I sat quietly for a long time with my hands in my lap, staring at my house. And then the fireflies came out and I switched my attention to those magical bits of moving light, landing here, landing there, occasionally shooting up like elegant little flares, but never staying anywhere too long, lest they be captured and taken to somewhere they’d rather not be.
JULY 19, 2011
The state government does indeed close down, but Metro Mobility services remain. On my father’s first day of riding the bus to adult daycare (which, in the interest of dignity and machismo, we call “the VA center”) my mother reports that she gets him up early so that he has plenty of time to get ready. She makes him a breakfast of oatmeal and cinnamon toast. She tucks the money he needs for the ride out in one pocket, and the money he needs for the ride home in another. She writes his address and phone number on a piece of paper, which she puts in yet another pocket. She goes downstairs with him fifteen minutes early to wait for the bus. She sees that he is helped onto the bus and safely seated, and then she goes back upstairs to the apartment to call the center to make sure someone will watch for him and escort him in. Then she goes to the house to meet with another auctioneer, and this one she likes. He’s kind, he takes his time, and best of all, he makes sure she understands that her job in all this is to do nothing: he will set things up, sell them, and dispose of the things that don’t sell.
When my father returns from daycare, he is happy: he won two dollars at bingo. He liked the current events program. He liked the place.
The next time, he was not quite as enthusiastic about it; then, on the day before what was to be the third visit, he told my mother he didn’t think he’ll go. “Oh, yes you will,” she said, and he did. On that day, he fell asleep during the current events part, and he didn’t get to play Wheel of Fortune, because time ran out. But he had gone and he seemed to have accepted the fact that he would continue to go, in large part because he knew it would help my mother. He had fought in World War II, he had been in Korea, and now he had to do his hardest tour of duty yet. Last time I talked to him about how it went at the center, he said, “Pretty good!” and I was so happy. “Did they have some dancers there this time?” I asked, and he said, “Yeah, and they were good. It was five women and one man.”
“I’ll bet that guy’s happy!” I said, and my dad chuckled and said, “Guess so!” And then he said, “How are you doing?” and I told him and he listened carefully, because he is still my dad and he is still taking care of me.
A few days later, I have a conversation with my mother about her and my dad moving to a condo when their house sells. “We don’t want you to be miserable,” I say. “And if you’re not going to take advantage of any of the things offered here, why pay for them? We can move you to a ground-floor condo, where there’s a screened-in porch where you can have your container garden. Metro Mobility can come there to pick Dad up.”
My mother says no, she will stay where she is. She also says would like to try embroidery, and so I send her some skeins of floss and some needles and a hoop. I also send her some yarn and knitting needles, in case she would like to join the group of women who knit sweaters for charity every Friday. She has made a new friend named Betty who still drives, which is the high school equivalent of being head cheerleader and prom queen and president of the student body and highest-ranking member of the National Honor Society. My mother has also signed up to go to Byerly’s grocery store on the bus, and sometimes she sits at the kitchen table to play double solitaire with my dad. When I hear all this, Cat Stevens comes into my head: Morning has broken like the first morning.
JULY 23, 2011
I get a phone call from my friend Marianne this morning. Much of our conversation focuses, as it always does, on our parents and on our children. Marianne’s father died many years ago, and her mother, Fina, a fiery, hyperenergetic Italian, began to lose her marbles a few years ago.
Here is an example of the old Fina. Once when I was out in California, Marianne and I drove to Santa Rosa to visit her. When Marianne called to tell her we were coming, she said, “Now, don’t cook, Ma. We’re both on diets and we only want salad. Just make a salad.”
“Okay,” Fina said, and she did make a salad, as promised. She also made homemade focaccia, pizza, lasagna, a couple of pies, and biscotti. The woman lived alone and had a huge kitchen, and every cupboard was full to the bursting point. And if you went out to the garage, which was a big two-car garage, you’d find more cupboards all along the wall, also jammed full. She used to go for her swim early in the morning, then come home and make pizza and bring it over to the bocce court. She had theme parties at the drop of the hat, and the cuisine always matched the theme.
But then she began getting confused about how to take her pills and, soon, about lots of other things. It became dangerous. Marianne finally got her into an independent living place near her. It was murder getting her there; Fina didn’t want to leave her house, didn’t see why she couldn’t still climb her fig tree in order to trim the branches, or cook vats of red sauce, or drive all over tarnation. She is in Nebraska now, visiting her sisters, and Marianne is worried that they can’t take care of her. She says Fina is in constant motion, rummaging in her purse, cleaning the sink, wandering off to do this, or do that, and the aunts are compromised in their own ways. But she’ll be back in California in a couple of days, and then Marianne will be in charge of taking care of her again, which is a blessing and a burden.
