The original post, entitled, "Babies Mourn Alot," had been open for business for two days before I went back for a round of editing. Upon second glance, the tone of the piece seemed a little harsh, a little glaring. Also of note, often within the first 48 hours of posting a new entry I would generally receive a couple of comments from readers including (almost without fail) an email from one woman on the west coast who discovered my blog shortly after I began writing it, and became one of my biggest cheerleaders as I learned how to be a father.
After I published the post about my mother's stone dedication and my perceptions of her as a human being--silence, no feedback, no comments, nadda, not even from my wife who often gave me immediate feedback. Five days of silence later, I approached her.
"So," I said, affecting an air of nonchalance, "did you read my last blog entry?"
Jenn looked at me for one beat, two beats. "Yeeess," she said, drawing out the "e." There was a hiccough of upturn to her intonation, as one does when one is about to comment on something that one wasn't crazy about and perhaps, ever so slightly, was even dreading being asked this very question.
"Well, what did you think?" I said, already knowing, or at least suspecting.
She took a moment to gather her words: "The fact that you would write that entry, especially so soon after the stone dedication, made we want to hold you tighter and love you even more."
Pin drop.
Jenn was the picture of compassion as she said this, but was quite clearly not celebrating any literary victories on my part. My take was with the above comment, she was alluding to what she perceived to be the true source of the piece--the writer's own woundedness.
"Well," I said feeling a little hurt, a little defensive, "I tried to be balanced. I brought in some of her positives."
"Yeah, but that wasn't until the end. It came in too late. One of the best things about your writing is that you weave heart into everything you write. It balances everything out."
She was right. I pulled the piece to complete the editing process. However, before I could repost it, I received two emails from family members quite disturbed by the blog. As a writer, one has to take the criticism along with the kudos, but after receiving their emails, I felt misunderstood, accused, hurt, and, oddly, abandoned. I lost interest in editing the piece due, in part, to my not wanting to change my writing from a place of fear or a need for approval. I also didn't want to simply "stand tall" and publish what I considered to be a flawed piece as a sort of "fuck you" over a blog entry I knew I could have written more skillfully.
Grapple, grapple.
Since the inception of my blog, "Babies Mourn A lot" is the only piece I have ever written that I pulled from publication ... until tonight. I have decided to re-publish it as-is, not from a place of reaction or as a stubborn, heels-dug-in, middle finger to other people's pain, but more because tonight, as I searched the archives of "Babies Crawl Alot," I was surprised to discover that I couldn't find an entry I thought I had posted long-ago.
When my mother was in the hospital during her final days, I spent each night with her in her room, sleeping fitfully on a godawful hospital recliner, waking-up periodically to sit by her bedside, go for middle of the night walks, pray, and weep--the insomniac's two step. During those late night hours, I started to write something I dubbed, simply, "Mom Blog." My plan was to keep a journal through the entire excruciating experience of my mother's death, much as I had written my way through my grief after my father passed. I saved this painful diary to a folder on my computer desktop with the one-time aspiration to turn it into a book about the life and death of Barbara May Bender. And there it languished, alone and forlorn.
Long story short, I lost steam for the project, and then, after having (mistakenly) thought that I posted what little I had written about the experience, I forgot about it altogether. When I stumbled across it last night, it was like reconnecting with a long lost friend or a part of my heart. I re-read it and found it to be the yin to my dark eulogy's yang,"the heart" that Jenn had alluded to several months ago. What follows, then, is what I wrote as my mother lay dying, the light and the shadow. It will live into perpetuity under the original, inglorious title, "Mom Blog." Immediately following this piece, for any interested parties (but mainly for my own peace of mind), I have re-published the eulogy in all its unadorned, unedited glory. It remains entitled "Babies Mourn A Lot." The reader, of course, may chose to skip dessert after taking in the main course--and who could blame you--but consider reading it anyway.
