2006-03-26 - 2:19 a.m.
My father woke me up with a phone call this morning. I think it was at a time I ordinarily would have been up, but I had been up very late last night, so I had only had a few hours of sleep.
My father does not like to talk on the telephone, and usually will use it for only a couple of minutes to conduct some kind of necessary business. This call was no different in that respect. But still, something in my psyche understood that a call like this from him could not be good, so I think automatically my emotional state threw a wall up.
�Your mother died last night,� he told me.
I was groggy and out of my mind. �You�re kidding!� I said, and then immediately mentally blasted myself for such an amazingly stupid and lame response, but then I later found out from my sister, Ginger, that Janine, the wife of one of our cousins, and someone who had become very close to our mother and talked with her on the phone a lot, had said the exact same thing when Dad called to tell her.
�She died peacefully in her sleep,� he told me. �I don�t think she felt any pain.� He was a person who was extremely sensitive to the slightest change in her breathing or snoring or body position, it would make him wake up and check her out. If he had noticed nothing in the night, she must have been peaceful. He told me when he woke up this morning that she looked funny to him (her right eye was closed, but the left eye was open, with the eyeball looking in the direction of where he slept), so he examined her and her body was so cold. He knew she was dead, but he called the doctor to come out (they had a doctor who made house calls), and the doctor had left and he was now waiting for a call from the Neptune Society with whom both he and Mom had contracted to arrange their cremations. And he had to get off the phone to call the other kids.
I felt completely flat and unemotional, as if he had just called me to tell me that it was going to be 68 degrees tomorrow. Just like that, feeling nothing, but my mind in a queasy turmoil.
I guess this was such a shock and so unexpected, which is odd, because as my sister Ree said, the idea of this has been running as a tape in the background of our minds almost our whole lives. In fact, I would say that it was only just now that perhaps we no longer worried about it. It seemed that since our mother had managed to survive this long, she was somehow going to live forever. And, of course, she had always been there our whole lives, so there was no way to prepare for her eventual absence.
She had had what was diagnosed as multiple sclerosis, although her particular disease didn�t quite act like other cases of multiple sclerosis. It�s commonly a progressive disease, something that inches its way along the nerve insulating sheathes, demyelinating as it consumes, but in my mother�s case, the disease destroyed her ability to consciously control the lower half of her body, but it did not go any further than that. Yes, it kept her almost entirely bedridden and in more or less constant pain for about 30 years, but my mother was thankful that it did not also progressively destroy her hands or eyesight, something that happens to some other multiple sclerosis sufferers. So that whereas in her earlier life (up to when I was in college) she had been very physically active, she was able to reapply her talents and interests to hand crafts�to have lost that, as well, would have killed her even earlier. But she was still able to lay eyes on her husband, children, grandchildren, and friends, and communicate with them, and make things for them, and for that, she was willing to accept all the other suffering if that was required.
That�s the outer story, but nobody wants to contemplate just what it must have been like to have been trapped in a half-paralyzed body on a bed for thirty years. Maybe just now we are finally facing up to all that she valiantly suffered, now that the suffering that remains is our own and she is free and we attempt to reconcile that. She gave us so much by being alive as long as she was, in which she outlived many well people�s natural life-spans. Just one week from now, she would have celebrated her 82nd birthday.
I did not want to call my brother and my sisters right away. I wanted to wait for my father to have had time to call them and then for them to have time to process this news and begin their grieving in their own way. Instead I started calling friends and talking with as many of them as I could, with hour-long, supportive conversations. So many people my age are going through this right now, or already have gone through it, or soon enough will. We�re beginning to discover how bonded we are with each other in our shared grief over these deaths.
Still, none of this made my cry, but I didn�t worry about it. I knew I would at the right moment and meanwhile I had to just do the best I could. This was the beginning of my spring break, which I had been looking forward to for a long while, but now I couldn�t even get out of bed.
