by Jo Owens
I know the girls worried about Alice walking again (or rather, falling again), but somehow her latest tumble seems to have changed her permanently. She sits in the wheelchair, picking at threads in her sweater. Twice a week, the activity aides belt her into the upright walker and take her for a turn, one person at her side and another following with the empty wheelchair right behind her, as they used to do for Mary. Hearty Josie comes and takes her mother out, wrapping her in a huge cape, swaddling her with scarves and jamming a thick woollen hat with knitted posies on the brim securely over her ears. Tucked in with lap blankets, Alice looks like a pile of bedding bound for the laundromat. Hello, Lady Oak Bay, I think unkindly, with a grin. Sometimes Josie brings ice cream and spoons it into Alice’s mouth while Alice smacks her lips.
“It’s a far cry from gin and tonic and appies, isn’t it, Mom?” says Josie. “But it will have to do.”
* * *
Chris and I have a serious conference about the Christmas chocolates.
“I know Michiko is going away just before Christmas, and you like her, don’t you?”
I nod, dying to ask how he knows Mich is going on vacation and what she plans to do, but we’re moving right along.
“So I’m thinking we should do this pretty soon, okay?”
It makes sense, so I nod.
“I’ve been thinking about the chocolate thing too, Mom. How attached to the idea of chocolate are you? Because we get a lot of Christmas chocolates at the office too, and it gets a little sickening. It makes us all jonesy.”
It’s true. All that sugar gets to be a bit much. But what is “jonesy”? I wish I could ask.
“What do you think about one of those baskets for the whole team? Something with boxes of tea and lots of fresh fruit and that kind of thing? With a really nice card expressing your appreciation.”
I nod, but I’m not jumping up and down. What I really wanted was to be able to give something to my girls personally.
Then Chris pulls out a tiny, shiny box. There are two exquisite chocolates in the box and they smell heavenly.
“I’ve brought this for you to try, Mom. I can’t be bothered with cheap crap chocolate, but these are really delicious. I think if I put a little on your tongue, it will melt there and you shouldn’t choke. Are you willing to risk it?”
Oh God, yes I am! Chris bites one of the chocolates, leaving a sliver in his fingertips. I open my mouth and he places it on my tongue. It melts there, tasting like heaven. I close my eyes. Bliss!
“Pretty nice, huh? Okay, this is my plan. I’m going to buy you a bunch of these. The little boxes will keep the chocolates from being squished, and you can keep them in a bag and hand them out. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
I put my hand on my heart, pat it, and then give a thumbs-up, grinning.
“Not bad, eh? Last year was a bit of a nightmare, but I think this year is going to be better!”
I take my fist and swing it across my body, as I’ve seen Michiko do: go get ’em, cowboy!
“We can do this, right? No more crying!”
I grin and Chris grins back.
“Is there anything else you can think of? Have I got you covered?”
Suddenly I remember the most important thing of all. My breathing comes quicker and I jab at Chris. Tears start to come. Who is going to buy a present for him?
“Hey! What’s this?” Chris reaches for a tissue and swipes at my cheek. “What’s wrong, Mom?”
I try to mime a box for Chris. It’s pretty poor acting, but by some miracle, he gets it.
“You want a present for me?”
I nod and gasp for air.
Chris sits back down. “Easy does it. I’ll tell you what, Mom. You know I have control of your money, don’t you?”
Actually, I’d temporarily forgotten, but never mind that.
“I don’t need any more stuff, but I’m planning to take Astro up island for a little getaway between Christmas and New Year’s. How about you take me out to dinner somewhere really nice? That’s something I wouldn’t do for myself. Would you like that?”
I nod and snuffle into my tissues, point to myself, and rub my fingers against my thumb: I’ll pay!
“Okay, then. That’s a nice present that I won’t have to dust. I’ll really enjoy that. Thank you, Mom. I’ll take pictures.”
Maybe it will be a good Christmas after all.
* * *
Then I have another spell of not feeling well. It fogs up my brain, leaves me apathetic. I’m shocked when Lily tells me it’s been a week since I got up. How did that happen? Out of the blue, I think, “Will this be the last time I sit in my chair? Should I treasure this moment?” It’s a morbid thought.
I remember how you used to have good days and bad ones, Anna, even before you decided you’d had enough “treatment” and switched to palliative care. Once that happened, I bought that hospital bed and put it in the living room, so that you could look out the bay windows into the garden. I was glad that I’d planted extra tulip bulbs the previous fall. The garden was a riot of colour that spring. It does me good to remember you reclining there, rolled up in your bed, enjoying the flowers with all your being.
There was no pleasure in food by then. You said you missed your appetite, but the sight, the smell, the very thought of food made your stomach heave. I didn’t make coffee; I bought it in takeout cups and drank it in the car, brushed my teeth before coming near you. When you died, the smell of coffee made me sad for months and months.
I don’t remember my last meal. The last time I danced. The last time Chris held my hand on the way to school. The last time I blew raspberry kisses on Angelina’s belly to make her laugh.