Mom Blog
On the old Monty Python TV show, an announcer would pipe in
something like:
"For the sake of accuracy the heretofore mentioned boa
constrictor was played by Fifi, the incontinent poodle, and while the one
legged man involved in the bank heist sketch was described as being 'of the
very worst ilk,' he really could be quite nice at times, and once even
volunteered at the local
orphanage, Our Lady of the Succulent Swagger. Furthermore ... "
I always write from my own perceptions and make no claim
that my ramblings are ultimate truth or reality, though I aspire toward
accuracy in spirit if not in letter. However, now may be a good time to add a
brief correction to my last entry about my family's trip to Milwaukee. While my
perception was that Jenn took my mother's, lack of displaying a photograph
containing her visage on her coffee table personally, Jenn would disagree and
claim only that my mother's omission of her in the family gallery helped her,
Jenn, to gain clarity as to the nature of their relationship. However, we were
both a little off the mark, since in my mother's bedroom, proudly displayed on
her faux Victorian-style desk, and well within view of a person who might be
reclining on, say, a queen-sized bed against the wall, was a framed photograph
of the author and one Jennifer M. Lukesh looking handsome and beautiful,
respective, while dancing at their/our wedding.
I also alluded to my mother repeatedly saying
"Boo!" to Zinnia at their first (and last, it would appear) meeting,
and expressed my thoughts at the time, in italics, mind you, questioning that
that was all she (Barb) had to offer? The answer to this question, with no
judgment or anger toward my mother (but with some regret for not picking up how
sick she was) is yes, sadly, poignantly, that was indeed all she had to
offer. Physically and mentally,
it's hard to tell just how present Barb was during our visit, and I am working
hard to hold my feelings of assholishness at bay for how I treated this
woman--both recently and in the past. I was (and am) unspeakably glad Zinnia
and Grandma Barb got to meet.*
My mother, Barbara M. Bender, was sick then, and even sicker now, and she is,
even as I write these words, quite possibly heading toward her own demise.
Things are hanging in balance, and we have no idea how it's going to play out.
Barb might, we still hope, have one more rally in her, but for now she is
laying in an ICU bed gorked up on drugs so she doesn't yank the bi-pap mask off
her face.
Two nights ago, I spoke to my mother's long-time friend (and
erstwhile employer), C, who let me know in no uncertain terms that my mother
was "as bad as I've ever seen her" and really needed to see me. C told me that the youngest child holds
a special place in every mother's heart, and that over the years it had bothered
my mother no end (as it bothered the author) that her youngest child (i.e. me)
had never met anyone or had any kids.
I felt oddly touched by this, that my mother talked about me
to people important in her life, telling them how she was concerned about me.
It also confirmed for me that it was time to fly to Milwaukee. Linda, my
sister, had already flown in, and was--and even now, is--by our mother's
bedside. Timing is everything with this sort of thing. I had to balance my
desire to work until the last possible moment with my longing be their for my
mother if/when she needed me. To twist an analogy gifted to us from the NRA:
Better to be at a (potentially) terminally ill mother's side and not need to
be, than to not be by her side and wish I had. So here I am, in my mother's hospital room, and she is
almost certainly dying. Linda is sitting across from me, her head resting on
her hand. She is either resting or deep in thought, and our mother is lying on
the bed to my right, O2 mask on, cathaterized, and able to speak only in
halting, two word phrases.
I feel a bit mercenary writing this is while it is
happening, but it is is all I can think of to do. I have wept several times
today, including by my mother's bedside when I begged for her forgiveness for all
the ways I have treated her disrespectfully over the years; I told her how hard
it was for me to let her into my life, and I thanked her for everything she had
done for me. I don't know if she heard a word of it, but I have gone from
feeling layer upon layer of guilt to something resembling a modicum of peace...
that is, until the pain medications wears off and she starts pulling at her O2
mask--her lifeline to her body--and she begins to flail around in a wave of
break-through panic, shaking her head, and the only words thatt come to her in those times are
"No" and "I don't want to do this," and the only thing I
can think of to say to her is "Mom, breathe ... relax. It's okay."