As the day crept on, I did make contact with my sister Ree, and then my brother�s wife (he is such a night owl, even more than I am, that Carol didn�t want to wake him with this information), and finally, much later, my sister Ginger. Ginger was the one who had reacted with the most immediate intensity. She told me she burst out into screaming so loudly and crying so forcefully that she genuinely frightened her children. She decided it was best to take them to their father�s house so that she didn�t have to worry about them being around her for this. She�s the one who had been seeing my mother the most, at least once a week. Since Ginger�s the one with the grandchildren, it was near her that my mother insisted on living. And nobody more than Ginger felt that our mother had at least ten more years in her. It was our father�s longevity that all of us had been worried about.
Ree was more like me, attempting to wrestle with this intellectually, but the emotions were existing in an empty room. Both Carol and Ree were very business-like about attempting to make arrangements for all of us to go up there, although I wasn�t sure that this was a good idea. I guessed that Dad didn�t want the whole family descending upon him, something he confirmed later by calling Ginger and Carol to insist that nobody go up there, which would have stressed him too much. �I prefer you wait to come up here to celebrate my 90th birthday on August 31,� he said, �but if you want to come in a week to honor your mother on her birthday, that would be okay,� he said.
I would have gone up there in a flash if I felt I was needed, but our father is very self-sufficient and he wanted to take care of telephoning and talking with all of their friends and whatever relatives still remained. He told me later that he expected that process alone to be at least a full week�s worth of work�but a lot of that was that he just couldn�t stand to do it, because he just couldn�t stand the reason why he had to do it. But work like that can be a god-send. As far as a funeral or a memorial service, none of us currently have a clue. All I know is that my mother�s body is no longer in the house and Dad told me he tore her bed down to a red air-mattress therapy device that had always been underneath the bed sheets, so that when he looks at it, what he sees is something different. I thought that was very smart. I wondered how he could possibly stand to sleep there in his bed tonight with that empty bed next to him, a spot next to him that had not been empty since the day they got married in 1946. On the other hand, I�m surprised he can stand to even leave their bedroom for a second, as that was where she had been and where her energy was most evident. What an emotional nightmare, to not be able to stand either being there or not being there�there was no place to turn and no place to find any relief.
Finally, Dave called. In the end Carol had had to wake him and tell him. He was very hard hit by the news. He had spent the whole morning crying and kept crying off and on as we talked. He told me he didn�t know when he could go into that house with our mother no longer living there. I understood what he meant and described my own feelings about what it had been like over the years to drive up there. You had to let our mother know when you were leaving so that she could anticipate the moment of your arrival. If there was any delay along the way, you would receive an anxious cell phone call from her asking where you were. Sometimes it felt like a long slog up a boring highway or through heavy holiday traffic. Most likely it would be dark when you got to the San Francisco Bay Area, and the traffic would be increasingly heavy as you tried to curve around Oakland and skirt the Bay up to the San Rafael Bridge. Traffic was always at its worse over in the Marin County side, sometimes unbearably so, and it would get very dark as you entered into woodsy Sonoma County. But often you could smell the hominess of wood fires burning and the feeling would spur you onward. Finally, the Petaluma exit and the downtown left turn onto I Street, and then after a while the left turn up the hill of Josette Court. Their house would be at the top of the hill, the lights all blazing. There would be a phalanx of welcoming hugs that would begin the minute your car door slammed shut and whoever in the house heard it would come running out to greet you, and these excited hugs would continue in the living room and down the hall to the master bedroom. Finally, there in the bedroom would be our mother, as bursting with excitement as a dog, lying there in her bed with her arms open as wide as possible and her face bright with a smile a mile wide�and that�s when I lost it and exploded into a burst of crying that shook the whole apartment building and Dave joined in, too, on the other end of the line and together we wailed and sobbed until we didn�t have voices or tears left.
�You had to lean over that scooter [that Dad always needed to help her get into that she needed to get from the bed to the bathroom and she'd panic if it wasn't kept handy right next to the bed] and bend down over the hospital bed and the position was awkward, you couldn�t hold it very long and you didn�t want to hurt her,� I continued.
�And you never hugged her as long and as intensely and you wanted and she wanted you to,� Dave continued.