I don’t remember when I learned what I now know: Angelina was her own person. She had her own path and it wasn’t wrong of me to let her go. I can’t remember when I learned that, or how. I wish I’d had more time, and more acceptance. That knowledge didn’t come soon enough to help her. But it’s here soon enough for me to forgive myself, I realize now. I still have time for that.
Lily is bent over Ruby, combing her hair, and I watch them both fondly.
Sometimes you get lucky: you get a roommate like Ruby, a nurse like Lily. You have the insight you need when you need it. You choose the right path.
Sometimes you don’t. You stumble in the dark, hands outstretched, hoping to get your bearings, never realizing that all you have to do is open your eyes.
* * *
One day in the week before Christmas, Lily keeps me up after lunch. We are all up, even Mary, who is looking very frail, and we’re herded into the dining room, where we sit in a circle like scouts around the campfire. We wait and wait until our bums ache and burn, when, accompanied by a small choir of amateurs stumbling over the words to “Joy to the World,” Santa bursts into the room, complete with the red suit and the black belt and the white beard.
“Have you been a good girl, Francesca?” he roars, close enough for me to see the perspiration on his forehead before he flings himself in my lap, carefully letting the arm of my wheelchair support his weight.
It’s Amit!
“Let’s see: I’d like new skis, and some chocolate, and”—flinging off his Santa Claus hat—“some new hair to cover the spot that’s bare!”
Everyone is laughing and I push at his back until he pretends to fall off my lap with a jingle of bells, more like a hefty jester than Santa Claus.
A couple of tiny elves in green suits take beautifully wrapped presents from a trolley and deliver them, one for each of us. Lily is helping an exquisite wee elf who looks just like her…oh, Sierra! They bring me a flat silvery package with a sparkly ice-blue bow. Sierra helps me open it: an empty photo album and a calendar.
“For your snapshots, Frannie. So they don’t get lost.”
I am delighted.
Ruby gets c
hocolates and a soft velour blanket in a rich peacock blue that matches her eyes. Mary gets bed socks (pink) and Santa puts a string of cranberry-red beads around Alice’s neck. She tangles her hand in it, pulling hard. Molly bounds for it just as it breaks and the tiny balls go skittering across the floor.
“Oh dear! I guess those weren’t appropriate for you!” she says, handing Alice a cookie as she deftly wheedles what remains of the necklace out of her hands.
Nana gets lavender-scented lotion and Lily opens it and gently massages a little into Nana’s hands. Michiko bends down and, laughing, allows Sierra to position a large red and green bow in her hair. Amit kneels and kisses Ruby’s hand. Two of the singers are doing a wonderful job with “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” One of the elves throws a shower of confetti snow, then takes a run at it, sliding across the floor almost into Alice’s lap.
Just like life, the whole thing is over in a matter of minutes.
“Merrry Christmas!” calls Amit, while Sierra, taking her responsibility seriously, shakes a heavy red ribbon mounted with bells.
“If I don’t see you, have a great time in Montreal, Amit!” calls Molly.
“On Dasher, on Dancer, on Prancer, on Vixen, we’re off to the East Wing, my bald spot needs fixin’!”
* * *
When Chris brings in the Christmas basket and the little boxes of chocolate, he has a package for me too.
“Do you want to wait for Christmas or do you want to open it now?”
Now! Always now!
With only one functioning hand, I make a mess of the beautiful paper, which is a pity, but I can’t wait: my inner child is fully alive and well and I claw at the wrapping like a hungry bear. It must be clothes. What else would it be? Does Chris know how to buy clothes? That’s what I’m eager to discover.
The shirt I finally extract from the tissue paper in the box is gorgeous, the deep ocean shade of blue that was your favourite colour, in a stretchy knit fabric that will make it easy for the aides to dress me.
“Do you like it, Mom?”
I know he can see how much I love it. My smile is reaching right up to my eyes.
There’s more.
Chris puts a smaller box on top of my new shirt, now spread across my lap. I shake the box. Jewellery.
Chris helps me with the tape on this one. He holds the bottom of the box while I pry off the lid.
It is a silver pendant, a concave circle and on the top, off centre, there is a round piece of amber held in place by a smooth silver lip, so that the golden yellow jewel appears to be floating like a full moon in the sky.
Lying on my new blue top, it’s absolutely exquisite.
“I have a little apology to make about this one, Mom. Anna bought this for you.”
I’m shaken. Anna? I stroke the beautiful silver with the tip of my finger.
Chris babbles on.
“I haven’t really got an excuse. She asked me to hang onto it and give it to you for Christmas after she died. But then Theresa had another miscarriage, remember? I had a lot on my mind and I guess I just forgot all about it. I found it when I was getting all my stuff out of Theresa’s house. Anna said to tell you, ‘Thank you.’ She said you’d understand. I’m sorry, Mom, I really am.”
I bring my finger to my lips…shhh. I reach for Christian’s hand and kiss his knuckles.
* * *
The little boxes of chocolate are a huge success. Chris brought them in one of those reusable grocery bags so that I can keep them accessible on my table to hand out personally whenever I want. Most of the boxes are shiny gold, but others are sparkling blue. “Those are for anyone who is vegan or lactose intolerant or allergic to nuts,” Chris says. So I gather he’s figured out that Michiko is vegan and I wonder what else he knows.
