Bryan leaves my feet and moves beside Allison. “Oh my God, she is smiling. She likes it. Sing some more.”
“Sing it, too,” Allison says.
“You’re doing fine. Keep going.”
Allison leans close to me again. Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a night on the town. I’m counting on you, Lord, please don’t let me down. Prove that you love me and buy the next round. Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a night on the town.
“That’s all I can remember,” she says.
My children become silent. Reverent. They touch my shoulders, my hands. They peer into my face. They smile and coo as if I’m a brand new baby.
“That’s so amazing,” Allison says. “Who’d have thought that Mom liked Janis?”
“Yeah, who’d have thought?”
Oh, there is something to be said for a dying woman’s final look at what she is leaving, when every bit of strength is gathered, when all movement is collected and coiled into one final wild and splendid thought. Nothing but this last moment is significant and counted in a mother’s book of days. Simply, there is only glory in knowing a mother’s children are present.
This is my last breath, my final look, and in spite of the void inside my head that has stolen from me everything I ever knew—every memory that defined the woman who once was Lillie Claire Glidden—I know I am ready.
I now can see what a baby-blue star does the moment just before winking on into its new existence. She looks squarely into the faces of her beautiful children. She sees their hands folded into little churches, she sees tears of astonishment ringing their eyes, and she hears the last of a silly Janis Joplin song floating from their mouths. She looks at her babies.
And she smiles. Then, in a papery whisper, she sings. Oh Lord, won’t you… Oh Lord, won’t… Oh Lord… .
The soft light of candles flickers across the room; my children have never before been more beautiful, more wondrous. Their eyes shine, their lips smile over me. They smell of candle wax and prayerful hands. They are luminescent!
Just before my eyelids flutter closed and my lips fall slack and motionless, just before my heart becomes still and damp inside my chest, I see the arms of my children fold around one another. They lean and touch their heads together, a quiet, simple gesture, but one that gives me peace. And peace.
And peace.
Epilogue
YOU LAUGH. You laugh because your refrigerator door is standing wide open like some silly mouth and you remember how it all started with your wallet hiding in the crisper under the lettuce. You remember everything now, every day of every year of it. You especially remember that day—that first day you knew for certain something was wrong. You didn’t know a sticky tangle of something was secretly growing in a small fold of your brain, but you knew something was amiss. That first bees’ nest in your brain must have nestled itself around the judgment cell, because from that day forward, you were nothing but a lamentable cylinder of tears and sticky notes, of fallen-down dreams and misplaced thoughts. You’re at peace now. Everything lost has been restored. Still, you look at your empty refrigerator with its door propped open and its crisper drawer pulled out and your mouth says the same thing it said seven years ago. Hah! you say. Of course, no one hears you. You’re very dead now. You look around your house—your sadly empty house. You leave no footprints, but you are very much here. You turn your head to look beyond the refrigerator door.
What remains are walls, stiff with silence. The light is stunted by closed draperies, yet still a strong early afternoon sun finds a way to creep along the edges of the empty carpet. Most of the furniture is gone; their footprints in the carpet give the only clue of where things once stood. A chair here. There, the sofa, square tables at each end. A coffee table, and over there, a floor lamp with a heavy round base. In front of the window with a view to the patio (empty now of birds that used to dance and peep every day) are indentations from the medical recliner, returned to the equipment store, most likely. The cupboards are mostly cleared of their contents; only a few odd boxes still stand open in the kitchen. The house has been only lightly vacuumed and, here and there, I see a missed paw print from John Milton, whose lanky body now lolls over the furniture in Bryan’s apartment.
The master bedroom, the only room yet to be packed and gutted of its contents, is softly lit. If it were a conversation, the room could be described as gentle and pleasant, almost warm and affable. Certainly it belies the prayer candles and tears that occupied every corner of the room just four weeks earlier.
Bryan stands at my dresser, packing nightgowns, underthings, a small green velvet-lined jewelry box containing a set of matching wedding rings nestled inside a felt envelope, several pairs of well-worn socks, a few sweaters, Ma’s Bible with its fragile onion-skinned pages and notes along the margins. The items seem so few. So precious. Bryan’s hands have the tenderness of a son, yet they still contain the thick clumsiness of a boy.
Allison picks through my clothes still hanging in the closet. Her hands are different from her brother’s—more delicate, perhaps more apologetic. She folds each piece, letting thoughts of better, earlier times be captured within the creases before settling each garment into a large box boldly marked, For Charity. She recognizes the blouses and slacks purchased for that failed trip to Hawaii. Her eyes are watery, choking her throat. Don’t cry, Allison. Mom’s right here. Everything’s okay, my sweet pony.
When she’s done with the hanging items, Allison turns her attention to the upper shelves. Among the purses and boxes of shoes, she finds a handmade cedar box.
I nearly clap for joy when she pulls the box down and finds it spilling over with neatly folded papers and letters.
“Bryan. Oh my God! Look what I found,” she says.
