Dorothy West Goes Through a

¶ … Dorothy West goes through a major physical, emotional and spiritual change as her experience in the hospital reminds her of how her own mother died. The change occurs as a result of her being able to feel all of the emotions that she imagines her mother had felt when she came to the hospital as an inpatient for the first time. Dorothy is able to recreate her mother's emotions in herself because she is also in the hospital as inpatient for the first time.

Because her mother had died unexpectedly in the hospital after a supposedly routine surgery, Dorothy cannot help but wonder if the same thing is going to happen to her as she is being wheeled down the hallway and is introduced to her anesthetist. Dorothy is especially afraid of not coming out of the sleep that the anesthesia is going to induce because of her mother's experience.

While she is relieved after the surgery to find that "it had not been my bitter inheritance to suffer my mother's unrelenting sleep that propelled her hour by doomed hour toward the hell of dying for no reason that made sense," Dorothy still cannot help but experience her mother's suffering in her own mind. She even recalls an incident much earlier in her mother's life when her mother was only 18 years old.

She had forgotten about the story until this moment in the hospital meeting with the anesthetist, but now it was clear as day. Her mother had gone to the dentist to get a tooth pulled and when the dentist tried to awaken her from the anesthesia, she would not wake up. The dentist started to panic and even tried to slap her awake, but nothing was working.

Finally, she just woke up on her own and everything was fine, but the impact of the fact that she could have died right then and there never left her. And it never left her daughter either. It just stayed hidden in her mind until it was woken up by a similar experience. All of this is basically a metaphor for the author's own mental, physical and spiritual awakening.

She had lived much of her life in fear that the unexpected would swoop in and change her life just as it had when her mother died. But now that she is experiencing some of the same types of things that her mother went through, a change occurs within her that lets her see that living in fear is no way to live. Her mother had always had a great passion for life and she did not live in fear.

In fact, when she had to go to the dentist when she was 18 "she had no concern except the hope that it would cost no more than she had in her purse." It had not even occurred to her mother that she might be risking her life by getting anesthetized. She was only worried if she would be able to afford.