Choking

I know how mom started choking.

First it was words. Stuck in her throat, sometimes even down in her chest. Other times right between the teeth she was grinding under the immense pressure of her jaw. One day it was a piece of meat. That’s when we found out that she was really choking, as she tried, in vain, to dislocate the morsel from her throat with the rear end of the fork she used at the dinner table. It wasn’t clear, at first, whether the drops of blood in the tub were hers or the lamb’s.

Rushed to the hospital by the very person who caused her spasming throat, she was saved by a surgeon on night duty. The other occasions when she choked on a breadcrumb, a slice of watermelon, the fuzzy peel of a peach or the bit of lentil that escaped the blades of a blender weren’t worthy of a hospital visit.

It all came to me recently when I started feeling the gentle tightening of words unspoken around my neck. A metaphorical morsel dislodged itself from the confines of my chest. I didn’t want to choke on my food as she had. I like eating too much to allow that.