Every chapter

Returning from St. Louis a couple of weeks ago, I left the interstate to take the route through Muskogee. This was the hometown of my grandparents and my parents. As a child, I spent a week or two there every summer, staying with my maternal grandmother, "Gaga" Adams, and making the rounds to visit all the other relatives who lived in town. Gaga was the last surviving grandparent, and after she died in 1974, I had not been back to Muskogee since her funeral.

I headed straight for the cemetery, where I stopped in the little office to inquire about the location of the graves. First I found my paternal grandparents' grave and the nearby grave of my dad's sister, who died last fall at the age of 98. Then I drove to Gaga Adams' grave.

And then the tears welled up, as all the memories from so many summers washed over me. I remembered the anticipation as we neared Gaga's house, usually after the sun had already gone down. How vividly I remembered that sort of cooing sound she made, as she fussed over us, and how she smelled of face powder and Sweetheart soap as she kissed us. I remembered that we sat around her Formica kitchen table and ate vanilla ice cream with Hershey's syrup. I thought of how the whole family would sit in the little living room, and the grownups would talk, and I would amuse myself or, if my aunt was visiting, too, I would sit on the floor while she brushed my hair. And I thought of those times when Gaga took us out to her beloved Sallie Brown School, the little two room schoolhouse, once a chapel, where she began teaching at the age of 17.

And the tears ran down my cheeks as I realized that when my brothers and I are gone, there will be no more direct memories of these precious people. At some point they would be like others in this cemetery: a name on a headstone at an unvisited grave.

I came back home in a somber mood, weighed down by the thought that the real loss that comes with death is the end of a lifetime of memories, and the end of the living connection with the past. And then I happened upon John Donne's Meditation XVII, which begins, "All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated." How those words spoke to me at that moment!

Violets

I brought you two pots of violets

To brighten up your room.

One was laden with pure white flowers,

But the other had yet to bloom.

I put them on the window sill,

Where they caught the winter light.

You smiled and said, "That's good,"

Pleased by the homey sight.

We considered the barren plant:

What color would the violets be?

"I don't know," I told you softly,

"I guess we'll just wait and see."

Simple words, yet carefully chosen,

I wanted us to share expectation,

To look to a future, to hold out hope,

To banish death from consideration.

Now you're gone, the white blooms have withered,

But now pink violets have burst from the other.

Their beauty brings me bittersweet pleasure,

If only you could see them, too, Mother.

My mother's hands

Her hands are gnarled and deeply veined,
Their trembling now is still.
At unaccustomed rest they lie,
From work at last released.

Childish hands in younger days
Knew the toil of country life:
Feeding chickens, toting water,
Planting, picking, shelling, shucking.

Shell shocked soldier and Great Depression
Conspired to send her off to school.
Her hands not only wrote her lessons,
But also worked for room and board.

Independent, self-reliant,
With the inner strength her mother taught her,
With determined hands she pushed
The confining limits placed on women.

A mother's hands worked ceaselessly,
Keeping the house, keeping the books,
Sewing thousands of straight, true stitches,
Guiding her children with a straight, true heart.

In later years, her weary hands
Of necessity took over other tasks,
As touch replaced her fading vision,
And gestures augmented her jumbled speech.

Through her pain and through my sorrow,
Our hearts spoke all they had to say.
Her hands grasped mine with newfound strength,
At once both gaining and giving comfort.

And then those precious hands grow cold,
As we look into each other's eyes.
And yet, even now, I feel their warmth
As Mother's strong hands guide me home.

As the end approaches

My mother has been in the hospital for several weeks now. She had surgery, and after a few days, was sent to a skilled nursing facility for rehab, to regain her strength and her mobility. Her plan was to be home in 7 days (she's a tough little lady!). But after a few days there, she seemed to be declining. I called her on New Years Day, and I didn't even recognize her voice at first, she sounded so frail. I rushed over to the SNF, and, after spending a few minutes with her, listening to her cough and laborious breathing, I told them to send her to the ER. She was admitted to the hospital with a heartbeat that was way too high and irregular, plus a mild case of pneumonia.

On Sunday, she seemed to take a turn for the worse. It was so alarming to me and so dramatic, that I sent a message to my brother, telling him that it would be good if family members could call her that day. I really thought the end might be approaching.

When my dad died three years ago, it was sudden and unexpected. He went about his business that day: gassing up the car, checking his email, calling his sister. That evening, he died in his recliner, watching TV. We knew this was how he would have wanted to go...no hospitals, no lingering. My mother remarked many times that it would have eased his mind so to know that this was how the end would come. But, because his death came unexpectedly, I felt a lot of regret that I had never told him the things I wanted to say.

So on Sunday, I sat there next to my mother's hospital bed, as she coughed and gasped for breath and moaned, fearing that death might be near. But I couldn't bring myself to start THAT conversation, because I feared that she would think I had given up hope. But obviously she was thinking the same thing, because she opened the door for me by telling me that she wanted me to have her car. Once she said that, the tears welled up, and I began to tell her so many of the things I wanted to say....as did she. It was a conversation I will never forget.

Fortunately she turned the corner the next day and has continued to improve. She is supposed to be discharged back to the SNF today. I'm hoping that she is able to return home, and that when the end does come, it will be sudden...no lingering, no hospitals. But this time, I won't be left with the regret of things unsaid.

This and that

I've been letting my blog slide lately, I'm afraid. I'm still writing a lot of articles on Helium. I'm really enjoying it, as I'm learning quite a bit as I research various topics. Plus, I have to admit, I'm kind of competetive, so I like watching my articles move up in ranking.

I've also been feeling down. Sometimes I feel so isolated, and it seems like even if I try to reconnect with old friends, I don't have any success. I think that in the past, when I was going through trying times with my kids, I was abrasive and alienated a lot of folks. Or, maybe we just drifted apart. Anyway, on a whim, I called an old friend and we talked a long time. We were catching up on some common acquaintances, and, in an off-hand way, she said something like, "oh, I think that was when Leslie's husband died." I couldn't believe my ears. Leslie and I had been pretty good friends in the past and I had known her husband back when he first came to the US from Croatia, but we had lost touch over the last 10 years. I deeply regretted the loss of our relationship.

And meanwhile, I've had several calls over the last month or two from an administrator at the center where my mother lives, reporting that my mother has been getting very angry and almost aggressive at times with other residents and the staff. I felt like I had been transported back in time to the days when I got all those phone calls from my kids' schools about their behavior! I called her doctor and he prescribed some medication, but it wasn't effective. So I did some research online and found that "inability to control anger and aggression" had been identified as a condition that occurs in 1/3 of people who have had strokes, especially those with left brain strokes and aphasia, like my mother. The recommended treatment was the use of an SSRI anti-depressant. So I called the doctor back, he prescribed an SSRI, and, thank goodness, it seems to be helping. I'm so relieved. I know that my mother is pretty isolated, due to her severe aphasia, and I would hate to think of her spending her last years isolated even more by being unpleasant to those around her. I think it would help her outlook if our family members would keep in touch with her, and I wrote everyone an email to encourage them call or write her, but no one but my brother in Houston has done so. I just don't understand...

Sometimes it seems as if some people have so many relationships, that some become expendable. But the folks tossed aside may lose their only connections.