The most profund thing that has happened all day was when
Linda said Barb as she lay (what I thought was) asleep: "Everything's
going to be alright," Linda said, to which my mother responded as lucid as
she's been all day: "I sure hope so."
And boy, did she mean it.
It is no longer a matter of if, but when. Barb's kidney's
are shutting down, and her lungs and heart are shot following a recent heart
attack combined with pulmonary fibrosis. Even her heart doctor was puzzled at
how quickly she has gone from relatively minor heart attack to death's door in
a matter of days.** The way the nurses and doctors explained it was like this:
If my mother's lungs had been strong, they would support her heart while it
repairs itself; if her heart was strong, it would keep her going while her
lungs healed; but with neither in good shape, combined with an alleged possible
overuse of prescription pain meds, these all may have contributed to where we
are tonight--with my mother in a blessed morphine cloud so the knowlege of her
impending doom doesn't drive her insane with anxiety and fear.
When I asked her cardiac doctor over the phone why my 79
year old mother was given the stress test, the doctor took on a decided
defensive edge. Over the next day, I approached a nurse and a cardiac resident
to explain to me why a woman with already compromised health would be given a
chemical stress test. The explanations made some sense even while being
completely unsatisfactory. Frankly, it all smelled (and smells) of poorly
practiced medicine topped with a heaping scoop of Cover Your Ass-ness.**
(Next morning) Family is flying in from all over the country
and world (i.e. aunt from Florida, oldest sister from Oregon, brother and his
family from Holland). Our mother is still alive, still hanging on, but she is
now on a constant morphine drip. She had been on half-hour or PRN (as needed),
but woke-up in a panic late last night, ripped the oxygen tube from her face
and nearly crawled off the bed. I had just returned from a middle-of-the-night
walk only to find my mother thrashing around, a wave of anxiety pouring off
her. Any conscious thought at this time had to have to included the subtle (or
not-so-subtle) undercurrent that she's dying and knew it. I was nearly bowled
over by her panic and gently held her down as I reached to press whatever
button I could reach to get the nurse's attention.
When the nurse finally arrived (she had been with another
patient) she--very business like--inspected the various I.V. tubes, held one up
to inspect it and tapped it with her index finger. I looked down at my still
agitated mother, back up at the nurse, down at my mother. At last, the nurse
pointed to the panel of buttons on the wall, one of which was still lit from my
effort to get someone to the room without leaving my mother by herself.
"If you want to call me," she said indicating the
nurse call button on the TV control, "you need to press this button
here," she said indicating the little red silloutette of the nurse on the
TV remote, "and not that one," she said pointing to the button on the
wall I had pressed.
"Okay, fine." I said. "Now will you please
give my mother more medication?"
"Also," she said, pausing to make eye contact over
the body of my mother. "you may want to contact your sister. It looks like
she's had a status change and may not--"
"I will talk you about this out there," I hissed,
indicating the hallway. "Now please just focus on my mother."
I went out to the hallway and paced, fuming, until the nurse
had finished. She finally came out.
"Two things," I said blocking her way to her
computer stand. "First, my mother is suppose to get morphine every half
hour. It's now been over an hour since her last dose."
"Well," she said, "I looked in on her and saw
you with a blanket over your head," half to prove that yes, she had peeked
in and half, I believe, to try to humiliate me. I had indeed wrapped myself in
a bedspread I brought from my mother's apartment and had pulled it over the top
of my head to ward off the coolness of the room.
"I believe you," I said, "but she's still
suppose to get the shot every thirty minutes. She was in such a panic by the
time you got here that she was trying to crawl off the bed."
"Well," she said, clearly of the school that they
key to an efficient defense was a good offense, "when I looked in you had
a blanket on your head and she was doing fine."
"The other thing," I said cutting her off,
"if you have any sort of status report or notice any sort of status change
that you want to share, pull me out in the hallway to tell me. And yes, I
understand my mother is highly medicated, but every once in a while she pops
out, and even heavily medicated, on some level, she can still hear. She's
already struggling with panic enough. Do not do this in front of her."