Marianne says that when she goes over to her mom’s place to take her somewhere, Fina does her bee dance. “You know how bees do that dance?” Marianne says. “That’s what my mom is like. I’m trying to get her out the door and she says, ‘Wait, I gotta wee. Wait, I need my Kleenex. Wait, I need my cough drops. Where are my keys?” And sometimes Marianne gets really impatient, as anyone would. You want to be like Ignatius of Loyola, who said, “Teach us to give and not to count the cost,” but you end up more often like Bette Davis in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Recently, on a day when Marianne was trying to hustle her mother up, Fina began to cry—and this is a woman who never cries. “What’s wrong, Ma?” Marianne asked, and Fina said, “I don’t make you happy.”
“It broke my heart,” Marianne says. “She’s still so buoyant and positive and can-do. She’s actually fun to be around, unless you have anything else to do.”
She tells me about an eighty-five-year-old woman she knows who is getting a divorce from her ninety-six-year-old husband. She can’t take care of him anymore, and he won’t cooperate with anything she suggests. “She just wants to sit and read,” Marianne says. “She just wants some peace in her life.”
I think, That’s what my mother wants, too.
After a few more minutes of talking about how hard it is to manage oldsters, how draining it is to be the sandwich generation, I’ve suddenly had enough.
“What did you have for breakfast?” I ask Marianne.
“Blueberries and coffee,” she says.
“That’s it?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she says.
“Well, I’m going downstairs to make me some pancakes,” I say. And that’s what I do.
* * *
A phone call to my parents. I talk first to my father, who tells me about the doctors’ appointments both of them had, and about how the extremely hot weather there is moderated by the presence of so many trees around them. “The halls are warm, but the apartment is comfortable.” He tells me my mother has gone down for the mail, but she comes back as we’re talking, and he gives her the phone.
She tells me that the eye doctor wasn’t too optimistic about either of them, but she went to the on-site library and found a couple of large-print books. She tells me my father went to the ice-cream social without her, as she was somewhere else, and that they both went to the watermelon social. “I was the only one to put salt on mine,” she says, laughing. She tells me that on Friday sh
e will wait for the bus that will take my father to the VA center, and that then she will take the bus to Byerly’s supermarket. “I like Byerly’s,” she says. “They have the meatloaf mix that has the lamb in it. And they have veal roast, so I’m going to get some and make wiener schnitzel. And they are the only store that has spaetzle, so I’ll make that, too.”
“A German feast!” I say. “You should make apfelkuchen, too.”
“You know,” she says, “there’s a ninety-seven-year-old woman living here who’s from Germany, and she does all her own cooking from scratch. And her specialty is apfelkuchen!”
“Where’s she live?” I ask, and my mother says, “On five,” with a measure of…what? Pride? (Look where I live!) Comfort? (I can just go right up and ask for the recipe.) Contentment? (Don’t worry. Turns out I have all I need here.)
My mother says that for dinner tonight, she’s going to have some ham and dumpling soup that her grandson’s wife, Mandy, made, and some chocolate cake that she also made. And that tonight, since the Twins aren’t playing, she’ll give that embroidery a try.
JULY 27, 2011
I know, as anyone reading this knows, that at some point things will get worse for my parents. My father may need to move to an Alzheimer’s unit. My mother might. Either one of them could sicken or die at any moment. But whatever your age, you are picnicking with your back to a forest full of bears, and right now, I think my parents are as good as they can possibly be. My father is here, fairly alert and oriented. My mother is back to herself, grateful for the taste of watermelon on a sweltering summer day, deeply involved in baseball, talking about books, looking forward to starting a new hobby. She and my father seem easy with each other. I think they have gotten to the place of peace I wanted so much for both of them to find—and they have found it not apart from but with each other. I think they have moved back into a love they have shared for almost seventy years. And I think they have come to understand that when the sweet moments come now, they are sweeter than ever they were before, because there is not a chance in the world that they will be taken for granted.
They are resigned to the fact that the house will be sold, and when it is, I intend to go over and visit the new owners with beautiful gifts. One of those gifts, I hope, will be that my parents will come with me, and they will welcome the new people and share information about the best places to go in the neighborhood and in this way give them their blessing. I think it was Robert Frost who said that everything he had learned about life could be summed up in three words: it goes on.
JULY 28, 2011
I have a friend whose elderly mother lives with her and is driving her crazy. Her mother was once a talented artist, an intellectual with myriad interests. Now, my friend says, “she gets up in the morning and makes a cup of coffee and she’s so slow, doing it. I mean, I just watch her sometimes to see how she can possibly be so slow. Then she sits at the kitchen table and talks about what might be for lunch. I just can’t stand it! All she talks about is her cup of coffee in the morning and the weather and what her next meal will be. I really wonder…is there any meaning to the end of life?”
I suppose one way to answer that question is to think about how a baby’s meaning in life is a ray of sunshine, the color red, the nearness of his mother’s flesh. For a teenager, it is music, fitting in, hormone management. In midlife, meaning comes from focusing on our families, our jobs, our involvement with the world outside our kitchens. Which is to say that the meaning of life is ever-changing, even as we are. Who’s to say that the richest time of life might not be when a cup of morning coffee fills the world? If you found a holy man hidden away on a mountain who found fulfillment in such seemingly simple things, would you not admire him?