Chris has put little handmade stickers on the bottoms of the blue boxes that say, “Nut and dairy free” so, he tells me, that I don’t get myself in a frustrating tizzy trying to explain. I’m grateful for that.
“You know these are the best chocolates money can buy, don’t you?” Lily says, opening her box and placing one on her tongue as though she was receiving holy sacrament.
“Frannie, you’re spoiling us!” says Molly, hugging me.
Fabby takes hers to eat on her supper break and comes back to tell me that my chocolates went straight to the baby and he’s been doing a happy dance all evening. She puts my hand on her belly so that I can feel the little guy kicking. Stella says she’s going to eat hers when she has her tot of Scotch before bed. It turns out the night nurses, Heather and Julie, are both allergic to nuts and they receive the sparkly blue boxes.
When Michiko is working with Blaire, I give them their chocolates.
Oh my God, this is heavenly, swoons Michi after thanking me.
Now you can get fat with the rest of us, says Blaire.
Aren’t you going to eat yours?
Blaire flushes. It’s such a pretty box. I thought I’d save it for Nadine’s stocking. There’s lots of chocolate at the team centre.
Not like this, there isn’t.
When Michi leaves the room, I bang my box of tissues to get Blaire’s attention. It’s not easy because when Blaire is not my nurse, she pretends that I don’t exist. It’s not personal. She treats all of us that way. “Not my group,” she says. But I persist, and when Blaire saunters over, I slip a second box into her hand. It’s for Stephen, and I try to make her understand by signing that I’m patting a small boy’s head. I don’t know if she gets it. Her eyes are both sad and angry as she thanks me. But that’s okay. That’s just Blaire.
* * *
On Christmas Day, volunteers come in and there is chamber music: two flutes and a harp.
Ruby loves this. Janika, who is covering for Michi, got Ruby up early so that Milton could take her to the morning service. They were back in time for lunch and now Milton is sitting next to her, holding her fingers like a courtier escorting a duchess.
Anna, I finger your necklace, thinking irrationally how beautifully the silver complements the tinkling flowing music.
When the music is over, we applaud as best we can. Tea is served and treats doled out on red napkins printed with holly and berries. They have shortbread decorated with maraschino cherries, fruitcake and mince tarts. The sweets don’t tempt me. But if someone offered me a bowl of Mama’s good Italian Christmas soup and a handful of your speculaas, I’d think I’d died and gone to heaven.
* * *
On Boxing Day, I am sick again. I have a lot of pain in my stomach.
“Something is going on here,” says Lily, “this isn’t normal.” She gets the nurse. Apparently I’m running a low-grade temperature.
“Do you want us to hold the tube-feed again?” asks the nurse, and I nod, grateful.
I’m given Tylenol and Gravol suppositories, but they do nothing for the pain.
You never got to the stage where you needed twenty-four-hour care, Anna. You chose not to get there. You had lots of medications, more than enough, and when you decided to take them all at once, you knew that you needed to take Gravol first to keep from throwing up. When you chose to stop active treatment, you told your doctor in a general way that you wouldn’t be waiting around for the bitter end. You made sure that she only half believed you. You didn’t want any social workers poking around, fussing about whether you were a suicide risk.
You never told me the day you were going to die. You left notes. You did your best to protect me from any shadow of accusation. I got a visit from the police. Even at the time, I felt that was fair enough.
I don’t believe in suicide, as a rule. But I know why you did it and I respect that.
I really don’t feel good.
It’s too late for me to plan the way you did, Anna. The best I could do was to fill in the Degree of Intervention form. I ask myself, do I regret that I don’t have the o
ption to make the choice you did? I search my heart as truthfully as I can; the answer is no, and I am pleased.
When the nurse comes back to see if the Tylenol has had any effect, I shake my head.
“I’m going to phone the doctor and see if I can get you some better drugs,” she says.
Good. I’m not in excruciating agony, but I certainly don’t want it to get any worse. The pain is taking up a lot of space in my brain.
* * *
Guess who I saw the other day, Michi?
Can’t.
Muriel.
Muriel, Muriel.
Oh, you know. Muriel Tan.
Oooh. I loved her! How is she doing?
She’s doing great. Says she’s seeing a really nice guy.
Was she glad to see you?
Well, you know, kinda.
Oh, Molly. She didn’t want to be reminded, did she?
That’s it. I mean, the last few months of Frank’s life were pretty horrific.
ALS is such a bitch-awful disease.
Remember, she promised she was going to drop in and keep in touch, but she never did, and I totally get it.
Me too. Family doesn’t want to come back here after their loved one dies.
Muriel did a stand-up job of supporting Frank as he was all through the progression of his disease, but when he died, she got to have the guy she married back, y’know? Happy as she was with the care he got here, to say nothing of the support she got, she really doesn’t want to be thinking about the guy Frank became.
But it’s tough for us, right? We not only lost Frank when he died, we lost Muriel too. And the kids. Damn, those were nice kids.