“We must do something with it,” Sarah, his partner, and I finally agreed. “At least for the family.”
We concurred that selling it to a publisher would be difficult. “Thank You For My Green Card” is the title of his immigrant story, one that has already been told in different ways at different times. A Swiss citizen’s story is not likely to resonate with the new generation of immigrants from Latin America and Asia. But, we agreed—the pages sang. I heard his voice, saw his colorful descriptions, shared his feelings. We began to edit.
Edgar wrote well, he was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, but his memoir revealed what both Sarah and I already knew: that he was a private man. No memoir appears complete for those who are close to the writer. Just as we cannot see ourselves accurately in the mirror, we cannot portray ourselves as others see us.
Sometimes we were tough on Edgar and excised an entire paragraph. It was redundant; it didn’t fit in. Other times we succumbed to his persuasiveness. I wasn’t upset by what he wrote about me, but I was upset by what he left out. When he described the aftermath of the automobile accident that instantly killed his wife, Louise, and almost took his own life, he mentioned his loyal visitors: Sargent Shriver, his Washington colleagues, his doctors and kind nurses, but not me. And not our mother, who kept a vigil by his bedside. Every week for the three months he was hospitalized, I had gotten a baby sitter for the day and taken the two-hour bus trip to Hanover to be with him. On the day of Louise’s funeral, I was not sure I should attend; he might die while I was away. But I should not feel hurt. It’s natural to take family for granted.
EDITING EDGAR’S MEMOIR, page by page, sentence by sentence, I wanted to get closer to him. I wanted to ask him again about my father. Edgar was four years older than me and had memories that I did not. When I asked him a year before he died what he could tell me about our father, his reply was the same as always: “I don’t remember.” He did remember, though; he had to. He was seven years old. But Edgar had sealed up those memories as if they might seep poisonous fumes. Was my father harsh, even abusive? Or was Edgar still angry with him because he felt abandoned by his suicide—a hurt that does not recede over time? It must have been too painful to expose the wound, but in protecting himself, he deprived me of memories. Or was he protecting me from seeing a portrait of my father that was ugly? I push that thought away.
How is it possible, at the age of eighty-one, to still mourn my father, to seek my brother’s memories? Two years after Edgar’s death, he is entering my thoughts even more often than he did during the first year. I miss him as a presence a phone call away, as an ever-faithful participant on the Jewish holidays, as a raconteur, as a confidant, as a significant, glamorous, and caring uncle to my children. I sense his presence and his absence deeply. I want him to know what I know. I still have the urge to share things with him, like the celebration of John’s ninetieth birthday, the election of Donald Trump, the defeat of Hillary Clinton. I turn around to tell him, and he’s not there. Mourning does not have an end point. I have not stopped grieving for the father I did not know, or for the brother I did know.
I know I should be satisfied with what Edgar gave me. I can still feel him covering my hand with his and squeezing it as we sit in the synagogue on our last Yom Kippur together. I can hear his voice as I move his words around. He is there, both when I wish he would go away and let Sarah and me do our work and when I want him there, right between us, telling us to do less talking and more editing, to get the book done so that his story will be told.
As Edgar got older, he lost many things: his glasses, his phone. He couldn’t find his address book so many times that when he called me, it often was because he had lost an address or a phone number and needed my help. But he always kept the same wallet. How do men manage to keep their wallets so thin, thin enough to slip into a back pocket or a vest pocket as easily as a cotton handkerchief?
When Edgar was moved to hospice in Tucson, the hospital nurse handed me his wallet. She had been keeping it in a locked cabinet while he was semiconscious in bed, oblivious to the need for identification. What do I do with it now that he’s dead? If I open it I feel like a thief. It is still his. I stealthily count the bills. There are no large ones. A mugger would be disappointed. There is just enough for some groceries and perhaps a bottle of wine.
I sniff the leather. It smells as if he has just breathed on it. It is satin smooth, rubbed and oiled by the play of his fingers. I open it and find one credit card. That was enough for him. He did not like to spend money. I can barely read the gray numbers on his social security card, and I wonder if he received it with his first job. Another card is from the Pima County Public Library, a recent red and yellow identity I had not known about. There are no photos. He didn’t carry the people he loved on his person. He must not have felt the need. Or possibly he did not want to be reminded of his lost loves: his first wife, or his second.
Edgar enters my mind and sits there, like he would sit on the patch of lawn overlooking the lake. He would let the newspaper find its own gravity, lean his head back, and let sun seep into each pore as if it were life-giving. His recklessness made me worry about skin cancer, but he ignored me. The delicious warmth was worth any risk.
He was right. Cancer was not the culprit. Neither was diabetes, which he had suffered from for some forty years. I would scold him—without effect—when he insisted on taking a second piece of pie or piled on another spoonful of whipped cream. He would smack his lips and smile and say, “I’ll just take more insulin.”
It’s hard to know precisely what caused his death. I think he decided to leave. The party was over. He was pleased with his life. The doctor diagnosed a mild case of pneumonia at the end. A CAT scan revealed a series of small strokes that enabled him to sleep much of the time in his last days. He welcomed the end and told us so. “This is a sanctified death,” he breathed. I nodded and kissed his forehead.