“What? I don’t have time—”
“No! It’s Mother. She wrote us letters. And poems, too.”
Allison takes the box from the closet and spills the papers across the bed. “Look,” she says. “Mom wrote all these things for… for us.”
“I need to get back to the office this afternoon.”
“Can’t you be nice just once? It’s Mom, in this box—”
“Oh, all right, all right… I’ll look.” Bryan pulls a letter from the pile. He opens it carefully, as if to damage the paper might cause great harm somewhere in the universe. He opens one, flattens it and then opens another and another.
He scans the words, a lawyer’s habit. “Maybe we should read them,” he says. “Look. A lot of them have dates. Let’s put them in order and start with the undated pieces first, then read the dated letters in order.”
“Don’t you think we should just read whatever? Like serendipity?”
“You wouldn’t know serendipity if it bit you in the ass.”
“What if she can hear us? What if her spirit or her ghost is here and she’s listening to you spouting your mouth off?” How precious that Allison would think to include me in this moment.
“Well, then she’s listening to your spouting too.”
Yes. Yes! I’m listening. Spout, my children… spout!
“All right,” Allison shrugs. “Your idea is good, let’s read them in order.”
When the papers are collated, Bryan picks up the top letter. “Do you want to read, or do you want me to start?”
“You read. I’m too nervous.”
Bryan looks down at the letter and begins to read it to himself.
“Out loud, please?”
“Oh, God. All right.” Bryan looks at his watch.
Without chairs in the room, they settle onto the bed. Allison fluffs a pillow and settles back on it, eyes closed, hands behind her head. Knowing his time plan has been altered for the day, Bryan sighs with resignation and begins to read.
My dearest Bryan and Allison,
I don’t quite know what to say to you. Given this illness (so new and surprising to me), I don’t know what to say to myself, for that matter. Apparently, I’m sick
. It appears I won’t get better. What should have been my time to grow beautiful wrinkles; to let the skin on my hands turn to crepe paper and gray hairs spread across my head like fairy silk; what should have been my time to gather you around the table over coffee or wine to offer a mother’s wisdom on those days you needed it; what should have been my time to pass on stories of my generation—well, it’s all now moot.
Instead, we’re looking at a quickening of my mental death. A hurried step into memories lost and confusion found.
I know I’ve nothing to apologize for. Some people simply get sick. Still, I’m so sorry. I’m so very, very sorry. I’m sorry especially for what I’m surely going to put you through. But you’re strong. Please, for my sake, stay strong.
The oddest thing is that I know within the moment of each loss exactly what it is I’m losing. I’m aware of it at the beginning stage of this mesmerizing and confounding disease; I expect I may very well be aware right to the very end.
I’ve read about my illness. My brain will turn gummy and tangled with sticky cobwebs. I’ll lose my language, but apparently I won’t lose the feelings that prompt whatever utterances should reasonably occur. How sad for those of us who have to go down this path.
Our memories are stolen.
I won’t talk aloud about these things. It’s simply too cruel for a mother to burden her children with her gathering frailties. It’s certainly not the Southern way. I come from a proud father and mother who suffered their own delicacies with silent mouths and hopeful hearts.
I can be no less.
Instead, I’ll write my thoughts to you. Letters. Little poems. A mother’s thoughts. They’ll be something I hope you’ll treasure. I’ll struggle over them, just as I’m agonizing over this first letter. I’m tempted to tear it up (of course), and find another, better way to occupy your memories of me. But I’m a writer. A poet. It’s what I do and it’s what I’m losing. Words. I’m losing my words.
But until all my words are gone—until I’m gone—I’ll continue to struggle in telling you all the things still left to say.
So here goes, my dear loves. Try not to fight over who gets to keep the letters. Perhaps I shouldn’t say that, but I know you well enough to know that you will. Just make copies, for heaven’s sake, and be done with it.
Oh, and don’t worry about me now that I’m gone—but if you need me for anything—I’ll be with your father, singing and dancing and living on in his arms.
All my love,
Mother
Bryan looks up with tears in his eyes. He places the letter upside down next to the stack of unread letters. “You read the next one.” Oh, my dear, dear Bryan. Sometimes the stoics break and split most deeply.
Allison reaches for the next paper, a poem. She reads it, her voice hesitant and quavering through to the end, her head nodding to gain the subtle rhythm in the piece. When she’s done, she places it upside down on top of the first letter. In unspoken assent, Bryan and Allison take turns reading, turning each letter over one by one at the end of each reading.
On they go throughout the afternoon, laughing, pensive, sometimes tearful. Occasionally they launch into grand commentary, remembering long-forgotten events, before moving on to the next piece. They lose time, even as the day’s shadows lengthen and stretch across the room.
At some point, they scavenge the kitchen boxes and find a bottle of cooking wine, a bent corkscrew and a couple of paper cups. I smile that it’s a lousy red, but a red, nevertheless.
When at last they come to the final paper, dated nearly two years before my death, the end of the day, as well as the end of my letters, has crept into their eyes. Bryan and Allison look at the last entry.
