Iris’ meditation coach was teaching her how to take those negative thoughts, turn them into clouds, and let them float away. She did so with this memory, and for the rest of her run, delighted in being able to name singers of some of the lyrics she passed.
Day after day, Iris showed up at her mother’s bedside, listening to the doctor and nurses talk about her care, confiding in Mary about what to do if Virginia died that day, and helping to manage the family visitors.
Even in such a dire situation Virginia still had some anger to throw around.
“Take me out of here!” she seethed at Iris one afternoon. Her eyes could have burned holes in a blanket.
Iris listened to her inner self and let the anger drift away. “Mom, we cannot take you out of here. You need constant care.”
“If you don’t take me out of here immediately,” she hissed, “I will take you out of my will. Did you hear me? I will take you out of my will.”
Iris had a hard time holding back. What she wanted to say to her mother was “Well, bitch, I’m not in your fucking will.”
Instead she said without the slightest hint of mockery, “Mom, we’re working on it. We’ll try to get you out of here very soon.”
Virginia wasn’t eating, refused even water, and she was complaining how much her body hurt. Her eyes would suddenly open wide and she would call out to no one “It hurts so much.”
Day after day, Iris grew less angry with her mother and more aware that she was on a journey to the other side.
On day five, Virginia asked for a chocolate malt. Father Joe was summoned to pick one up at her favorite burger joint, Sandy’s. When he delivered it, Iris, Mary, and Vicki’s daughter Jessica were there. Virginia was very lively.
“I wondered if that Chinese doctor was young enough for me,” she said.
“Dr. Ng?” Joe asked. “He’s Vietnamese.”
“He’s a handsome one. I like his uniform.” She smiled.
“Mom, that’s his white coat. He’s a doctor.”
“Yes, I know,” she continued, “and do I have a new definition for white coat syndrome.”
The room erupted in laughter. Virginia was being bawdy again, even as she lay in critical condition.
She couldn’t drink the malt. She fell asleep.
Long after everyone left, the nurse’s aide asked Iris if she would help bathe Virginia. She brought sponges, warm soapy water, and a soothing after-shower powder. She lowered the shades, turned on the soft lights. They lifted Virginia gently to a sitting position in the bed, removed her hospital gown, and covered her with warm towels. “You take that side, and I’ll bathe this,” the young aide said. Virginia sighed.
Iris uncovered her mother’s right breast and saw how small and shriveled it was.
So this is the breast that couldn’t feed me, Iris thought sadly.
She saw the smooth, unblemished skin on Virginia’s back, noticed her long, slim neck, and her terribly bruised hands and arms from the intravenous needles. As Virginia breaths grew longer, she dipped the large sponge into soapy water and gently bathed her neck, under her arms, her back, her bottom, between her legs, those long and pretty legs, her feet, and noticed her recent pedicure.
When she softly towel dried her mother’s body she longed to hold her. To be still with her. To love her.
The only instance of being held by her mother that Iris remembered was when she was about four years old. The family was traveling in the old Ford “Woodie” station wagon, heading back to Austin from a visit at the O-Bar farm, VF driving. With five children at that time, there was no room for Iris in the car except on her mother’s lap. She cuddled into a ball in her mother’s arms, and felt her warmth for the two-hour trip. As she lay her head on her mother’s breast, she smelled baby powder mixed with a hint of Chanel No. 5. Dreamy.
Iris helped the nurse put a beautiful baby blue satin nightgown on Virginia that Mary bought to help her feel pretty.
The nurse took all the towels, sponges, and wash pan and tiptoed out.
As she stepped back and looked at her mother dozing quietly, a deep sense of love and forgiveness washed over Iris.
It could only be described as bliss. It was similar to an experience she once had as a Eucharistic minister. When she was handed the chalice, she felt an all-consuming warmth throughout her body, and a desire to fall on her knees. Was this rapture?
The next morning, Virginia, in a deep haze, told Iris and Mary about a bassinette.
“It was there,” she whispered in a raspy voice, pointing to the sky with her manicured finger, “a white basket-weave bassinette with light blue beads and a blue satin lining. It was there. They said the baby was gone. They can’t find the baby. I need to help them find the baby. I saw my mother.”
“Your mother?” Mary asked.
“Dan, Dan, Dan….” Virginia answered mysteriously, then she fell asleep.
Mary and Iris stared quizzically at each other.
“Who is Dan?” Mary asked.
“Beats me,” Iris said, “you think she said ‘Dad’?”
“No, you heard her. She said Dan.”
Mary plugged in a CD player for Virginia to listen to her treasured 1940’s hits, and put in her all time favorite CD of Bing Crosby. They hugged and Mary left for work.
Iris settled in for another long day of brushing her mother’s silver-streaked mane, listening to her breathing, and discussing her care with the doctor and nurses. They agreed to remove the IV from her hand, which had occluded. When the nurse gave her the five injections to reverse the damage, Virginia screamed feebly.
Her kidney function had returned to normal, and except for her fever, her lack of appetite and her congestive heart failure, she was doing well, the doctor said when he appeared later in the day.