PLANETS
Seven new planets
circling a star
named Trappist-1,
forty light-years
from our earth.
Swirling globules
all in a row,
there may be water;
there may be life.
I am entranced,
curious like
a wide-eyed child:
another earth,
another life,
I will not know.
I will not live
long enough.
I will not know
my newborn granddaughter
when she falls in love.
14
My Fleeting Senses
I CONFESS I FEEL A SENSE OF SATISFACTION when I stand up quickly from the table without holding on to the arms of my chair, as I watch other Wake Robin residents do. The chairs have small, clever wheels that make the turn away from the table easier, even for me. I question whether I am guilty of arrogance when I stride out of the dining room without a cane, a walker, or a wheelchair, unlike my gravity-bound husband, whose walker (and now, a wheelchair) asks me to slowly navigate around chairs and tables and out the door.
John hates his wheelchair. He hates being confined to a seated position while everyone else is standing. He hates not being able to make eye contact, not being able to join the conversation without great effort, and he hates being dependent on me—dependent on everyone. He can’t move without me. Sometimes his trapped anger bursts out: “Damn, damn, damn!” So I time my pace to his. I am held back by an invisible sash at my waist. When I untie it, I flout my freedom like a puppy unleashed.
I can empathize with John. The signs are undeniable. Age is eroding my senses. Even when I wear my hearing aids, I don’t catch every word in a movie theatre or a crowded room. Neither can I always answer a question from the audience without asking the person to repeat themselves. The sound seems loud enough, but I miss clarity.
I say “pardon me” more often than I used to. I console myself by thinking of the “
Aging Tsunami” up ahead—and how they (whoever they may be) will soon create a more powerful hearing aid that catches every whisper. But it’s likely hearing loss runs in my family. My brother had it and would often lose his hearing aids. He would recall visiting my grandmother as a small boy and being forced to stand at her bedside and shout into her enormous hearing horn.
Occasionally I am tempted to tune out an entire conversation and retreat into my own little sound-sealed world. Hearing loss can lead to mistakes when guessing what the sound means; coming out with one false word can be either hysterical or cruelly embarrassing, but I am aware of the danger of that kind of self-imposed loneliness.
I have learned to say, “Can you repeat that, please?” and to avoid, as much as possible, noisy places. A quiet restaurant, at my age, is a good restaurant. No matter how many stars a restaurant has earned, what matters to me, in my eighties, is the noise level. I have a fantasy about opening a Quiet Restaurant. In my restaurant, there would be no music and the interior would be plush: heavy drapes, thick carpets, and a padded ceiling to smother the sound. My customers would be able to hear one another without having to shout or repeat themselves again and again. This dream restaurant would develop a reputation as a place where people share secrets without fear of being overheard at the next table. Gossip about the neighbors’ pending divorce, touch and go business deals, political forecasts, even personal confessions could be spilled out on the table. My Quiet Restaurant would show its age preference: more people over sixty-five would peruse the menus through their reading glasses than under. But I won’t worry, because in a few years those younger people will be lined up at the door, adjusting their own hearing aids.
Sometimes I can’t hear well because my hearing aides have been forgotten at home. My friends who are my age have endless stories to tell about losing things. We try to console one other: “Oh, that happens to me all the time.” Neither can I find my passport-size calendar that I keep in my purse, or my reading glasses. I sometimes miss an appointment because I can’t decipher my own handwriting. I know I should keep that information on my phone, but it’s too complicated and takes too much time.
I know that short-term memory loss is creeping up on me like a hungry vine. Last spring I had a new experience. I bought a pound of asparagus at the Farmer’s Market on a Saturday morning. By Sunday afternoon, I had lost my asparagus. I looked in all the obvious places: kitchen counters, every cupboard, the refrigerator—even on top of the refrigerator. I calmed myself. No one would steal a paper bag loaded with one pound of asparagus.
Three days later, I found my missing vegetables. They were still in the brown paper bag, the stalks now slightly shriveled, in my husband’s study beside his computer. They had been waiting patiently to be cooked. I questioned whether dementia was creeping up on me. I reassured myself again that losing a bunch of asparagus must be a once in a lifetime event. It wouldn’t happen again. But I search for my phone at least three times a day, sometimes more, sometimes less. I deliberately bought a bright red case so I’d see it when I left it on the couch, the coffee table, or in the dark depths of my handbag. And if I still can’t find it, I know enough to call myself so the phone will call me, and we’ll be reunited.
I always (almost always) keep my phone in the side pocket of my handbag. This location has many virtues: I can touch it when I’m driving. It’s easy to pull out of its hiding place, and it’s equally easy to return to its den. But, I confess, sometimes it’s the last place I remember to look. Sometimes my phone is coy and plays hide-and-seek under a newspaper, or even between its pages. Or it will sit quietly behind a pillow or slide into my coat pocket feigning sleep. If I were to add up the minutes I spend every day searching for it, I could finish a short novel.
