In the summer during college, after my mother moved to New York too, June would take me on her visits to dress manufacturers on Seventh Avenue. This was an amazing opportunity for a young college coed majoring in Fashion Merchandising. The show room sales people would ooh and ahh over me and offer free samples I wanted so much to take but was never allowed to have. Ethics you know. What I saw during these trips was a strong role model, asserting herself and making quick decisions. She knew what she liked and had a good eye for what would sell and what wouldn’t. June knew her customers.
The vibrant and intelligent side of June faded away so slowly after Dad died and June was left all alone, I didn’t notice. My frame of reference of the kind of person June was, remained grounded in my early and most impressionable memories. She was forty-six years old before she ever married, a good long time to become accustomed to an independent way of life. Those habits don’t miraculously disappear once the I do’s are said. I know because I married at thirty one and even after thirty years of marriage, Richard and I still butt heads over who’s in charge of the basics as well as all the other comings and goings in our lives.
At work the next day, I snuck outside so I could talk at least semi-privately. The Neptune Society was my first call. Beth answered the phone. She had a pleasant voice but often hesitated to answer my questions. She must have been new on the job and I was the sale that was going to keep her employed until another payday.
“Our basic package includes cremation and a biodegradable urn,” she said.
“She wants to be buried at sea. Is that included?” I asked. Dad had been buried at sea and June only wanted to be with him.
“It’s an additional $395.” Let the up sell begin. “And it includes…”
I tuned out the rest of the pitch. I was ready to fork over the money right then and there without hesitation. I wasn’t in the mood to shop around for a better deal somewhere else. I told Beth exactly that.
“Terrific,” she squealed, no longer reading from her script. “Let’s get started on the paperwork. “What is your mother’s name?”
I had to think here for a minute. Do I give her the legal name or June’s switcheroo name she’s used most of her life? I had to make a quick decision.
“Dorothy June Wright,” I said.
The memorized list of vital information came next. Social security number, last permanent address, married or widowed, children, occupation. The questions seemed to go on forever. Until this one.
“What is her father’s name?” Beth asked.
June called him Daddy. I don’t think that was what Beth was looking for.
“Let me think a minute.” I said. Dad called him by his first name, what was it? Harry, Harvey.
“Harold!” I yelled out. “Cockley.” I pronounced it with the incorrect long ‘o’ but spelled it without the ‘a’. Beth would be none the wiser.
“Her mother?” she asked.
“Esther. Esther Wolfe.” The name Esther came to mind along with Harold’s.
The question and hesitant answer period went on for over a half and hour. I finally gave Beth my credit card number. June could now pass from this world without intervention from others. Due to my disinterest in shopping around for a better deal, Beth would also remain employed.
A week later a box arrived in the mail form the Neptune Society. It contained a gorgeous wooden box, with a highly varnished cherry finish. Inside I found a crystal picture frame and a faux leather folder with a button and an elastic closure, and the biodegradable urn. I was most interested in this last item.
The box dimensions were about eight inches long by five inches wide by five inches tall. It was covered in a dark moss green fabric. A cascade of silk autumn colored leaves adorned the top. I removed the lid and looked inside. A plastic bag ready for the ashes. I examined the container more closely, curious about what made it biodegradable. Cardboard. Dressed up. At least June would be doing her part to save the planet.
“Richard,” I shouted. “What am I going to put in here?”
I showed him the contents of the funeral box.
“Wow. What a nice box.” His eyes flickered as his brain created a thousand different things he could use it for.
“Don’t you want to put June’s picture in it and save it for posterity?” I asked.
“You want to keep her ashes? Not in my house.” he announced.
“That’s creepy keeping her ashes. Do people really do it?” I asked jokingly. I kept the dog’s ashes after it died, so why wouldn’t people keep other people? Obviously they did or the Neptune Society wouldn’t figure the cost of this box and all its contents into the price of its prepaid funeral plan.
“Be sure to tell Pastor Gordon the next time he calls, June’s taken care of,” Richard said. “Maybe he has a use for the box.”
“I want to sleep but my brain won’t stop talking to itself.” - Anonymous
Chapter Thirty-Six
Thus continued my secondary education into old age. I’m a baby boomer myself, on the young side of the range of children born after the war, but still considered a boomer. Richard is thirteen years older than I am, so getting ready for the end stage of our lives is something we talk about. Like putting in grab bars in the shower, making sure the will is up to date and most important that neither of us want to be kept alive by any artificial means.
For some reason I have experienced old age diseases at a younger age than my peers. I had a hip replaced at sixty because I could barely walk and the constant pain wore me down, and the ophthalmologist keeps telling me about my cataract that is ripe and read to be removed at age sixty two. I don’t know if this is because I hang around with older people, or my body just wore down faster than everyone else.