Iris pulled a chair closer to Virginia, and sat at its edge, watching her mother sleeping and breathing heavily. She had brought along her favorite prayer book, and quietly read the scripture for Thursday:
May the God who gives us peace make you completely His, and keep your whole being, spirit, soul, and body free from all fault, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Every few minutes Virginia’s breathing stopped—as if she had apnea. Then it would continue. Her eyes were closed, her mouth wide open. Iris gently wiped her brow. She kissed her cheek. Not a single wrinkle, and no plastic surgery for this girl! There’s a testament to skin care compliments of Lancôme and her favorite facialist. Iris sat uncomfortably, not knowing what else to do. The music played softly in the background.
Iris thought about the dramatic scenes in movies where the offender and the offended have their come to Jesus moment. She wished Virginia could talk to her. There was so much she wanted to ask, and words she wanted to hear. She wanted more than anything for her mother just to say “I love you, Iris.”
Virginia’s breathing stopped. Abruptly. A hard stop.
Simultaneously, the music stopped.
All was still.
This is it?
Iris held her breath. Listened. Watched.
She saw her mother’s body lie quietly as a whirlwind of gauzy iridescence materialized above her, then hovered briefly and disappeared. Iris immediately felt she had witnessed a cellular transformation. She felt a lightness of being—as if being witness to this passing lifted her, too. She was not afraid. Not angry. She was in awe.
She stood up, put her ear to her mother’s chest, and then looked at the CD. It had stopped on the song, “It’s Been a Long, Long Time,” Virginia’s all-time favorite. She felt like she could hear her mom sing, “Kiss me once, kiss me twice, and kiss me once again…” How appropriate to die hearing her angel Bing Crosby.
Iris kissed her mother and calmly rang the nurses’ station. No one came, so she covered her mother and walked up to the desk.
“I believe my mother h
as died.”
The head nurse hurriedly followed Iris back to Virginia’s room, checked her vital signs, and nodded.
Iris phoned Mary, pulling her out of a meeting. Mary, who had Power of Attorney, called the funeral home. Everything else happened in quick succession. The doctor signed the death certificate, Mary arrived, the funeral home employees picked up the body, and family members were all alerted that Virginia died December 23, 2006.
Iris did not cry.
Chapter Eleven:
Oh Death! Where Art Thy Sting?
Christmas, 2006
Mary and Iris worked with the funeral home and with the pastor at the Dripping Springs Catholic Church close to the ranch to re-create the service that Virginia had arranged years before. The church allowed Father Joe to officiate. Virginia’s instructions included an open casket, no rosary, a church service but no communion, “nice” music, flowers, and burial next to VF in the family cemetery. Virginia had thought of almost everything, but the sisters felt it needed a little more panache.
“Should we entitle the program, ‘Oh Death, Where Art Thy Sting?” Iris asked Mary while meeting with the funeral director. Mom’s last words to me before I moved to New York. So cruel. She was ruminating more than proposing the title of her mother’s funeral program. She knew her mother didn’t get the words right. She just couldn’t help herself.
The director grabbed his King James Version bible and turned to the verse. “It’s here,” he said, “1 Corinthians 15:55-57 ‘O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?’”
Mary kiboshed that idea. “No, Iris. No.” Iris just couldn’t help it. She smiled, and then she suggested holy cards with St. Anthony’s image on them “because St. Anthony is the patron saint of loss.”
It was true that during their childhood Virginia made the magic of beseeching the saints to intercede for a special cause into a weekly ritual. She made all the children pray to St. Anthony when anything in the house was lost. Most of the time, the prayers were answered since all the family needed was a quiet minute or two to contemplate where the item was last seen.
There were more global requests. She told them to pray to St. Jude when she felt there was an impossible cause, like the Vietnam War. Vicki took up the practice with gusto and created a shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary in the girls dorm. A one foot statue of the Blessed Virgin held a jeweled miniature rosary in her hands, with smaller statues of St. Teresa of Avila, patron saint of headache suffers, and St. Joseph, patron saint of carpenters, at each side. Jillian was only six when she made the alcove part of their built-in bookshelves, and lined it with blue velvet.
The funeral was set for December 26, the day after Christmas. Both Iris and Mary hurriedly ran errands, chose stunning lingerie, a cerulean blue dress, wrote the obituary and designed the program. Virginia may have been a horrible mother most of the time, but they were going to have her dressed in style because they were not vindictive. That and she was going on a date with their dad.
Vicki asked to arrange the reception. Their families wondered if there would be a Christmas that year. Mary had two children in middle and high school, and Iris had grown, married sons and grandchildren. They told their families that Christmas would have to wait. Iris asked her kids and husband to come to Austin for the funeral, where they would celebrate Christmas.
Mary and Iris decided that Iris would give the eulogy. “Years ago, I so wanted to tell everyone what a horrible human being Mom was. I looked forward to that day. Now, I feel very different. It’s as if a great burden is gone—I think I understand some of what she went through with so many kids and having them one after another, with all the demands of raising hellions, and having such a complicated family herself. I just will never understand her cruelty, the over the top abuse she meted out. The rage. I’ll never get it. But perhaps the times in which they lived from the beginning set the stage for chaos in Mom and Dad’s lives.”