NEW YEAR’S EVE AT WAKE ROBIN
The wheelchair danced in circles
to the rapid beat of the
Onion River Jazz Band.
She was young again,
unbound, free,
no longer pushing him,
but flying with him
on the dance floor.
He waved aside the
ribboned oxygen tube
streaming behind him.
I grasped John with both hands
And brought him to his feet,
placing the walker within reach.
He moved his head, and then his arms,
and then his feet to the music.
We danced, we sang,
with the walker between us,
and love inside us.
15
How Will I Die?
LIVING AT WAKE ROBIN, I have become familiar with different ways of dying. A long-stemmed red rose announces a death. It is placed on a small table with a photograph in the foyer where it can’t be missed. Residents stop and look and ask, “Who died?”
Dick Walters chose his own way to die. John and I visited him twenty-six hours before he was to take the drink that would kill him. He was watching television with the sound off. His wife, Ginny, sat beside him. They held hands like two teenagers. Was she, like him, ready to let go? They had done everything together, including lobbying for ten years for the passage of the Patient Choice and Control at the End of Life Act. They stood together next to the governor when he signed the act into law.
“Congratulations, Dick!” the crowd shouted in a chorus.
And now it was Dick’s time to die by the hand that he had scripted. Two o’clock the next day, he would be in his room, surrounded by his family. He did not look as if he was at death’s threshold. He was, by any measure, a happy man. He was ninety but could pass for seventy-five except for the oxygen tube plugged into his nose and curled down into his lap. Lung cancer was the culprit.
I observed Dick in his final hours. He behaved like a busy person in his office, answering his phone and responding to emails. I detected euphoria in his glittery eyes. He had determined that his time had come. It was a rude defeat for the devil. Dick would have the last word.
We had entered the apartment quietly. Dick gestured to us. “Come and sit down over here.”
Everybody brought a dish. It was Ginny who added, “Can I get you something to drink?”
Nuts were offered. It felt wrong to take a handful and chew in his presence. Dick and Ginny told us about the wonderful family dinner they had eaten the night before. He was thrilled that his two granddaughters had come. They said it was like a birthday party.
The phone rang as we were leaving and I could hear Dick laugh, a deep chest laugh that I could recognize anywhere. Would I ever have the courage to follow his example if I had a terminal illness? I don’t know.
My best friend, Nicky, had a different death. She died slowly at Wake Robin, so slowly that when I visited her in her last few months, I wished that she would have died sooner. It was difficult to understand her speech. There were moments of clarity when she knew who I was but then she would disappear into her cavern. She received kind physical care at Wake Robin but she was distraught—a butterfly caught in a net for months.
When Nicky was wheeled into the dining room I sat across from her. She wore a bib. I could not tell if she was hungry or not, but when I brought the spoon to her lips, she opened her red mouth like a little bird without a chirp. Despite knowing that food would prolong her life, my mouth opened when hers did. I believed food was good for her.
“Dear God,” I said to myself. “Let me die before this happens to me.”
Louise died as she wished. She was suffering from the ravages of a stroke. She stopped eating. Then she changed her mind and announced that she wanted to live a bit longer to find out what would happen to Senator Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary against Hillary Clinton. Louise had always been a progressive liberal, but with an overlay of class. She had lost a son in Vietnam, and that was how we met, at the Vietnam Memorial on Interstate 89. She had demonstrated against the war passionately. Then, when her husband was transferred with IBM to Vermont, she became a passionate ad
vocate for prison reform. The Sanders campaign dragged out longer than Louise’s desire to live. She could no longer find any joy in life.
“Louise is dying,” my friend Betty told me.
The straight, narrow fold in the bed was Louise. I bent down and spoke to her. “I’m here. This is Madeleine. You’re leaving. It’s okay. We love you,” and I let go of her hand.
She mouthed words back to me with surprising force. She wanted to talk. She may have made a last pitch for Bernie, for all I know. Contrary to what many might think, starvation at the end of life is not painful. She died three days later, in peace. Still, it is not easy.
How will I die? Will I be like Dick, Nicky, or Louise? Or will I be lucky enough to die like Marilyn, who turned around to go home as she was walking downtown with her husband. She had indigestion. She was sitting on the couch when she took her last breath. Gone. Ideal.
Lately, colon cancer has been ranking first in my list of anxieties, because I have irritable bowel syndrome. My large intestine has a mind of its own. It is often cross, and I suffer from abdominal cramps. I never paid attention to my colon until I got older; it functioned fine without me. Then, after a colonoscopy ten years ago, I was informed that I had a “redundant colon,” which means that it loops around twice and has to work twice as hard. That may be why it sputters and groans so much. On bad days, my worst fear is that a tumor may be snuggling inside the double coils and growing quietly. I think of my cousin, who almost died from an intestinal blockage and arrived at the hospital just in time for surgery. Or, I wonder, are my intestinal problems caused by stress? I know there is a brain-gut connection, but how do I control it? Lack of certainty opens the maw of worry wide.
Coming of Age Page 8