The nurse held her tongue on this one, but I could tell she
wanted to say something.
It's 9:00 A.M.
on June 11th, and I just spent about a page of dialogue relaying what is
already a meaningless exchange (although I did ask that this nurse not be
assigned to us again).***
My mother is still on the planet. She breathes, she occasionally
moans, and she sleeps, her mouth agape beneath her oxygen mask. The pretense is
over. Barbara no longer dons a blood pressure cuff, and they have removed the
circulation stockings from her calves. Her breathing is quite labored, her
kidneys are shutting down, and her belly convulses every few seconds with a
spasm of breath. Every doctor we have spoken to suggest they will make her as
comfortable as possible, medical-ese for "Your mother's dying."
In general, I didn't really like my mother very much, but I
did love her. She was a pain in the ass (on a good day), needy, paranoid, and
incredibly stubborn; but she loved her four kids and five grandkids with a
fierce love. I am having regular spells of silent weeping as I sit vigil by her
bedside. I will miss her.
(Later)
Aunt Nancy, Barb's younger sister, arrived from Florida. One could say that Barb's slow but steady decline happened during her last visit to see her sister and brother-in-law, Bob. For my mother, never the picture of flexibility, preparing for a trip--any trip--was a nerve-racking affair that was barely outweighed by her desire to see her family. She would begin to pack a full week ahead of time, by rather than alleviate her stress level, this flow of trip preparation would serve to only give her more time to get worked up. The amount of medications that she had to bring with her alone could dictated their own designated satchel. Then there was packing for every time of situation and weather even though she was going to southern Florida in the winter, and the clime was fairly dependable. Additionally, as she had aged, the logistics of actually getting her suitcase down to the lobby and arranging transport to and through the airport had become more challenging as her gait had become less sure. Between her arthritic hands, now twisted into claws, arthritic back, and dogged determination to never exercise or watch her diet, my mother's body had broken down to an extent that she now walked with her back arched forward and her arms pulled back as a counter-weight in upside-down "L's."
I remember Barb being exceptionally worked-up about this trip in particular. How was she going to get her suitcase down to the lobby for a 5:00 a.m. airport limo pick-up. For someone who now needed a walker to get from A to B and had no family in town, this was a real concern. And once she got to the airport, she was facing the change-of-life-reflecting wheelchair ride to her terminal. By the time she left, Barb was a total stressed-out mess, and she had had a "minor" heart attack by the time her plane landed, but didn't even know it. When her sister met her, Barb was tired, disorientated, and weak. Nancy new something was wrong, and the next day took her to the hospital where they discovered she'd had a coronary.
The real trouble began when she went to rehab. She picked-up a C-Diff infection--a G.I. infection that resulted in explosive diarrhea (a phrase that always cracks me up even while describing a dire circumstance), dehydration, and disorientation. C-Diff kills a lot of old people. A lot of old people.
At this point, my mother and our family began what was to become a pattern of dyke-plugging that continued for the next 1 1/2 years. Linda flew down to be with our mother. A week later, I flew down when Barb was deemed fit to fly back to Milwaukee. Prior to the trip to the airport, I went to a CVS pharmacy to pick up what looked like the most comfortable (and snug) adult diapers on the shelf while praying to dear God that my mother wouldn't have one of her "explosive episodes" while on the plane. (Later on, Barb gave the diapers a verbal thumbs up: "Ooo, these are pretty comfortable," which of course bordered on TMI, but was kinda funny too.) I assisted the fragile Barbara May into the car, checked her bag curbside, and ushered her through the airport in a wheelchair, until, at last, we boarded the plane.
We made it back to Milwaukee without incident, but little did we know this was just the beginning. The tenacious C-Diff infection recurred no less than five times over the next year. In homoepathic medicine, the cure is in the ailment. With C-Diff, the ailment is in the cure. The treatment for the bacterial infection is high doses of antibiotics, but in order to cure the C-Diff, doctors recommend that people discontinue any antibiotics to allow for the blooming of healthy intestinal flora. Each recurrence of the disease, brought with it its own share of chaos. One of the kids would get a call that my mother was back in the hospital with dehydration and disorientation, and then one of the us would scramble to fly in to be with her during her recovery and to accompany her home until she stabilized.
