CRISIS STIRS REFLECTION ON CHERISHED MEMORIES
You'll leave the milk out.
The basement door wide open. When the call comes, you'll drop everything and run.
Ambulance and mom are words with which you'd rather never have any association.
Such things, however, are inevitable. But that doesn't make it any easier.
On the drive over, a strange fog will settle upon you as you refuse to think what might happen.
Parking. Parking. Dammit! Why is there no parking?
You're told to follow the red line. Or is it the yellow line? And there she is, propped up on a gurney. Every one of her children is present. Several of her grandchildren, too. No surprise there.
She's stable, chipper and cheerful — her usual self. It appears, however, that they've let some air out of her tires. She's smaller somehow. Or maybe it's that all that vitality is now, somehow, compressed?
The nurses love her. They chat away with us, saying, “This is how I want to be when I'm her age.”
She's being admitted to a ward. As she is wheeled out, the nurses call out to her: “Come back any time!” We all chuckle at the duality of that invitation.
I sit with my son while the ward nurses do their thing. He squeezes my hand as I lower my head to his shoulder.
I can't imagine a world without her in it.
Lord knows, I've tried. Especially in my teen years. But here we are and it's a whole other subject.
I watch over her as she sleeps and my stomach churns with long-forgotten memories. She used to sew many of our clothes, and her own, as well. The black velvet dress with the crisp white collar she made for me to wear to my first high school dance flashes in my mind. I remember, too, the raw silk drapes she “ran up” for the living room.
My mom is a do-er. She can fix just about anything. Mechanical or vegetable. And that includes people, too. I was used to coming home and finding my friends seated at her kitchen counter, discussing the intricacies of their lives. Strays and orphans, vagabonds, widows and widowers — they somehow gravitate to my mom. To that end, she's an excellent and inspired cook. She'd pore over the Time-life Foods Of The World series at our local library, churning out Moroccan tagines, Senegalese soup, or homemade bannock on any given Wednesday. Dinner for 24 on short notice was never a problem. If you could find an empty perch on the staircase, you were welcomed.
My accountant father would come home late during tax time and, unfailingly, find both her and a hot meal, waiting. From my bedroom, I could hear their murmured conversation. Their load was a heavy one. They'd both grown up poor with distinct disadvantages. They would have four children of their own but still manage to look after not just their family, but her parents and his mother, as well.
An inheritance of $3,000 combined with a government incentive program meant that they were able to build their first home. Painting and landscaping it themselves became a multiyear project. It's funny what you remember about such things. A seagull we named Danny would beg for table scraps at the window over the kitchen sink. In the unfinished basement there was a train set up on sawhorses. Neighbourhood games of Red Rover in the backyard with cookies and Kool-aid to follow. No one ever used the front door.
Another memory: I'm in third grade. The notion of life being finite is somehow front and centre in my mind. I'm crying. My mom asks what the matter is. I tell her I don't want her to die. She draws me up onto her lap and tells me that one day I'll be so busy living that I won't have time to think about death.
That moment is a crystal in my mind. I was satisfied with her answer.
But today I'm not.
Today, all I can think about is that I don't want her to die.
Ever.
Jane Macdougall is a freelance writer and former National Post columnist who lives in Vancouver. She writes on The Bookless Club every Saturday online and in The Vancouver Sun. For more of what Jane's up to, check out her website, janemacdougall.com
THIS WEEK'S QUESTION FOR READERS:
What do you wish had not been left unsaid? LAST WEEK'S QUESTION FOR READERS:
Where do you stand on the subject of punctuality?
I try desperately to be on time because it is rude to waste other people's time.
Sadly, when I am ready 10 minutes early, that's just enough time to paint my fingernails or check email (not!).
Mom said my gravestone should read: “Here lies the perennially late Lorna Blake.”