�But we did the best we could and for her it was so wonderful.�
We both wanted to hug her again, right now, and to hug her forever, but now she was gone and we would never again see that smiling face or hear that voice or hold her body or receive her excitement over our presence and suffer her profound grief whenever it was time for us to leave, and how she would beg us to stay yet one more day, yet we always had obligations in our individual lives that pulled us away, but we could get away by promising when we would be there again next time, only now there would never again be a next time, not to this person who had been in this body, with this name and with this life history, only the spirit of love and the memories that remained in our heart, which seemed so impossibly inadequate and unsatisfactory and there would never be such warmth in the world again.
It felt better, but the crying wiped us out, and after we hung up, I continued crying throughout the day, even the tiniest thought or memory would get it starting again, until I was thoroughly exhausted. The only relief was when somebody called me, either someone responding to my answering machine message, or others who had by now heard the information from someone I had spoken with earlier. Also Ree called me back several times with various snatches of memories or insight. She felt that she had heard Mom�s voice, talking to her quite plainly, and it made her think that everything was all right. �She�s with Nana and Ham and Aunt Mary and Aunt Barbara and Cleo,� listing relatives who had died before, �and Puff and Licorice and Tonky�� adding to the mix beloved pets that had died, also. �She�s having a party and walking again and dancing and waiting for Dad so that they can go camping or boating, heaven isn�t up, you know or north, south, east, or west, it�s right next to you, parallel, she is here, watching you and listening to everything you say, she wants you to be fine and happy.�
She also concluded that Dad wouldn�t live longer than a week (if he even got through the very next night), the stress of the loss would speed the metastasizing of his prostate cancer, �Which is already affecting his stomach, you know.� My mother, herself, had been so worried about our father, �He is so thin, now, he hardly ever eats,� she had said, �and he sleeps all the time, now.� It seems that for the past several Saturdays (I would call her every Saturday and thanks to my unlimited weekend calling plan, we would talk for hours), we would be interrupted by her call waiting and when she�d come back on the line, she�d say that the pharmacy had called, a prescription was ready. Always pain killers for either her or Dad.
I called Dad back, myself, after dark and Ginger was there with the kids, she had gotten Dad to agree to letting them all sleep there in the house with him that night. I am thankful of that. Dad told me he was glad they were there, �She�s been so helpful,� he said, �she�s cleaned up and made us dinner.� He sounded lucid and loving, but something about his voice was funny, like he had had a stroke that nobody knew about. But then later Ree told me she knew that he had complained that the pain killers would swell his tongue, so that was why his talking sounded funny. �I just wanted you prepared in case Ginger calls you tomorrow morning like Dad did this morning,� Ree said. Well, that was something we had been trying to be prepared for for the past couple of years, because our greatest fear had been that it would be a completely helpless and trapped on her bed MOM who would wake up one morning and in a panic discover a dead Dad in the bed next to her. Such a call from her would have immediately mobilized a four-offspring-and-one-wife rescue force speeding up north. But I had long been telling my mother that Dad simply would NOT let that happen, he would never die as long as she needed him, and he, himself, had always said, �I will take care of your mother until the day she dies.� And he did, just as he said he would.
Finally, during one of Ree�s many phone calls to me, she told me that she had asked Dad what the coroner had written on the death certificate. �Infarction of the cells,� she said. So I guess I had to figure out what this was. Unfortunately, a Google search yielded no direct results (not ONE lead to that exact combination of words), and I was left piecing together these various terms and concepts: peripheral artery occlusive disease, chronic ischemia, angina pectoralis, and dry gangrene. We know she complained of severe angina pains, and we know she had gangrene in her feet�pieces of her toes would simply break off, plus her worst pains were felt in her feet. She was taking pain killers for the angina, but there was no solution for the gangrene short of amputation, and that was not recommended for someone of her age and physical condition. I guess this was another millimeter-by-millimeter creeping death, similar to and contributed to by the multiple sclerosis, only more surely deadly.
The human body really is designed to be a moving mechanism. Despite the circulatory system having the heart as a pump, it really isn�t strong enough to pull the blood back up out the legs; this effort is assisted by the squeezing of the calf muscles when a person is walking and moving around. Lying supine in a bed for thirty years and with no ability to voluntarily move a muscle below the waist does not support this circulatory effort. So if the blood isn�t circulating properly, the cells aren�t being properly provided with oxygen or fed necessary nutrients. Angina is a result of that oxygen starvation in the heart. Also, the lymph system doesn�t even HAVE a pump; it circulates entirely through the movement of the body�s muscles, and so for my mother, not only were the cells in her lower body slowly starving and suffocating, she was also being poisoned by her own internal body wastes. This was a breeding ground for infections, and, indeed, she had several chronic ones.