I hesitate to call this a routine but however sporadic and jumbled these interactions were; they had become my new normal.
Safely tucked in bed reading a book, the phone rang around 9:30 pm.
“Mom’s okay,” a male voice said without saying hello. “Is this Linda?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“June has a skin tear. I’m required to call you whenever that happens.” He spoke in a thick Jamaican accent.
“What’s a skin tear?” I asked.
“It’s a cut on her skin. It’s been bandaged and she’s resting comfortably,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said and disconnected the call.
I googled skin tear and the graphic pictures of various shades of red and purple were enough to keep me from sleeping most of the night.
It’s 10:00 am and my workday is in full swing. I answered my cell phone.
“Mom’s okay. Mrs. Wright has an appointment to see the orthopedic doctor on Friday. Are you available to accompany her?” the voice on the other end of the phone asked.
“No. I live more than a hundred miles away.” That’s more information than I should offer since the only benefit it serves is to increase the up sell. Or give someone the opportunity to check June’s fingers for a fancy diamond since her family didn’t show up very often.
“Then you need to call this number and they will send someone to take her,” she said.
I called the number and the person on the other end seemed to know June and me personally. There’s a conspiracy here, I know it.
“The charge for this service is $75, payable in advance.”
Ka-ching.
Do you take a credit card?” I asked.
Of course they did.
After I handed my credit card information into the great unknown, a more important question that I should have asked first popped into my mind.
If June is now under hospice care, why does she have to leave the nursing home to see a doctor? I needed to rewind for minute. The office phone rang and I went back to taking trade orders and requests for funds from a client’s brokerage acco
unt.
The night, dark and stormy, the rolling rumble of thunder punctuated by the sound of a ringing phone.
“Mom’s okay,” the voice said. “Is this Linda Wright?”
“Yes it is,” I replied.
“My name is Margaret and I’m the hospice nurse. I am here at the Forum to do June’s assessment and they won’t allow me to see your mom, June,” she said. “She’s sleeping and they don’t want me to wake her since she sleeps so little.”
Being unable to sleep was my issue these days. No one had informed me that it was also June’s.
“It’s after ten. I don’t think you should wake her either.” Once again I was not going to win any friends after that remark. “Why are you there so late?”
“I just received the assignment and I drove by here on the way home, so I thought I’d stop in.” she answered. “I’ll come back tomorrow but I wanted to let you know that I’d been here.”
“That would be perfect. Thank you,” I said. That’s why she was sent to the doctor the other day. Hospice dragged its feet sending someone to do an assessment and getting June entered in the program. Until officially enrolled, the nursing home kept on following the normal protocol.
I returned to the less than comforting sounds of Mother Nature hoping desperately the gentle rain falling in the night would soon lull me to dreamless sleep.
The very next day a different nurse called. This time it’s Saturday and I’m doing the grocery shopping.
“Mom’s okay. Is this Linda?” she asked.
“Yes.” I’m learning that a more robust answer isn’t necessary.
“We need to change June’s room. She sleeps very little and yells quite a bit. It’s disturbing the other person in the room.” She paused waiting for my response.
“That’s fine. Is the not sleeping something new or has it always been that way?” I knew about the yelling from when I visited her in the hospital.
“She never sleeps very well. And she’s very disruptive to the other patients,” she added. “Dr. Mandel has ordered the psychiatrist to visit with her.”
“Can you please make a note in the file to have the doctor call me after the psychiatrist comes to see her?” I asked.
I stare blindly at the shelf of blue pasta boxes, unable to find the boxes of pot-sized spaghetti on my list. I struggle to imagine the kind of conversation June will have with a psychiatrist that will allow the doctor to prescribe the appropriate medicine for her. It goes something like this.
Doctor: Good afternoon, Mrs. Wright. What is your main complaint?
June: Linda put me in this awful place and I just want to go home.
Doctor: Is Linda your daughter?
June: No, I don’t have any children.
Doctor: I see. You seem agitated. Tell me what you’re feeling.
June: Linda took away my cigarettes and I want a cigarette.
Layers of guilt piled up deep within the folds of my imagination. I blinked my eyes, threw two boxes of bow tie pasta in the cart and moved on to the jars of Ragu.
Doctor: What do you like to do, Mrs. Wright? Do you read books or go to bingo?
June: I smoke cigarettes. Linda took away my vodka too.
Doctor: Why do you think she did that to you?
June: Because she didn’t want me to have them.
The rows of spaghetti sauce blurred to red. I grabbed a jar, without paying attention to the brand or the flavor and pushed my cart out of this dreaded aisle. I think we’re going to go out for dinner tonight. Too much guilt is swirling around like a pot of boiling noodles.
“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
I keep a 5-year journal I write in every night before I go to bed, reflecting on the day. Over the past few years, I’d often written about June. Care and concern for her had consumed much of my daily activities.
