Departure

She’d asked for me.  My mother was in palliative care outside of Toronto after being diagnosed with stage 4 cancer - liver, lungs, kidneys.  She was 89.  I called my sister, Elizabeth, to see how she was doing.  Elizabeth had arrived the week before to help her get settled in the hospital.  Both of us had moved to the States to get away from our family but visited her a few times a year, sometimes with each other, sometimes alone.

“She asked for you.” 

“Oh, that’s a big deal, I’ll come then.” 

“Yeah, she said, where’s Jo-Ann?” 

“Okay, I have to help Brennan get ready for his math exam then I’ll fly there on Thursday.”  I booked my flight outside Starbucks, the Denver sun warmer than usual for May.

My son hated math. “What’s the point?” he’d ask.  He was 14, brilliant at music and art, an amazing writer, but didn’t see how math could ever be of any use.  “I have a calculator on my phone,” he’d concluded.  Math had been my best subject.  With the chaos and confusion of an alcoholic family, math gave me answers – neat, reliable – it was somewhere I could control the pieces, gratified with the process. 

I put Brennan’s needs above my mother’s - logical, the right thing to do – but it had taken a lifetime of Alanon meetings and therapy to not drop everything and tend to her.  She had that kind of influence over me, playing on my guilt as if I were the parent and she, the child.  “Oh, I wish you lived closer.  You could help me with my computer.”  I was glad I didn’t. 

Growing up, my siblings and I had to endure our parent’s drunk, repetitive, violent fights – there were nights we’d hardly sleep.  In first grade, I woke up after class had been let out.  My teacher, Mrs. McAdam, was kind and let me sleep with my head on the desk.  When I was a teenager, I’d try to reason with my mother when she was drunk.  She would become a different person - belligerent, arrogant – and if she was losing an argument she’d slur, “Who do you think you are, Jesus Christ?” and laugh as if she was being clever.  I never understood what that meant.

birth

My mother told the story so often, I knew it by heart.  When I found out I was pregnant with Jo-Ann, I thought, ‘Win is going to kill me… one more mouth to feed.’  So, I got a bucket and began to scrub the walls and ceilings.  The next week I went to the doctor and he said, “Mrs. Birch, you are on the verge of having a massive miscarriage.” He reached in with two fingers and tilted my uterus back.  Some months later Jo-Ann was born – downy soft hair, big brown eyes and perfectly poised hands – such a beautiful baby.  When I reached my thirties, I asked her to stop telling the story. Oh, she said.

I’m all for a woman’s right to choose, but once the kid is born, maybe keep it to yourself.

As I sat on the plane, I pulled out my journal and started writing.  Something I’d learned in recovery – a daily practice – sometimes a light check-in to affirm I was okay, sometimes hard journaling where the pen would tear through the pages.  It was my mother who inspired me to join a poetry writing group.  My mother had always been a good storyteller and was taking a creative writing class to memorialize her past. My son was a baby, and I needed a creative outlet that took me out only one night a week. 

I started writing prose and poetry, really as a way to sort out the rage, and after a few years we had gathered enough to self-publish a book.  I paid for the publishing and designed the cover, even organized it so that her stories were first in the book.  It was my gift to her.  She was in her seventies by then and working on her fourth university degree.  She showed the book to her favorite professor, Finn.  He had liked my writing and told her so. Uh, oh.

My mother hadn’t believed my grievances when I’d bring them up.  “Mum, you came into my bedroom when I was 13 and hit me while I was asleep because a neighbor misidentified me in a group of kids at a bus stop.”  “Oh nonsense,” she would say.  Then would add, “You were no angel you know.”  Strangely, she did believe what I wrote as if the printed word held more weight than what was spoken.  She was from a generation where what was written was sacred, somehow true.  Now with Finn’s vote of confidence, she begrudgingly took my writing seriously.  Some of my stories hurt her, but after the pain wore off, she eventually apologized to me.  This was really something, I may have been the only one of her five children who broke through - she and I forgave each other as best we could.

mud hens

I hadn’t been naked in front of my mother since I was five years old.  This year we took her for her first time to Calistoga.  Mum, do you want to try a mud bath?  When in Rome, she answered, although she did make it clear to the receptionist, in a low and sturdy tone, I will not remove my wig.  After putting our clothes in separate lockers, we wrapped ourselves in beige flannel sheets, donned our hair caps and waited beside the glass brick wall separating us from the variety of offered baths.  Are you nervous Mum?  Oh no, I’m a trooper.  Carmen, our bath guide, led us to the twin tubs filled with the famous black-brown mud, the air, pungent with peat and sulfur.  We dropped our sheets and wriggled down into our respective tubs.  Carmen gave us lemon ice water in wax cups and laid cool cloths upon our heads.  As the moments passed, my limbs jutted out of the mud one by one in an attempt to cool down.  Are you alright Mum?  Fine, she answered sipping water calmly.  A timer rang and Carmen instructed us to sit up and use our arms to push ourselves up and out.  I quickly got to my stall and was moving the flexible showerhead to places the sun rarely shines when Carmen asked, Can you please come and help your mother?  With Carmen and I on each arm, and another bath guide coaching, we made a few attempts at pulling my mother out, each with a rousing 1-2-3 from me.  Then Carmen suggested my mother try throwing her left leg over the side and rolling out, but that would require more arm strength.  Finally, Carmen’s eyes met mine and she commanded, You must hook both of your arms under hers and pull.  I planted my feet at the head of the tub, hooked both arms, my full, naked chest against my mother’s back and with all my strength pulled as Carmen cheered, Push with your feet, push with your feet.  There was an audible pop and out my mother emerged, completely unphased.  Carmen led us to our shower stalls, and with the last bit of shyness burning off me like morning fog, I gently sprayed the mud from Mum’s neck, back and legs.  My love for her traveled to someplace unknown, twisting my heart in a new direction.  I held her hand as Carmen led us to our next station, a pair of bubbling mineral baths, side by side.

Elizabeth picked me up at the airport and took me to my brother’s house.  It was 10 pm, he was drinking coffee, trying to sober up.  “Ooh, you don’t want to see her.  She’s like a shriveled-up troll.” His face crinkled in disgust.

I barely slept, afraid to witness her now that she was so close to the end.  I’d seen her the month before, in April, when she was just a yellow old woman in the hospital ward having tests done.  Now in palliative care, they’d stopped giving her food and water, and she was unconscious.

The last time I’d spoken to her was on the phone the week before.  She’d arranged through my brother’s wife to be in palliative care until the end.  She was on her way to the hospital and joked with Elizabeth and me that she didn’t have the right nightie to die in, “Mine are either sheer or have various leopard patterns.  What will the nurses think?”  We laughed, of course.  “Now I don’t want you girls to worry, I have a plan.  I’m happy, I have a plan, I don’t want you to worry.”

On the way to the hospital, we took time to try to return the rental car because it smelled of cat pee.  My mother lay close to death, and we were trying to negotiate a new car.  “I think we’re stalling.  Let’s go,” I said to Elizabeth.  We gave up and headed towards her.  Elizabeth had bought a pass to the parking garage, thinking she might be coming for several weeks. 

My mouth was dry, stomach churning as I mustered up the courage to see her.  God help me.  We entered the hospital room, she looked like she was sleeping but seemed to be working to hang on.  Her mouth was open, breathing audible, eyes closed.  She was the only patient in the room, although it was meant for two - I think she was glad to be alone.  Attached to the side of her bed was a catheter bag, brown fluid filling it halfway.

Now that she was so close to death, I could only remember her goodness - she’d believed in fairy tales and Christmas and childhood.  Ordered chocolate dessert with a rascally grin.  She was funny, smart and attractive, like Grace Kelly, with blue eyes and flawless skin.  She had an Irish mysticism, something magical.  She’d read everything, was a friend and had been kind to me when it counted. 

dentist

After he’d examined me, my small hands holding the brown leather arm rests, smell of Novocain constricting my tummy,

the dentist stood in the doorway, explained to my mother how it was a baby molar, She’ll get her permanent one soon enough. 

She was pretty with lipstick, hairdo from the salon, wool coat over her arm.  She glanced at me while he whispered, a tear rolled down my cheek.

Afterwards she took me to Simpson Sears, the gauze wad still bloody in my mouth, let me pick a stuffed cat, fuzzy hands and feet sticking out from overalls. 

Holding the toy against my face, my tongue searching the empty socket, she drove me home through the frozen Winnipeg night. 

After my father died, my mother would travel and visit us for the holidays every year.  My wife and I sang in a gospel choir, there was always a big show on Christmas Eve.  My mother would smile, swinging her hips to the music, clapping her hands on the offbeats, one and three. 

And when Brennan was diagnosed with a couple of learning disabilities, I sat on her couch and she asked me, “Tell me what it really is?”  On her knees in front of me, she held my hands, as I explained about ADHD and slow auditory processing.  She cried along with me, “He’ll be alright Jo-Ann.  He’ll be alright.”

I put my phone on the hospital bed, played a song she loved and sat with her.  One of my mother’s friends arrived, which was awkward, really just wrong, so Elizabeth took the friend out into the hall and left my mother and I alone with each other.

Moving to the non-catheter bag side of the bed, I closed my eyes and talked to her silently through my thoughts.  The room was warm, the air still.  I reminded her that she had loved well in her life, that there were people waiting for her on the other side – her parents, her brother, friends, my father.  I told her there was nowhere else to go but into more love – big love mum, big love. 

As I stayed with these thoughts, comforting us both, I followed her breath.  I heard her breathing move to half the speed it had been.  I peeked, she seemed okay.  Closing my eyes again, I continued affirming love to her and listened until she took that last breath, a slight push on the exhale.

I opened my eyes.  All movement had stopped.  I gave it a couple of beats to see if she might breathe again, then I felt her spirit move through me, like a wind or electricity, up and out of the room.  Although I’d never been present for someone’s death, it felt like I was doing it for thousandth time - both extraordinary and ordinary at once.

I spent a few moments with her body.  Her grey hair, combed from one side to the other, like bald men when they are trying to hide the balding.  Her denture and glasses were on the bedside table.  Rings still on her fingers. I went to the hallway, “She’s gone.” 

“Oh my God, she waited for you,” said Elizabeth.

The friend scurried off as we came back into the room.  Elizabeth placed the wig on my mother’s head, a little crooked.  Then we stood arm in arm at the foot of the bed, “That was our mother,” she said.