“Yeah… marrying Dad during the War” Mary offered.
“I can imaging that was frightening and exciting at the same time.”
* * *
On December 26, the church accommodated a small crowd to celebrate Virginia L. Landry’s life. Most of Virginia’s Wild Women friends were there. The last funeral Virginia had attended was her good friend Dottie, who had passed away several years before in an auto accident. Dottie was driving her brand new Mercedes when hit by a 19-year old whose car veered across the median at 90 mph. The teenager escaped with bruises.
One of Virginia’s favorite songs, Amazing Grace, opened the service. The organist was Virginia’s piano teacher. Mary read scripture and Father Joe led the singing of An Old Rugged Cross, something Virginia requested in her funeral arrangements. Finally, Iris approached the lectern, and looked out over the friends, family and neighbors who had gathered.
“Thank you for being here with us today and celebrating Mom’s life. I’m Iris Landry Cohen, number five of the Landry Tribe, and I had the privilege of being with Mom when she drew her last breath. I’m sure some of you are wondering if she passed with any last words or revelations. Frankly, I think she had said them months ago.
“That was when I got a call from her as I was walking home from work. No one was more surprised than I was to hear her voice because she NEVER called me. ‘Well, hello Iris? It’s your mom. You doing OK? What are you doing?’”
“Well Mom I’m walking home from work.”
“Where do you work?”
“I work in New York.”
“After the niceties of asking about my family, she went on to tell me what a magnificent sunset she was watching, and how colorful the wide, Texas sky was.”
“‘I’m looking out the back porch window now. Your dad would have loved to see this. I think I see a deer out there.’ She told me she really loved Dad and missed him terribly. I was speechless—you just had to know my mom—she was a tough cookie and she would never ever let anyone know she had such emotions.
“Mom’s greatest pride was her eight children. ‘My chickadees’ she used to call us. And we would call her ‘Mamasita.’ Our wake up call was ‘Good morning breakfast lovers, good morning to you!’ in an off-tune lilting voice, throwing open the bedroom door and sashaying into the room as if she was in a Broadway show.
“Her father was an engineer and she made the trains run on time in our family. She was master planner of our activities and our shuttle service—to music, dance, tennis, tumbling, etiquette lessons, cooking classes, Scouts, Y-Teens, and hair appointments.
“Because she had attended nursing school, she was very attentive to us when we were ill, making sure we had all the necessary comforts to bring us back to health, including her favorite, of course—ice cream. She made sure we had regular dental appointments, and would call Dr. Hunter to our home when a child had a raging fever.
“She spoke sign language. She learned it in order to communicate with the owners of the dry cleaners we frequented.
“She was mysterious. What was it with the violin she kept most of her life? She had played it as a child, but why had she given up playing it? She loved painting, but never took us to an art museum. She took up painting china, then watercolors, and oils—usually with like-minded gentlewomen, finally joining the Palette Club.
“Her favorite color was blue. Her favorite cookbook was that red plaid Betty Crocker cookbook, of course. Favorite food? Lobster, with Cheddar Bay Biscuits as a close 2nd. Favorite restaurant? Red Lobster. Just last week she told us her favorite movie was Cool Hand Luke. Her favorite ice cream flavor was vanilla and her favorite soda was root beer.
“I never saw her ride a horse, although she lived many years on a ranch. She was afraid of horses.
“Her genealogy as a descendant of Roger G. Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, gave her some claim to fame, but she never told us more about the Williams’ clan. The only thing she clung to from tha
t family was the enigmatic Williams family bible from 1891.
“Her life, it seems, was to create and celebrate the lives of her children.
“Although there were a LOT of birthdays to remember, Mom always made sure that birthdays were celebrated. That didn’t mean there were expensive presents, but it did mean cake and ice cream with candles and Happy Birthday sung out of key.
“Catholicism was an adopted religion for her, and although she preferred Baptist hymns, she made the best of the pageantry and ceremony of the Catholic Church. She made sure we had our prayer books, mantillas and our rosaries and that we attended Catholic school. And, I’m sure none of us can ever forget that she would have us pray to St. Anthony immediately when any of us lost something—miraculously, those prayers would be rewarded.
“She enjoyed tunes from the 1940’s and could sing every word of many of them.
“She was a nuanced person--Mom LOVED to laugh—sometimes so much so she had tears in her eyes, and us on the floor. She loved to joke—sometimes bawdy. When she was in the hospital recently, the handsome doctor asked her if there was anything he could do for her. ‘Hmmm….she paused, ‘maybe if you were a little younger.’
“Her flip side was that she believed in never sparing the rod. It would spoil the child.
“So she was a strong lady. And she had to be obeyed.
“By today’s standards it’s a miracle she lived to be 85. Exercise for her was going shopping. Sugar was a main staple of her diet. Despite the lack of diet and exercise, she rarely needed glasses, she could hear a person from 20 feet away, and she never had a broken bone until age 84 when she fell and broke her hip. She also had the best handwriting of all of us.
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