Death? The Second Time’s a Charm
I got one death wrong, very wrong, and I did the second one better.
When my mother died in her late sixties, it was a shock in the wake of a premonition with the kicker that I would now become my father’s caretaker — he who had just received an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. I experienced the memorial services as a distant alien who was gathering intelligence on human behavior during stress. My mother was trim, ate healthy, walked miles every day. And yet, earlier decades with cigarettes doomed her.
We had a fraught relationship that began in adolescence and settled somewhat before she passed. Surely, she loved me, as I did her, though there were tensions about who I was in the world, the choices I made, that I had squandered some natural beauty she imagined I had for a more difficult life when it would be so easy for me to marry a doctor and focus on making meatballs. Instead, I had married a man with two young children, started my own business, and followed my internal drummer’s beat to a Unitarian congregation, forsaking our Catholic traditions. But still, when I gave birth to my son, she redeemed herself in my eyes; I had never seen such joy, unrestrained adoration towards this new life. She visited often, sleeping in a guest room where his crib was the main draw. She loved to wake in the morning to his gurgling songs as he held the railing watching his grandparents sleep. She would tend to his morning diaper and hold him in her arms as one might clench a Wimbledon trophy in the last match ever to be played.
One September Saturday, I was in a local mall shopping for suitable clothing to go on a business trip to Rome with my husband. While strolling the aisles in search of a dress that woudn’t wrinkle, I was overcome with a sense of dread. Extreme dread. Dread that led me to the pay phones on Macy’s third floor where, in the presence of the irritated people waiting in the customer service line, I phoned my husband and declared, “Someone is going to die.” This actually happened. “Are you and Greg okay?” Yes, they were watching the Muppets. All was good. I drove home, shaken up, and the next morning I called my parents at ten in the morning. When my father answered, I knew it was over. My father never answered the phone, part of his creeping dementia. “Where’s Mom?” When he explained that she was on the kitchen floor and wouldn’t get up, I now understood where the premonition was pointing. He hadn’t called 911 so I did but it was too late. Part way through a reboot with my mother, she up and died.
At her services, two aunts on each side of my family approached me when no one else was around. Each said the same thing to me, which was uncanny, “Your mother would like you to have her china.” It seems that in the months before her death, though she appeared to be in good health, she mentioned to each of them that if anything happened to her, I was to get her china. So, we each had premonitions. And lest you think that I was singled out above my three siblings, my unconventional life choices had led me not to get china while my brothers and sister had dutifully done so as part of wedding tradition. She wanted to make me whole.
The shock of her death and the burden that my father presented combined to mute me during the somber days after her passing. I had no words at the mass, couldn’t write a reflection, was at a loss in every sense. I missed marking the moment. I got it wrong but it was all I had.
My father’s decline unfolded over the years as we worked to find suitable care. It was imperfect and crushingly sad. He was a man of such strength, of such solid character that to watch him lose his memory, his words, to lose the skills of eating and toileting was beyond painful. He didn’t know me, he didn’t know any of us, and I continued to visit him in his last post in an Alzheimer’s facility over the border in Pennsylvania. I did his death better. Nine years into his decline, I could see that he didn’t have long, and I took my worn copy of Tuesdays with Morrie to his place and read to him from it. After telling of Morrie’s fine character, I shared with my father stories of his own goodness — how he could remove my Band-Aid without making me wince, how he could brush my hair and release the knots without a snag. In sixth grade, he helped me make a pulley for a science project in his workroom in the basement where his ripening cigars filled the space with a peaty stink. We made a small flagpole together and then we painted the pole gold, and it was one of the greatest undertakings I’d ever experienced. With four kids and two jobs, he didn’t have much time for side work, but he had made the time for me. And I told him this story as I sat by his bed, as he looked at the ceiling with his mouth locked open and his eyes vacant but still, I told him what he meant to me. He was at the end of his days; I left him that night and whispered in his ear, “Dad, your work here is done. Best father ever.” And early the next morning, maybe it was two or three, we received a call that he had passed. It was my birthday.
At his service, my sister and I elbowed our way into giving a eulogy of sorts, against the wishes of the priest who had no knowledge of my father or any interest in learning more. We asserted ourselves and told stories of his nice ways. “Find your Hawaii and go there now,” was my punchline as I described my father’s humble spirit and his only known unfulfilled dream to visit Hawaii again, a place he had been stationed during WWII. At the luncheon after the burial, we passed around a bottle of Dewar’s and shared taralles — his small daily delights — and toasted him — the siblings and our children, cousins and family friends.
What hasn’t been said is that in the months prior to my mother’s sudden death, she had often complained about my father’s decline — that he would sit at his desk for hours to pay one bill, that he was becoming belligerent even to the point of bruising her. I could not hear her. My father was the gentlest man I’d ever known, he was good beyond any measure. Of whom was she speaking? In not acknowledging her turmoil, I missed an opportunity to show up for her, to be a good daughter. When he came to live with me after her death, I could see the bitter truth in all that she said. So, I not only got her death wrong, but I missed something important when she was living too.
When my marriage broke up years later, there was the matter of my mother’s china. Living in a six-hundred square-foot apartment, I have no breakfront, nothing resembling a china cabinet in size or utility. But with the help of my friend Ro, we wrapped it carefully and trucked it into my Manhattan home. The day we transported it happened to be my birthday. How did my mother know it would make me whole? It has. I use the lovely cups for tea and the plates when there’s more than one for dinner. They actively grace my life in the day to day.
It’s too late to say the things I wanted to tell my mother before she died, to tell others of her gifts when she lay in a coffin. She would be so proud of the toddler grandson whose growth she missed. He’s a man of impeccable character like his grandfather before him, so smart and funny to his core, an incredible cook, loyal to all. Her wish skipped a generation — turns out he’s the one who married a doctor. A surgeon, no less. She was right about most things I’ve come to believe. That you bring your best to work, that you care for the family and do the laundry with skill, never neglecting to pair the socks correctly. That enjoying a Jersey tomato in August is a treat and so is putting your feet up at the end of a workday to browse the inky pages of the Star Ledger.
She was a tough cookie, unafraid of a wasp in the bedroom or bullies in real life. She had strong opinions and incredible instincts for choosing a solid path. I goofed up my own early adulthood with its missteps and abandoned dreams. Somewhere along the way I found the footing of a bold woman determined to make the most of her life, I found the footing of my mother. I wonder now if she were here to read “My Treehouse Life” — to learn about my further journey — I wonder if she might turn to me and say: Now, there’s my girl.