(Back in the hospital) Nancy had been deciding whether to fly to see her sister or go be with her daughter in California who was facing surgery herself. Like everyone, Nancy didn't want to believe how serious the situation was and at first said no, she wouldn't be coming to Milwaukee until after California, but she called back later that day to say she was on her way. When she arrived at the hospital, the visitors in the room--myself, Jimmy, Jose, the boys, parted out of deferential respect. Nancy approached my mother's hospital bed and looked down at her sister in silence for a solid minute. There was no mistaking--Barb would not be leaving the hospital alive. At last, Nancy sat down on a chair by her sister's bedside, looked at her in silence, closed her eyes, and lowered her head to the guardrail of the bed.We cleared the room to allow the two sisters a moment alone.
(Later) My brother, Jimmy, his wife, Jose, and two sons, Dani and David arrived from Holland this afternoon. Jimmy called from the rental car telling me he had arrived and wondered where to enter the hospital and park.
"Go ahead and park," I said. "I'll meet you on the corner of North and Prospect."
I caught the elevator down and was crossing the expansive hospital lawn toward North Avenue when I heard a whistle. There they were--the entire Dutch clan looking as if they had just driven from the south side of Milwaukee and instead of having just flown in from Holland where it was one in the morning and then driven a rental car through the daunting Chicago rush hour for two straight hours.
We hugged each other hello, and Jose' and I exchanged the Dutch mwah-mwah-mwah, left-right-left cheek kisses. I asked how their flight was, but the question was strangely out of place and fell flat.
"Fine," Jimmy said.
We looked at each other in silence.
"How's gramms doing?" David said, getting down to it.
"Look," I said. "It's bad. She's going down hill fast. It ... it ..."
My face contorted with grief, and I was trying not to weep. They looked down briefly and then back up.
"If she looks like she's on death's door, it's because she is," I said at last.
We took a few steps.
"I'm glad you all are here," I said.
There really is no preparing for the sight of a dying--a near death relative. The consensus reaction until the very day she died was shock.
Wait, we were just talking a few days ago. How did things get so ..."
(Next day) My mother is propped up on her side and
occasionally sucking in a breath. I had a horrible dream last night where she
was lying on a mattress in the corner of a bare room in full fledged panic,
saying over and over "I don't want to go."
"Mom, it's okay. It'll be okay. It'll be okay..."
I said ain the dream as I held her arms both to soothe and to prevent her from running away
in full-fledged terror.
(6/15/12) Barbara M. Bender died at 12:35 a.m. on Wednesday,
June 13th. My brother was asleep next to my mother's hospital bed, and I was
down the hall in the family room, having fallen asleep watching some sitcom or
other, needing a little sleep and a breather from the intensity. My intention had
been to only be there for an hour or so before going back to her room, but
instead, I was woken up by my brother's voice saying, "Tommy wake-up. Come
on!"
I staggered to my mother's room, not quite comprehending
what was going on until I saw the nurse quietly gazing up at the monitor. The
cardiac line was nearly flat, aside from a soft, green sporadic blip, and her
respiratory line had flattened out entirely. Barbs brain was still offering a
few blips, but they became fainter and fainter. Barbara's face had already
begun to draw in on itself, and she looked as peaceful as she had appeared in
years.
Somehow, after everything she had been through--the repeated
hospital visits, the 1 1/2 year battle with a C-Diff infection, and now this,
wrapping up her life confined to a walker or wheelchair and tethered to an
oxygen tank--she hadn't looked this peaceful and (she would be happy to hear)
young in years. Beneath the pale fluroscent hospital light, Jimmy, myself, and
the nurse watched in silence as
the last few waves of her brain faded to flat.
