June has arrived bringing with it the unmistakable lethargy caused by relentless heat. It is safe to say summer is here in Texas. This summer also drags along with it a lot of one-year anniversaries involving death and decay.
Last year was somewhat numbing, starting with the loss of a friend before the first week of the year had come to a close. That loss was hard but not totally unexpected. Late July brought the biggest shock with the sudden death of my best friend for the past 40+ years. We communicated constantly via email and rarely would a day pass without some exchange of information and most days they were lengthy. We had been emailing that Saturday morning and into the early afternoon. The last email I received that day would be the last I would ever receive. She collapsed and died at some point in the late afternoon or early evening and her body was not found until the following Monday when she failed to show up for work.
I thought it strange that we had no communication on Sunday but she often had busy weekends with errands. But when Monday morning arrived with no email I began to wonder if she was OK. She would go to work early and almost always emailed me upon her arrival to announce that she was at her desk and the countdown to Friday would commence.
Sometime just before noon my cell phone rang and her name was displayed on the caller ID. That was the point where I knew something was seriously wrong. While we were extremely close we never communicated by phone during business hours. The person who rang me was one of her friends who met some co-workers at her house when they had to force open the door and found her body. There is something particularly unnerving about hearing the words “Elizabeth is dead” when answering a call with her name on the caller ID. It is as if you are hearing another language and the words just don’t make sense, or they do not belong together in a sentence. Yet, the words were clearly understood. For several months I could scarcely believe it and even now I am sometimes dumbstruck that it happened. The expectation of early morning emails that abruptly ceased appearing in my inbox was one of the difficult adjustments.
Even more bizarre was the trip in August to visit my mother. For decades I have always stayed at Elizabeth’s house in Little Rock and would make the 2-hour drive to see my mother, and then return to the city in the evening more often than not. The trip late last summer deviated significantly from that routine. I stayed in a hotel. I went to restaurants alone where we would normally eat together. I drove out to her house once just to seek out some closure to this. I parked my car on the road in front of her closed gate and stared at her empty house with her red truck still parked out front as if nothing unusual had happened.
About two weeks after her death I lost my last surviving uncle, a man I admired and respected my entire life for his intellect, his exquisite taste in food and wine, and his grand accomplishments, not the least of which was getting out into the world and making a life for himself and his family.
A month prior to Elizabeth’s death my mother fell (again!) at home and spent the next month in hospital. While there were no broken bones that I recall it marked a major turning point in her health which has dramatically altered how we communicate.
My mother has always been an avid letter writer. Even though we would speak on the phone at least once a week she would constantly write letters as well. Often we would speak on the phone before I had time to receive the letter and she would have already told me virtually every bit of news that was in the letter, and then she would start another one. June 2017 was the last time I got a letter from her and I doubt whether she will ever write another one. Her deteriorating condition first became apparent several years ago when I visited her. I always looked forward to her home-cooked meals, classic southern cooking with vegetables, macaroni and cheese, and cornbread. I knew on that particular trip that I was unlikely to experience this delicious preparation again. She made it known that she simply did not have the energy to do it.
During the visit last August I tried to prepare something for her for a change - a pan of collard greens and a skillet of cornbread. Her days of cooking were long gone and replaced with whatever food friends might bring over, or whatever could be microwaved. Although she was largely confined to a chair she did manage to make her way to the kitchen to stick a fork in the collard greens for a taste. Then she turned up the heat a bit and left them to cook for considerably longer. She returned to test them again and again until finally they met her strict requirements. The cornbread was also good but I had neglected to sprinkle cornmeal in the skillet to keep it from sticking. And yes, she pointed that out to me. She knows her techniques well since she has probably been making skillet cornbread for eight decades.
A short time later that same afternoon I had to leave to return to my home. The goodbye was gut-wrenching as my mother’s eyes filled with tears and it was obvious she knew there was a strong possibility we might not see each other again.
She remained at home until she fell yet again on New Year’s Day of this year and suffered a shoulder injury, and a fracture if I recall. Another month in hospital and then she was transferred to a care facility where she can be monitored day and night. Since that time her communication skills have worsened. She already had stopped writing letters but this incident affected her speech. Phone conversations that would have normally lasted 20 minutes were reduced to 2-3 minutes, and usually with difficult periods of silence, a struggle to get each word out. Sometimes the conversations were incoherent as she would say things that didn’t make much sense, and sometimes no sense at all. She also was not calling me at all except for the occasional accident while she was likely fidgeting with her phone. Those were somewhat unnerving as I would answer and she would have no idea she had called me, and had no idea I was even on the line. I would only hear silence or occasionally some background noise. Ironically the intentional calls and conversations were not much of an improvement.