She had various artificial therapeutic devices, such as rising and falling air mattresses and various muscle squeezing devices (when she could stand to use them), and my father would nightly massage her feet and legs (when she could stand the pain of them being touched, which only he could do in a way that she could tolerate), but none of these efforts could equal natural functions.
Ginger asked me if I had seen Mom�s legs when I was home last Christmas. No, I did not look at them; Mom kept them well-hidden and I did not demand a look. I know that Dave saw them, though, and regrets having seen the sight�it was after that that he began insisting that she get better in-home medical care or move into a nursing home. But Ginger says that seeing them would make acceptance of our mother�s death much easier. �They were no longer human,� Ginger said. �They looked completely dead and fully taken over, like dead logs in the forest covered with barnacles.� During my internet search to discover �infarction of the cells,� I saw various pictures of gangrenous feet, and I suppose my mother�s legs had become gangrenous, too, so I have some idea of what Ginger was talking about. I also understand why my mother didn�t want many people to see this. In fact, she wouldn�t even let the new nurse that they hired see this, something I didn�t understand, since I had thought that providing medical care for my mother was the reason they got her. But now I understand that Mom knew what was happening all along, and she had gotten the nurse for Dad, not for herself. She and the nurse hit it off instantly so that my mother felt like she was part of the family, and therefore didn�t want her involved in her medical care any more than she wanted her own children involved in it.
None of this is to make one squeamish and disgusted over the condition of my mother�s body, but to be astounded at the level of patience, love, and humanity she expressed from within such a relentlessly decaying vessel. I sincerely hope that now that she is dead, she has finally received an understanding of why she was made to suffer so. None of us could ever understand it, and neither could she. Maybe now if she knows, we will learn it too, via a dream or a voice that my sister hears, or via some other form of message transmission if such is possible between this world and the next one.
For now, I will end this entry with just this:
My mother would send me e-mails all the time, although not necessarily much in the way of notes or letters, since we did talk weekly. Mostly she�d circulate jokes, or send me pictures, or articles she�d come across that she thought I would appreciate. The last one that she sent me was about a whale rescue that occurred in the Pacific Ocean just beyond the Golden Gate Bridge. A whale had gotten completely tangled up in various fishing nets, ropes, and lead weights, and it was completely unable to free itself. All this stuff was severely weighing the whale down, so that it had to continually struggle to keep itself at the surface of the water where it could breathe. But it was getting exhausted and soon would be unable to keep itself on the surface.
A fisherman saw this whale and radioed in to a rescue team to come see if it could help the whale�Greenpeace, or something like Greenpeace.
The rescue team was very worried about what they saw. There was no safe way they could rescue the whale, because it was in such a mess that the only way to free it would be for divers to get into the water with the whale and laboriously cut off one by one each rope or piece of net. The nearly-suffocating whale was in a desperate panic by now, and they were afraid that just one swipe of its tail could kill one of them. However, despite this danger, they all risked their lives and got in the water with the whale. They worked very hard for a very long time, cutting piece by piece, working diligently to save the whale. One of the divers later reported that the whole time he worked, the whale followed his every movement with her eye, and it filled him with wonder and gratitude that he was able to be there to help such a magnificent creature.
Ultimately, the rescue team was successful in clearing all the nets and ropes off of the body of the whale and none of them were hurt. When the whale realized that it was at last free and her life had been saved, she took the time to gently seek out and gently bump her nose against each and every diver who had been there to help her, personally thanking each one. Then, after she had done that, she turned and swam off to freedom in the greater sea.
This article was the last e-mail from my mother, and we had had a chance to discuss how wonderful it was and I expressed my appreciation to her for sending it to me. Today I reflect how symbolically prophetic that last article from my mother was. Today she is finally free of her extreme body burden, and, with us knowing that she gently gives her love to each and every one, she has now swum off into the vast freedom where she belongs and is her natural home.
Eternal love to you, sweet precious Mom.
�
 |
 |
�
