I'll Be Seeing You

by Elizabeth Berg

  In the morning, I asked my mother if she would like me to bring her to her church or to the beautiful cathedral in St. Paul so that she might have some time alone. Or I would stay with her there, whatever she wanted. She said, “It may sound stupid, but you know what I would like to do? I would like to go alone to Rainbow, where we used to shop, because…” She began to cry, and finished, “I’ll see her in the aisles.” She stood there before me in her nightgown with the little red hearts, her hands clasped tightly together, and I said I understood completely why she would want to do that. We made an arrangement for her to call me when she was through. I dropped her off and went to the library to use their computers to catch up on email, and then I went to the large-print section to find something light and interesting for my mother to read. I told the librarian a little about the circumstances of my visit, and he very kindly let me check the book out on her card, and he made a note that it would be okay if it got returned late. There was a fireplace at the library, and patrons sat reading in front of it. I watched them for a while, and the sight was soothing; I hoped that after my mother moved, she might be able to take a bus here and sit before the fire herself. There was a coffee shop there and they had a lot of sweet rolls. The way my mother eats breakfast is to have coffee and a “goodie” first, the goodie being part of a sweet roll. Then, later, she’ll have her real breakfast. I bought my mom a gift card at the coffee shop so she could not only check out a book from the pretty expansive large-print section, but also have a cup of coffee and a goodie. I hoped this might bring her some comfort and provide her with something to look forward to in her new life at the facility. I couldn’t wait for her to get there. I was equating it with relief, with safety, with the opportunity for communion with others. But I also suspected that there was a mountain inside my mother’s chest, and that dealing with the weight of it would come first for a long time.

  My mother called from Rainbow just as she was ready to check out, and I drove back to the store and went inside to meet her there. She showed me the pinwheel cookies she was buying (my expensive cookies, she called them). After we checked out we went to the service desk to buy a betting card. My mother got one with two games on it, and she said the top game was for Tish and the bottom one was for her. Tish won nothing, but my mom won two dollars, so she went right back up to the desk to claim her fortune. And I thought, There you go.

  On Saturday, Patty called to say that the funeral would be on Tuesday, and I was alone in the kitchen when I took that call. I expressed my condolences to Patty and she thanked me. Then she said, “I just feel so sorry for your mom.” “I know,” I said. “How is she doing?” Patty asked, and I thought about how my mom had lost Tish and she was losing her husband in the cruel way of dementia and her one remaining sister was having a few problems with dementia, too, and she basically had not one of her peers for support. I put my forehead in my hand and started to cry and I said, “Oh, this is just unbearable,” and Patty said, “I know.” But even as I said it, I knew it wasn’t true. This wasn’t unbearable. And besides, my mother is strong. This is something I’ve come to see only recently. She is much stronger than I ever gave her credit for. She will get through this with courage and grace and faith and even with a sense of humor. It will just take time, and that time will pass, as it always does, wobbly day by wobbly day.

  On Sunday, I took my mother shopping for makeup and for a gift for my grandson’s upcoming birthday. Then my sister came over for a while, and we made to-scale paper cutouts of our parents’ furniture so that they could see how everything would fit on the floor plan they have of the apartment where they will be moving. Odd how much fun it was.

  On Monday, I took my parents back to the facility to take photos of the apartment. It was completely empty now, and they could inspect the place with leisure. One of the photos I took shows my mother looking out one of the windows of the living room and she is smiling; in fact, she appears to be almost delighted. She told me she liked how deep the windowsills were; she could keep plants there. She liked how much cupboard space she would have; she liked the fact that for the first time in her life, she would have a dishwasher.

  After we had finished taking photos, we sat for a while in the lobby and both my parents seemed content. I knew that coffee was always available in the dining room, so I asked my parents if they’d like a cup of coffee and they said why, yes, they would. So they drank coffee and spoke with a few of the residents, all of whom told my parents that they would love it there. “Their coffee is good, huh?” my father said, and my mother agreed that it was and so did I.

  After a while, I asked my parents to come and sit in the dining room. I wanted to show them the large fireplace, before which you could sit in Queen Anne chairs; I wanted to show them how you could sit at a table by the window to eat breakfast and watch the birds come to the feeders outside, just like they did at home; I wanted to show my mother the many empty planters stacked up outside, waiting to be filled when spring came. Just as we were getting up to go, a woman approached us and said, “Oh, are you leaving?” She had a cup of coffee in her hand; she had just gotten up from a nap and had come down to find someone to talk to. She was lovely. June was her name, such a good old-fashioned name, and I thought she might be a friend for my mother.

  It was a good visit; my parents both seemed pleased. When we got home, I called my sister and told her how well it had gone. Later that afternoon, I bought a huge box of See’s candy for the luncheon that was going to take place after the funeral; Aunt Tish had loved chocolate. My mother got a little box of chocolates to slip into the casket with her sister. She put it in a cellophane bag and added some other, loose candies and a note: To sustain you on your journey. She affixed multiple ribbons: the look was celebratory. She showed it to me and said, “Do you think that’s all right?” and I said yup, I did. Sure did.

  Monday night, my mother set her alarm so that she could wake up at six-thirty. She wanted time to get ready for the nine-thirty funeral, and I knew that part of getting ready included her desire to sit alone in the living room, in the yellow chair she always goes to when she wakes up in the night, or needs to put her feet up, or when she simply needs to close her eyes and tend to her own thoughts, her own needs. She doesn’t usually get to do this for too long; my father finds her, and often he asks, “Are you mad at me?” He thinks if she isn’t beside him, she’s mad at him. “He doesn’t understand,” my mother said, when she told me about this. I knew he didn’t. But we were both a little mad at him for not allowing my mother time alone. I thought, This is why I came here early, to shepherd my mother’s grief, to make sure she has time and space to cry or reflect or simply sit in silence. But it was proving harder to do than I thought.

  On the morning of the funeral, I came into the kitchen and found my mother standing there in her nightgown, looking distraught. “How are you?” I said softly, and she flung her arms up in the air, and with tears in her eyes she said, “Well, we’re not moving.” I asked her what she meant and she told me that once again my father had done a complete about-face. There was too much to move, it was too overwhelming. It could be too expensive. Let’s just think this over.

  “How do you feel?” I asked my mother. “Do you not want to go?”

  “I wanted to go,” she said, “but right now I just give up. Right now I’m just so confused.”

  “Okay,” I said. “If you want to go, you’ll go. You’re going to have to be the decision maker. He’s not able…It’s going to be up to you. But we don’t need to talk about it any more right now.”

  My mother told me my father was having a hard time dressing for the funeral. “His suits just hang on him,” she said. She and my sister have tried to take him shopping for a new suit, but he won’t go. “I told him just to wear a sweater,” she told him, and I said, “Sure, that’s fine, a sweater is fine.”

  My mother went to get dressed, and my father came into the kit
chen. He was wearing a white shirt and blue pants and suspenders, and thank goodness for those suspenders. He sat at the kitchen table with me and started in about how they weren’t moving. And I lost it. Between my teeth, I said, “Dad? I know this is hard, but we have talked about this and talked about this and it is just the best decision. You’ve said the sooner you get there, the better. You’ve said you know you have to go. Yesterday, you seemed to love the place.” He said something to the effect of this was their lives and they would make the decision. I leaned in closer to him and said, “You are only half of this relationship. Mom wants to go. I am not going to let you bully her out of her decision. And today is Tish’s funeral.”

  “Let’s not argue; let’s just eat our breakfast,” my father said, but I had no appetite, and I doubt he did either. But we ate our breakfast. Chew, chew, chew. No eye contact.

  The hour before the funeral mass was the visitation, which meant the open casket was stationed in the middle of the church. There Tish was, a rosary intertwined in her hands, her fingernails painted a rose-pink color, her make-up blessedly subtle. She was wearing a turquoise blouse that my mother said she bought one day when they were out shopping, but then it went on sale so she returned it and bought it again for the sale price.

  I looked at Tish’s familiar face and wept, and then I looked at some pictures of her that were stationed amid the flowers and I wept more, and then I started looking through the flowers to make sure the ones I’d ordered had been sent. This felt like a tacky thing to do but I thought maybe everyone did it. I didn’t like one of the bouquets I had ordered and I started to get mad, but then I realized that nothing they might have done would have been good enough.

  When Tish fell, I had sent cheerful yellow bouquets to both my aunt and my mother. With my aunt’s bouquet, I’d asked to have included a stuffed bear, and had also asked that the florist put something on the bear’s arm so it would look like it had a broken arm, too, what with the way that misery loves company. The florist had quite cleverly fashioned a sling and a cast out of blue ribbon and Patty told me Tish had really liked that bear, and she’d had it sitting on her couch. Patty brought it to the funeral and gave it to my mom, who held on to it tightly throughout the service. Once, I saw her stroking the bear’s arm with her finger, as though offering it comfort. Hush, little baby, don’t you cry.

  Patty gave a beautiful eulogy, and I have no idea how she did it. She stood up there and talked about how her mother’s name came from Tish’s mispronunciation of Patricia Frances: as a toddler, she called herself Tisha Pances. How she was raised as a child of the depression, how she came to marry Bob, how she was a peacemaker and wanted more than anything for her fiery, strong-willed children to get along, and how Patty hoped that in their mother’s memory, they would. I cried a lot, my mother cried a little, my father put his head down in sorrow.

  The lunch. The way my mother at first touched nothing on the plate I fixed for her, but then did. Cheesy scalloped potatoes were on the menu. They were delicious. The candy disappeared almost immediately so I made sure to grab three pieces for my mom and dad and…who? Tish, I suppose.

  After the funeral, we took a drive around St. Paul so that we could go past the condo where Tish lived. It is on Grand Street, a street full of restaurants and stores and life. We went past the cathedral that Tish used to walk to—it was pretty far from her place, and as she had grown older, she had taken to finding places to sit and rest along the way. We drove past Patty’s new place, which she had just signed the papers for on her mother’s last day on earth. One of the reasons she had moved there was to be close to her mother, whose condo was only a block away. Tish had told my mom that if she looked out a certain window, she could see Patty’s place. It was right there.

  After we got home, my mother seemed to come fully into her sorrow. As we all stood in the kitchen, she was asked a question and she just looked so bewildered, and then she got flustered and seemed like she was ready to cry. I took her into her bedroom and sat on the bed with her and let her talk. “She was the one I would bitch to,” my mother said. “And she would bitch to me.” After a while, we heard my father come to stand outside the door. He said, “What are you doing in there? Locking yourself in the bedroom?” “Yes,” we both said. Later, when we came out, my mother said, “I think I’ll have a cup of tea, would you like a cup of tea?” Yes, I said, I would.

  That night, my sister, my parents, and I went out for Mexican food. My mother, a famously poor drinker, one who gets loaded on half a glass of wine, ordered a strawberry margarita that came in a goblet big enough to float a boat. She lifted the glass and said, “To Patricia,” and we all toasted. We commented on the size of the drink, and my mother said she was going to have every bit of it. “Oh boy,” my father said. “Pretty soon you’ll be singing ‘You Are My Sunshine.’ ” This is something my mother has done in the past, sung when she’s a little tipsy; I suppose it’s her Irish blood. But she reminded my dad that she had one other song in her repertoire. She said, “I also do ‘It’s My Party,’ ” and here her face changed as she finished saying the title, “ ‘and I’ll Cry If I Want To.’ ” She did indeed drink the whole margarita. And then she ate all of her dinner. I couldn’t believe it.

  In the morning, I came downstairs and my mother was in her yellow chair. She hadn’t slept well; she had been sick in the night. I remembered that when her mother, my grandmother, lost her husband, she lay on the sofa and threw up into a plastic bucket, over and over. But my mother probably got sick from drinking, and I told her that’s what she got for being such a lush. She told me her ear was hurting, too, and I took a look and told her it was a little red and maybe it had gotten irritated from the way she slept on it? Probably, she said, and then she waved her hand and said, “It will go away,” which is what she says about any health problem that comes along. And usually, it does go away. Not her breast cancer. That didn’t go away. She had surgery for that, and I remember that when Tish came to see her she brushed my mother’s hair and asked if her doctor was good-looking.

  On the drive home from Minnesota, I was lost in sadness. Then my daughter Julie called, and even though you’re not supposed to drive and be on the phone, I held on to that phone like it was keeping me alive. We talked about where my grandchildren should go to nursery school for a long time, and at one point Julie apologized for talking about that in the wake of all that was going on with my parents. “No, no; it’s a relief to talk about this,” I told her. And it was. I thought about all those little beings in nursery school classrooms bright with artwork and full of things to learn. I thought about how they were so new in life that their eyes still shone like babies’ when they are born and they look up at you, trusting that all will be well.

  I got home in time to go to my writers’ group. It felt important to me to get back to normal as quickly as I could. It was a good session; I was glad to be in the company of those women and I was glad to take all they offered and I was glad to offer what I could to them. Being with them reminded me how I’d once heard a writer talking about meals in China, how there was always a sharing platter. On the walk home, I saw that the moon was not quite full, and that it seemed pale and insubstantial, as though it were the thinnest of wafers. But it stayed there, high up in the night sky; it followed me all the way home and it shone on after I closed my eyes and fell asleep in my own bed. My friend Marianne used to say that the best index to her mental health (after her complexion) was whether she knew what phase the moon was in. I saw what phase the moon was in, and I slept well.

  On Thursday, I talked on the phone to my parents and my sister and the woman at the facility where I hoped my parents would move. Then, on Friday, I decided I would take the day off from all of this. I got my car washed and went to the cleaners and the grocery store. After I got home, I made chili and goulash and cornbread, and I roasted vegetables in olive oil and herbs de Provence. I made croutons for salad
from a demi-baguette of Asiago bread. I made brownies from a recipe Julie sent me and they were the best brownies I’d ever tasted. I sent a lovely bouquet of flowers to a girlfriend for her birthday. I got some pink tulips and pussy willows and yellow mini-roses for myself.

  That evening, while Bill was out working, I sat before the television and ate goulash while I watched American Idol. The show is a little foolish but it’s fun. I like listening to people sing. I like the competitive nature of the show. I suppose it’s my football. Sometimes, in the shower, I pretend I’m singing to the judges. Dressed in Eileen Fisher and emphatically flat shoes. I sing standards like “It Had to Be You” and “You’re My Thrill,” and in my fantasy the judges are always amused and impressed, both.

  After I watched the show, I cleaned up the kitchen and thought, Okay, now I’m going up to read Cynthia Ozick and that will be a nice ending for my day off.

  But then I couldn’t stand it, and I called my parents, just to check in. My dad answered the phone and he sounded upset. “How are you?” I asked, and he said, “Not so good.” When I asked him why, he said he had fallen into the bathtub and banged his head. And then he couldn’t get out. “How did you get out?” I asked, envisioning the people who responded to the 911 call saying, Okay, Art, put your arms around my neck. But no. My eighty-eight-year-old mother got him out. When I talked to her, she said it had been pretty hard to tell him how to maneuver so that he could stand up again. I thought he’d been taking a shower, but she said no, he was just in the bathroom and he fell into the tub. “Good grief,” I said, and she said, “It’s always something. Tish and I kept saying, ‘This is the winter of our discontent.’ It sure is. And another major snowstorm is coming. Ah, me.”

  I asked if she wanted me to find out if she could move sooner than the fifteenth of March. No, she said. No, she needed to sort through some things. Mentally. She said she had called the movers who specialize in older people leaving houses they’ve been in for a long time. Gentle Transitions, they’re called. As if. And yet I’m glad that’s what they’re called. I do so hope they are gentle, that they see with seeing eyes and hear with hearing ears and feel the history in that little house on the corner as something they would touch only with gloves on.