Nothing.
* As an aside, at one point during that same visit, I
slipped and mistakenly referred to my mother as Zinnia's Great Grandmother, a
title that Barb took great exception to and was quick to correct me on.
** After my mother's funeral, an old family friend was at
the post-service gathering. He raise his eyebrows when informed they had given
her this test. He was shocked, as he had had one the year before and had to
tell them to stop because his heart was trying to jump through his chest. He
said it was the most uncomfortable thing he ever experienced, and this from an
avid bike rider and hiker.
*** As a follow-up, two days ago I contacted the head of
nursing for the ICU my mother had been on. I praised the care she received on
the floor, but filed a complaint against this nurse if for no other reason than
to help any future patients she may have.
Posted: 26 Jun 2013 08:07 AM PDT
It is Father's Day Eve, a day that, if I weren't actually writing this entry, I wouldn't have been able to remotely tell the reader what date Papa's Day fell on or even which month. Jenn, out of generosity, created the space for me today to do whatever I choose, and what I want most, fair reader, is to add a little something entry-wise to Babies Crawl A lot.
Since last we spoke (Fair reader? Since last we spoke? Clearly I am still shaking the rust off my three hunt-and-peck writing fingers) much has happened, not the least of which -- okay, maybe exactly the least of which -- is I finished reading, "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters/Seymour: An Introduction." The book is a double novelette penned by my writing hero, the late, great, (and in the spirit of full disclosure, alleged lover of underaged girls and/or women very much his junior) J.D. Salinger. (See:http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/04/24/j-d-salinger-a- selfish-old-goat-but-not-a- perv/)
Salinger as much as anyone I have read, could convey a character's personality, intelligence, flaws and strengths in a single sentence, and often in the very first sentence of descriptive narrative even before the character sctually speaks. Below is an excerpt from a letter written by the fictitious, but likely at least semi-autobiographical Seymour Glass to his narrator brother and writer, Buddy. He was commenting on Buddy's newest story, as he always did after his brother read to to him aloud. In the letter, Seymour wanted to explain to Buddy why he had reacted with mysterious mirth when he saw that his brother had put "Writer" as his profession on his enlistment paperwork during World War II:
Do you know what I was smiling at? You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It’s never been anything but your religion. Never. I’m a little over-excited now. Since it is your religion, do you know what you will be asked when you die? But let me tell you first what you won’t be asked. You won’t be asked if you were working on a wonderful, moving piece of writing when you died. You won’t be asked if it was long or short, sad or funny, published or unpublished. You won’t be asked if you were in good or bad form while you were working on it. You won’t even be asked if it was the one piece of writing you would have been working on if you had known your time would be up when it was finished--I think only poor Soren K. will get asked that. I’m so sure you’ll get asked only two questions. Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out? If only you knew how easy it would be for you to say yes to both questions. If only you’d remember before ever you sit down to write that you’ve been a reader long before you were ever a writer. You simply fix that fact in your mind, then sit very still and ask yourself, as a reader, what piece of writing in all the world Buddy Glass would most want to read if he had his heart’s choice. The next step is terrible, but so simple I can hardly believe it as I write it. You just sit down shamelessly and write the thing yourself. I won’t even underline that. It’s too important to be underlined. Oh, dare to do it, Buddy! Trust your heart. You're a deserving craftsman. It would never betray you. Good night. I'm feeling very much over excited right now, and a little dramatic, but I think I'd give almost anything on earth to see you writing a something, an anything, a story, a poem, a tree, that was really and truly after you're own heart. The Bank Dick is playing at the Thalia. Lets take the whole bunch tomorrow night. Love, S. (From “Seymour: An Introduction”)
I find Seymour's/J.D's advice to be inspiring, and, in fact, used it to write a book about
the life and death of my father. Too, it makes me wonder if the secret to following our Joseph Cambell-ian bliss is as easy as that--asking one's self how we/I best wish to serve the world and then shamelessly making it happen. I have great respect and awe for the earth shakers of the world, and J.D., the reclusive bastard, wrote at least one masterpiece (and no, it wasn't "Catcher"*), and three other pieces of work that had a definite (if a somewhat obscure) register on the collective, literary Richter scale.
* * *Last weekend was my mother's stone dedication. Benders converged on that center of mourning and rending of garments--Milwaukee, I'm afraid--from all over the world. Okay, from New Mexico, New Jersey, and Holland. We were there to honor the memory of our dearly departed mother. Sister, Lindala, organized the service, an informal affair attended by Barbara's three families--one biological, and two adopted--both Milwaukee-based. Jill had been a close friend of my sister Linda growing up and had known my mother for 40 plus years. Barbara's other family was headed by Cathy L., a sharp minded, big hearted, divorcee for whom my mother had provided childcare for 10 years give or take. C. told me a few years back that she had kept my mother on as long as she did--until her kids had reached their middle teens--out of loyalty, until her kids, now fairly grown, had informed her that they were now taking care of their caregiver more than she them. Cathy said she, of course, had known this, but couldn't get herself to lay my mother off. (How kind.)Barb spent virtually every holiday with Jill and her family, and apparently was known far and wide (okay, at least far) for her jello mold. It's one of those inside jokes I had no idea even existed until, at her memorial service, I heard several people allude to the dessert with knowing smiles. The other thing that my mother was known far (and this time wide) for, was--no surprise--her orneriness. Barbara Bender, my mother, lacked a certain ... how shall I put this--she lacked a filter that, for many, serves as a guide to a certain sense of tact. Additionally, she was renowned, I repeat, RENOWNED for her bluntness in the way that often garnered the adjective "Sassy" (a word I hate). But sassiness gets old very quickly unless you are the rare person for whom it is an integral part of your personality. In those cases, the sassiness is so embedded in ones fiber, so uncontrived, so ... understated, that there isn't anything about it that whiffs of phoniness or ego. Ironically, this pretty much describes Barb's younger sister, my aunt, who I will be seeing at a wedding next week. Where Barb aspired to toughness (which mostly came across as bluster), my aunt was/is the real, big hearted deal. And underneath the bluster, as most of my mother's family and erstwhile adopted families were well aware, was fear and hunger.
Ostensibly, to those who were one or two tiers down from family, Barb was feisty and outspoken. To the inner circle--in fact, let me speak for myself (an inner circle of one), my mother could be, and not infrequently was, just plain mean. She had been a bully when we were kids, and to my chagrin and surprise, appeared to have remained so into her dotage. This took the form of bossing her grandsons around when they were in town (or at least trying to) and, to the extent that they let her get close, her granddaughters. This is no axe grinding here. What it is, pure and simple, is a goddamn shame. Barb could reign herself in for short periods of time, but manners and delicacy, subtlety and respect were, for her, foreign languages. She could speak them haltingly and with great effort, before--water being water--Barb would find her own level and fall back into her most fluent language.
It is hard to relay the exact effect my mother had on family members, particularly her progeny, and I am debating whether or not to even give it a try. I know it is considered poor form and/or plain insensitivity to talk ... not exactly "poorly"of one's recently deceased mother, but to talk critically of the dearly departed. It's risky stuff. On the other hand, to paint Barb as a minor saint or even an emotionally healthy person, would be disingenuous. She was depressed and fragile much of her life and likely personality disordered to boot. Early on, as a young mother and deeply impacted by her father's premature death at the age of 51, my mother's suffering took the form of rage and immaturity. Later on, her anger had more the look of manipulation, only the kind that was nearly invisible to the untrained eye while still being potent and capable of inducing unreasonable (or seemingly unreasonable) anger in its recipient.
Two years ago, my 29 year old niece, T., who was in the country visiting from Israel, decided--brave soul that she is--to visit, on her own, her grandmother, one Barbara May Bender. By herself. Alone. Without a net. My niece knew that her grandmother was doing poorly, and she wanted to see her before anything happened, i.e. before she died. From this place of altruism my niece sallied forth.
From what I understand, by the end of the second day, this lovely, compassionate, kind-hearted, dynamic young woman was ready to help her grandmother crossover to the other side herself, bodily if necessary. As a long-time bachelor, virtually all of my visits with my mother were hombre-a-mama'. And while I am not looking for a badge of honor (no matter how deserving I may be), I felt oddly validated by my niece's response. Barb was a bottomless pit, longing to be filled with love and acceptance, but making loving her in person a risky affair. One generally had to be willing to sustain ten emotional kidney punches before even a single act of love was proffered. Thus, when it came to showing one where one balked at love, my mother was a great teacher.
(I will now utilize the subtle literary technique of the segue to shift gears and focus on some of my mother's positive traits)
And speaking of of greatness, here is where my mother, Barbra May Bender let all her stars out. She could be genuinely tough, but her toughness came across best, at it's most shining, when she wasn't trying to be, but more, when she was in her "When I Am Old, I Shall Wear Purple" mood. She had a sharp wit and tongue that, had she talked to the general public that way when she was but a young lass, she would have raised any number of eyebrows if not actually had people muttering under their breath. As a crone, Barb'srudenesssassiness was coming from a hunchbacked septuagenarian, and people readily dismissed it with indulgent smiles and hop-to-it service.
My mother was a voracious reader. She loved movies and bridge, and from what two people said at the stone dedication, she loved her children (one fourth of whom is writing to you from an extra deep, Houston Rocket couch) with an abiding love. Once the obligatory day two argument was out of the way, Barb could be quite generous. One of her greatest super powers was her dogged, consistent distaste for anything new or risky. If the reader thinks I am being sarcastic in referring to my mother's fear of the unknown as a strength, rest assured I am not. Barb was quite pure in who she was, so much so that one could set one's watch by her reactions to any given situation. For example, if one was ever in need of unsolicited advice about, well, almost any topic, she was your woman. She treated every trip out of state as if she were packing for India, (i.e. she'd get just the teensiest bit nervous), and she could blurt out social faux pax at any moment and/or any event. I know all of this risks smelling of a backhanded compliment, but the author is sincere: Without the all of the above qualities and many, many more, there would have been no Barbara May Bender.
When we got to the cemetery, Jenn was in the back of the rental car with Zinnia, and my mother's friend and ex-employer, Cathy, arrived shortly thereafter. We chatted about this and that as Zinnia, hung out between my legs. Linda arrived shortly thereafter and joined the fray just as Zinnia had started to explore. I will say, to paint an even handed picture, that Cathy and I had been standing in front of my mother's gravestone, perhaps six feet away. However, with all of the interesting plots she could have explored, Zinnia went right to her grandmother's site and climbed onto the marble ridge at the base of the gravestone. Z. did not go to the right side of the stone, towards her great grandfather's half; she didn't go looking for her mama (as she often does in new situations), nor did she--with so many interesting things to explore--try to simply wander off on her own. She went towards her grandma.
Linda, appreciating a good minor miracle (aka a coincidence to the general public) when she sees one, took note of the event and brought it to the writer's attention. I had already noticed it, but had long ago trained myself to--and please, steel yourself for a verbal loopty-loop here--not to not expect miracles. In other words, according to the Course of Miracles, miracles do not only exist, they are our birthright. It was a miracle that all of Barb's kids and most of her grand kids made it to Milwaukee before she died; it was a miracle that she lived through the C-Diff infection which kills so many elderly folks; it was a miracle that her oldest living grandchild decided discretion was the better part of valor when she chose not to smother her beloved grandmother with a pillow; it was a miracle that--by most accounts from family members--this extremely challenging person, as it turned out, was the main glue point in the Bender family matrix; and it was a miracle that I didn't start weeping during a session last week when a client said something that triggered a memory of my mother, lying there, unconscious and in her hospital bed, so close to death, and then after, the inanimate object that was once her body, now a breathless corpse, beautiful and still.
*"Franny and Zooey"
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