, 2025.)

Interested in reading more essays? Check out:

*MONKEY BUSINESS

*MAISON MAGIQUE

*GANGSTER GRANNY

(Photo by Jen Fariello)Deborah Prum’s fiction has appeared in The Virginia Quarterly Review, Across the Margin, Streetlight and other outlets. Her essays air on NPR member stations and have appeared in The Washington Post, Ladies Home Journal and Southern Living, as well as many other places. Check out her WEBSITE. Check out her DEVELOPMENTAL EDITING SERVICES. Check out her PAINTINGS.

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