In short, I am living my life with a very clear understanding of what it will be like when she’s gone. No home-cooked meals, no weekly letters, and no phone communication. I have nothing but a lifetime of great memories with a wonderful mother who happens to still be alive for however long it lasts. I am at least six months overdue for another visit and it will be another strange twist as I will be staying in her house alone for the first time. She will never be able to return home to stay and I cannot even imagine she will have the energy to be taken there for even part of a day. I often think about all this and weigh the pros and cons of sudden death as opposed to a slow decline into death. None of it is easy but I guess I prefer the latter. At least you have time to prepare for it. Even so, when it finally does happen I have no doubt it will be another layer of shock and coming to terms with a new reality as opposed to having a taste of “what it’s like.” There will be a finality that is difficult to imagine.
The big question for me is whether or not I will get there to see her at least once more. And it is a difficult question to answer. I should have gone in January. It is now June. One of my co-workers recently asked me if I was making excuses not to go and it got me thinking. It certainly could seem that way to an outsider. Among my excuses has been treatment by my eye doctor for a dry eye condition with follow-up visits to the doctor every couple of weeks. However, I’ve been on a relatively stable course now for over a month. I am not certain I am up to the challenge of a 9 1/2 hour road trip. Flying would solve most that problem but I do want to drive up and collect a number of household items from the house. That could be done anytime and doesn’t need to be a priority. I have also used work as an excuse. That is absurd because I could easily take time off work for this. I also got started on a landscaping project in April and early May which was important to me but I have to wonder if it also wasn’t a convenient excuse not to take this trip.
If I were to be brutally honest with myself I would have to admit I do not look forward to the trip. I never have liked it. The drive is long and intense. When you do finally arrive you find yourself in a depressing and impoverished area of the Delta in a town that has been slowly dying since the 1970s. (An apt metaphor indeed.) Its primary claim to fame of late is the Japanese American Internment Museum - a memorial to those subjected to racism during WWII after being torn from their own homes and communities in the name of national security. On a side note, George Takei was one of the 'residents' as a child with his family and was one of the guest speakers at the opening of the museum a few years ago. He has described the experience as being ripped from his home and taken on 'vacation' to the swamps of east Arkansas. And when I find myself having to travel there my enthusiasm could best be described as similar.
My youth and early adult life was spent dreaming of the day I could escape the place and I often had resentment that my parents and grandparents had settled in the area. It was a feeling that Elizabeth and I both shared. We both grew up in the area in towns about ten minutes apart, separated by vast stretches of sprawling flat farmland amidst the heavy air of the Delta which at certain times of the year is infused with the stench of pesticides. As much as I disliked my town, hers was far worse and even poorer. We both abhorred the area and always had to force ourselves to visit. At least she lived closer and could do her visit during part of a day and return to her own home in the afternoon.
Now that my mother is living in a care facility, has difficulty hearing, and struggles at times to speak, and often sleeps, the bang for the buck so to speak has diminished in terms of quality time together. I could spend 19 hours in a car getting there and back only to have maybe two conscious hours with her and God only knows what in terms of actual conversation. I know the point is to spend that time together, whether it’s 2 hours or 15 minutes, but obviously I’m struggling with the entire situation.
Sometimes I wonder if she’s fine with the idea of not seeing me again. Maybe she would prefer to remember our times together when she had better health and mobility just as I prefer those times. I spoke to her last year about 20 minutes away from her house to let her know I was almost there. She knew how much she had deteriorated since the year before and said to me, 'well, prepare yourself to see a tired old woman'.
The tired old woman who used to sit on her porch and watch the birds was then living her life in a room with a reclining chair for a bed. The wood shutters closed tightly on the windows were a fortress against all outside beauty whether gorgeous sunshine or dreary rains. Day and night were indistinguishable in her room. Her kitchen sink which had always been open to a laundry room with a window and door to the outside now had a thick dark tapestry strung across the opening. Her retreat from the world was clearly intentional. The sensory deprivation was suffocating to me. And now the next visit will be worse because the house will not have her in it.
Yes, perhaps I am making excuses, just as I have done for the past four decades.
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