It is a very warm summer morning, and my parents are both alive and ambulatory. They are still capable of enjoying a slice of apple pie and of having a conversation. They are living together in what will probably be the last home they will ever share. Imagine them at the kitchen table. My mother will serve breakfast on the embroidered tablecloth. The day will pass. Laundry will be done, the mail will be gotten, the phone will be answered; people they pass in the hall will be acknowledged. Lunch and dinner will be eaten. Someone may drop by for a visit. In the evening, the television will be on and they will sit watching their shows. They will go to bed together—my father has never and will not now go to bed without my mother—and while the moon follows an ancient path across the night sky, they will lie next to each other with their eyes closed. In the morning, the first thing they see will be each other.
Epilogue
My dad died in the early-morning hours on December 26, 2012, after having enjoyed, to the extent that he was able, a Christmas gathering at his and my mom’s place. By then, he was using oxygen and a wheelchair or a walker. He slept in a hospital bed that had been set up in the TV room, and a caregiver came at night so that my mom could get some sleep. When he went to bed that night, after bidding farewell to his guests, he was joined for a while by his wife and her sister Lala, who sat on either side of him, each holding one of his hands. I came into the room at one point to see if they needed anything but then walked right out. It was too tender what was happening there; it was private.
On the night he died, the caregiver asked at one point if my dad was hungry. “I’m not,” he said, “but you go ahead and eat.” Then he made many suggestions as to what she might enjoy. Later, he asked the caregiver if she liked to fish, and he told her he had just had a lovely dream about fishing with his brother. Later still, he asked to go to the bathroom. The caregiver told him she would help him use the bedside commode, and my father said no, he wanted to go to the bathroom. He insisted upon it. Halfway there, using his walker, he turned to the caregiver, said, “I’m not going to make it,” and slipped to the floor and died.
My mom died March 15, 2015, in hospice, at the same place where her sister Lala died. I had flown home for the weekend to get a bigger suitcase and my computer so that I could work while my mom was sleeping. We all thought it was fine, because she was doing so well at that point that we had entertained taking her out of hospice. But she died rather suddenly when I was gone. She complained of pain in her midsection, took in a big breath and was gone. In her room were many flowers, her beloved books on tape, and photos, including one of her and my father on their wedding day. How young and strong and beautiful they were, she in her yellow dress and her brown velvet hat, my father in his Army uniform, too fierce to smile. My brother and sister were with our mom when she died, and Frank Sinatra was crooning softly in the background. (My father was always very jealous of Frank Sinatra, because my mom loved him so.)
The last words I said to my mom were, “I’ll miss you,” and she said, “I’ll miss you, too.”
I do miss her. I find, in fact, that I miss both my parents far more than I thought I would. It’s not in the acute way I did when they first died. Now it’s more of feeling like I’ve had a glimpse of something about them that escaped me when they were alive.
It might be a memory of something that really happened. For example, after my father died and we were helping my mother clean some things out of the apartment, I came across a flyswatter bedecked with plastic daisies. “Do you want this?” I asked, holding it up.
“Yes,” she said, and took it from me and lay it on the table with great care. “Your father made that for me in daycare.” She stood looking at it for a moment, then went on with sorting. I stood looking at it, and a thousand things occurred to me about the way that even in bitterness and confusion and anger, my parents’ love for each other endured. I saw that whenever I was looking at them, I was seeing only the tip of the iceberg. They belonged to each other more than they belonged to us. I had once asked my mother if she still had the letters my dad sent to her when he was in World War II, when he was in Korea. “No,” she said. “They’re gone.” But I think what she meant was that she could see the dr
ooling writer in me and those letters were none of my or anyone else’s business. And she was right.
Other times, I imagined something that nonetheless felt true. Not long after my mom died, I was in St. Paul, Minnesota, for a literary event. I was staying in a hotel where I could walk to Mickey’s Diner, a legendary place serving comfort food in a vintage train car twenty-four hours a day. I had always wanted to go, but never had. I ordered a platter that had pancakes, sausage, and eggs, and coffee. While I was listening with pleasure to the conversations around me, my father and mother moved to sit on the stools beside me, never mind that they were occupied by someone else; now they were doubly occupied. My father was in a nice short-sleeved sports shirt, orange sherbet in color. It was neatly pressed, as his shirts always were; I never saw that man dressed in anything that was not clean and pressed. The hankies he kept in his back pocket were spotless and folded just so. But there he was, his hands clasped loosely on the counter before him. My mother sat with her hands in her lap. “This is good,” I told my parents, referring to my oversized breakfast platter. “Yeah, it always was a good place,” my dad said. Then, looking at my mother, he said, “So?,” only he said it “Zo?,” making it sound a bit Deutsch. It was how he used to ask her if she was ready to go. My mother stood, and they disappeared.
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