March 25, 2015
Early this morning, still in bed, I saw a picture in m mind. I was helping June walk across a bridge. A blue bridge like we had seen in on our trip to Jacksonville crossing the river. At 8 am I was in the shower, the phone rings. June is having trouble breathing. They are calling hospice to put her on crisis care. Someone will be there 24/7.
When the phone rang at 10:30 that night, the nurse didn’t start the conversation by saying “Mom’s okay.” June’s suffering was finally over.
***
Time is a funny thing, created by man to manage order in our lives. It’s finite, and once it’s gone, it will never return. Yet time is endless, available for the taking to use however we choose. A lifetime of hardships, headaches and beautiful memories, all mixed together and baked in a bitter but delicious pie raced through my mind in the year since June died. Every day I still wonder if she found the one thing she was looking for and I’ll never know the answer to that, at least not while I’m alive. I can only hope that she did. All she ever asked for in the end was to know if Paul would be waiting for her. Knowing she found my father again would bring me some comfort.
I have no understanding of death. None of us do. It’s one of those experiences that has to be carried out alone, no one else can do it for you. I pray when my time comes, death will be swift and peaceful. Who doesn’t wish for that? How do we need to act while on this Earth and what good deeds do we need to do for God to bestow that on us? I watched June linger far too long as she dwindled toward death. In the grand scheme of things maybe it was no time at all. That’s God’s little secret and the code will never be cracked.
I had hoped June’s death would finally bring her the peace that she longed for. It was not to be. Her death in many ways was the beginning of what might be considered the worst of the injustice.
In her suicide note, June requested no funeral and no obituary. Being pretty pragmatic about death myself, I’m not into hosting a fancy funeral with flowers and eulogies. Her few friends had faded away the minute she began to fail. The rest stopped sending Christmas cards so I assumed June would now be reunited with them on the other side.
I called Susan and gave her the task of informing Martha and Steve. Emotionally drained, I had no energy left to speak to anyone else that evening. Richard and I sat in silence on the couch with our arms around each other for a very long time.
Two days after her death, the funeral director from the Neptune Society called me.
“I want to offer my condolences,” he said in a soft voice after introducing himself.
Memories of June floated into my mind constantly in the days following her death. Even though we hadn’t grocery shopped together since Richard and I moved away, it suddenly became a chore, not a cherished weekly outing as it had once been. June would show me all the buy one get one bargains she purchased along with her half-gallon of chocolate trinity ice cream. I drifted through the pages of her mail order old ladies clothes catalog that now came to my home with tears in my eyes. The smell of cigarette smoke lingered wherever I went. I knew June watched over me.
“Thank you,” I said.
“I’d like to ask you some questions, if you have a few minutes,” he asked.
“That’s fine,” I said.
“Does she have any metal in her body?” he asked.
I went through June’s list of artificial parts; several dental implants, a hip replacement, dentures.
“Thank you. I know this isn’t easy for you at this time,” he consoled. “I have to ask another question. Are you her daughter or her stepdaughter?”
Here we go again, I thought.
“Stepdaughter.” Although June taught me how to tell a few little white lies on our journey together, I was not a person who could easily tell any other kind of lie. Not knowing where this line of questioning was headed I didn’t sense any need to fudge my answer.
“I h
ave to be sure the arrangements for her are what she wished to have. How long have you known her?” he asked.
“Fifty years,” I answered without hesitation.
A pause, “Oh.” The only word he could muster at that moment.
He explained since I’m not a blood relative, I would not be able to get a death certificate that included the cause of death.
“Usually insurance companies need the cause of death in order to pay out any proceeds. I’ll send you the abbreviated version that should be acceptable for everything else.”
He asked for my fax number to send me an affidavit to sign and return.
“An affidavit for what?” I asked.
“You’ll have to get it notarized that you knew her for as long as you said you did. Then mail it back to me so I can proceed,” he answered.
I brought this conversation to a quick close so I could go have a good hearty cry. She’s lying in a freezer somewhere waiting because I’m not a blood relative. Should I have lied? Along the line someone used the word “step” otherwise how would he have known? Why in this day and age of blended families of all shapes and sizes should it make a difference? Am I wicked? Did Cinderella have good reason to despise her stepfamily? Or was she trying to do the right thing? I’m punishing June once again because I simply didn’t know how to care for her or give her what she wanted or needed.
Should I have washed my hands of June completely and let her blood relatives take over? Many people gave me that advice over the past few years but interestingly enough that was one decision I had no trouble making. June and I were in this life together.
June left carefully handwritten papers of the nephews and niece addresses and phone numbers. When I emptied her apartment, I packed up the things she wished for them to have and sent them each a letter explaining where she was including her new address and phone number. I receive little response only asking where the rest of their stuff was she had promised them over the years.
A Bittersweet Goodnight Page 23