“Do you want to do it, or do you want me to go ahead?” Bryan asks, his throat thick with wine and memories.
“You do it,” Allison says, pushing the letter toward him. “You hold together better than I do.”
Bryan takes the letter in his hands and lets his eyes settle on the words. “Okay, hold your breath. Here goes.” He reaches over and takes Allison’s hand and together they walk the landscape of my final letter.
My children,
It now takes all I have to find only a few words. They’re all nearly gone. This shall be my last to you, my loves. It’s taken well over (oh I don’t know how long) just to write this. Years? A lifetime? I don’t know. But today, or yesterday, I thought of your MeeMaw again and how she would gather me under her arm and how we would together read her favorite poetry. Always that ancient, John Milton, as you might guess.
So, my last thought to you shall be no less a gesture. Please feel my arms around you now, both of you, one to each side of me, as if I were reading this to you myself.
One last thing—and I hope you don’t mind—instead of simply copying one of MeeMaw’s favorite pieces (which, of course, would be something Milton, or maybe Eudora Welty, or even something dark from Poe), I’ve worked on a sonnet of my own for quite a while now. That’s what I’d like to give you as my last gift. The words have not come easily or well. I’m afraid, I’ve even made quite a mess of it in some spots. But I hope these last words give you comfort, or pause, or even admonition as they fill your ears and fall into your hearts.
So here, my dears, is my sonnet to you:
On My Memory
My arms are empty of words I would hold.
They’ve spilled from my grasp and now all my life’s
Thoughts are gone and my heart cries unconsoled.
Such wintry agony, a thousand knives
Of half-gathered memories, dying fresh
Within wisps of thought on a broken night.
As murmurs of love fall soft from my breath,
You fade, my dear roses, paled by night’s light.
Yet don’t think of me, my clattering words.
No! Hold to the thought that somewhere in time
Love will return us, not set us apart
Like small buds plucked, a new bouquet. While I’m here
Emptying thoughts to spare room for your tears,
Come sit with me now and read of my years.
—Lillie Claire Glidden
(your mother)
And there it is, my dear children. An imperfect sonnet, but I think I counted the syllables right—I’m not certain. Don’t tell anyone, but I may have even made up a word or two to fit the scheme. It would seem I’m too far gone to be any better than that.
Still, my last words come from a mother’s guttural love, from some visceral place that not even I understand.
My words, my poem, even my love—all are imperfect. Still, I hope you’ll hold these thoughts close to your hearts. Also, my dears, hold tightly to each other. I need for you to do this, so that for what one of you might forget, the other might recall.
Please. If nothing else, now in this moment—simply take each other’s hand, much like when you were children filled with innocence and wonder.
Yes, go ahead. Do it now.
Take each other by the hand. Then remember me—all that you are able. Yes, remember.
And remember.
My love forever,
Your mother
YOU LEAVE. You leave now to the place that is waiting for you. Your children know everything of you and you’ll forever know everything of them. Their vision of you will always be that of your final moments. Your agony. Your sad forgetfulness of their names, their faces. The hushed and failing light as you left them. But they’ve also captured an image of you and their MeeMaw and a grand Southern porch where life was filled with lemonade and poetry and their PaaPaw’s hands striking chords on a scratched-up old banjo.
You’ll visit your children now and then, especially when your daughter marries again and has a late-in-life baby son that gives her—and you—such joy. You’ll watch your son as he flourishes in his career, then falters with too much wine and sympathy for himself. You’ll try to whi
sper in his ear, but he’s stuck in the bottom of a glass and his ears are deaf. You’ll visit him more often than anyone.
You’ll visit Jewell now and then too. You’ll watch as she hums over a new woman. A woman older than you were, but one who loves her just as you loved her.
One day, you’ll turn to find John Milton on your lap and you’ll smile at his gray muzzle and wizened yowl. You’ll spend grand and glorious eternities with your Ma and your Pa, singing Poor Ellen Smith across the skies. You’ll join your beloved husband and welcome him to you as you never did in your living body. Yes, you’ll leave your children. But you’ll never really leave.
No, you’ll never really leave.
The leaves of memory seemed to make a mournful rustling in the dark.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
About the Author
AUBURN MCCANTA is an award-winning writer and poet. Raised in Portland, Oregon, she remembers thinking her mother’s garden was a place so green, petals fell from the sky and flowers grew in every pathway. McCanta’s father was an advertising director whose work transferred the family from the rose gardens of Portland to the Sonoran Desert of Phoenix, Arizona, where she now lives with her husband and two giant dogs. She serves on the Arizona Alzheimer’s Task Force. All the Dancing Birds is her debut novel.
Auburn McCanta serves as an Ambassador for the National Alzheimer’s Association. Until either a cure or an effective treatment is found, Auburn will donate ten percent of all book proceeds to the National Alzheimer’s Association for the care, support, research, and advocacy of Alzheimer’s patients and their families. Thank you so much for your help in this urgent need.
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