The Furious Spinner

I wrote this on the train on my way home to be with my family and bury my mother. It's nearly a week later and much has happened. I haven't reread this since I was on the train, mostly because I think I'll change something, because I was so raw then, and I'm not quite as raw now, and I think it should stand on it's own. I have so much appreciated your emails and letters. Somehow it helps to know that people care. Please don't take it personally if I haven't responded. My brain is kind of on hiatus right now. I have such dear readers and friends, and it's felt good to know you're out there. I know so many of you have gone through the same thing. I am not unique in this, unfortunately. I'm still in Michigan and will be here for a while longer. Take care, Spinners.

I’m on a train, stopped, somewhere in Montana. To the north, snow dusts the furrowed earth. Away from the fields, the ground is grass-blond. The sky is milky blue. I woke this morning and felt like it was all a dream. My mom can’t be dead. She was alive yesterday. Yesterday. How could she die just like that? I called Mario, sobbing. ‘Why am I on this goddamned train? Shoulda gotten on a fucking airplane!’ I want to make it all better for my father, who weeps and says he should have been able to do something, should have fixed it, should have saved our mother for us. Now we are motherless.

When I was a child, I believed my father could do anything, but he was not responsible for my mother living or dying.

And the truth of it, of her death, is slippery. They thought it was pneumonia at first and then congestive heart failure, which means she was probably walking around with it for a while and didn’t know. Why? Because she has asthma? Had asthma. Those of us with lung issues often feel weird, our lungs, our chest. Maybe she couldn’t tell. Thought she had a cold. Flu. Who goes to the doctor for every Tom, Dick, and Harry cold? Who could know? (Please say no one could have known, nothing could have been done.) And now she’s dead.

Yesterday my father wandered around the funeral home, and he found my mother on a stretcher, waiting for them to do those things they do. As my sister told me this, I could see him in my mind’s eye. His quick short strides. Him looking away from his sorrow, to the right, for a moment. Trying not to think about what was happening. And then he found my mother, and he hugged her, kissed her. My sister said, ‘we can come back every day, dad, until the funeral if you like, if it’ll make you feel better.’

She told me mom looked peaceful.

Mom’s all gone.

Fuck.

Mario said, ‘there should be something in between dying from a long painful illness and dying so quickly and unexpectedly. I said, ‘yeah, when you’re 100 years old and you die in your sleep.’ Mario said, ‘and your kids are senile so they don’t know you’re dead.’ We sat in the dark in our car, down by the lumber yard, near the railroad tracks, waiting for the train.

When the train came, a big dark man leaned out of one of the open doors and called, “Mrs. Kim?” I laughed. I suddenly felt Korean. I kissed Mario goodbye and got on the train. In my room, I asked the big man to call me Kim. He said, ‘as long as there is a Mrs. in front of it.’

The conductor, a small Irishman with a ruddy complexion, came to my room so I could pay for the ticket. He said, ‘did they tell you how much this will cost?’ He seemed a bit incredulous. Was I really going to pay that? And I said, ‘my mom just died and I need to sleep.’ As though I’d gotten on this train to sleep because my momma died. Taking a train ride to sleep. He said he was sorry and he took my credit card. Later he came back to finish the paperwork on my ticket. I asked him to sit down and he did. When he noticed the date, he said, ‘December 7th. It’s Pearl Harbor Day.’ I said, ‘Yep, what a terrible day to die.’ I immediately flashed onto the ships in Pearl Harbor and thought of all the people who had died that day. Why on Earth had I said that? Why was Pearl Harbor Day any better or worse than any other day? When he was finished with my ticket, the conductor stayed and told me stories of Alaska, about some of the characters he knew when he lived there. I sat listening to his stories, smiling, and I let the train and his words rock me, soothe me. I appreciated his kindness. I hoped I could remember some of the stories to tell my father.

The Mrs. Kim man—I’ll call him Gabriel, Mr. Gabriel—wanted to bring me a cold plate. I didn’t think I would eat it, but I let him bring it anyway. Later I walked to the observation car and handed it to three young men. ‘There’s nothing wrong with it,’ I said, ‘my mom just died and I’m not hungry.’ ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ one of them said, and I realized I’d said that out loud again, about my mom dying. Why do I keep saying it? It can’t be true. Can’t be real. ‘No,’ I told them, ‘I just mean, that’s why I didn’t eat it; it’s perfectly good.’ They offer to pay for it. ‘No! Just enjoy it. I hate waste.’

When I can get phone reception, I talk to my sisters and father. I feel bad I’m not there. I feel weak for not flying. But that’s the way it is. My mother being dead is new and traumatic enough. I didn’t want the plane ride on top of it. Mom would understand. She didn’t fly, either.

And what things did we both miss in our lives because of our fears? I’ll change, I’ll change. Do I have to do it today?

I lay in bed with my hepa filter whirring next to me while I watched Seabiscuit on my computer. I love the story of Seabiscuit, the small broken-down horse who, during the Depression, became famous and well-loved for winning races. I love the movie, too. About down and outers getting up again and thriving. My mom was a Depression child, and her father died when she was twelve. She knew what it was like to be very poor, and she didn’t like it. She dropped out of high school to help support her family. Later, when I was in high school, she went back and got her diploma. She was an artist when I was younger. She once painted a nude woman on our bedroom wall. And she loved to dance. In the sixties, she’d play Johnny Cash on the hi-fi and sing along with him while I rolled my eyes and thought, ‘Mommmm. How embarrassing.’ And she told me to always write in ink because pencil fades and one day when I was a famous writer, people would want to read what I wrote when I was a girl.

I turned off Seabiscuit and I tried to sleep. I kept thinking about my mother and all the things I didn’t know about her and that I would never know about her now.

At one point in the night, it seemed as though my mother was there, sitting at the end of my bed, looking out the window. I said, ‘Mom, can I open the curtains for you so you can see better?’ She said, ‘No, I can see fine.’ And then I fell to sleep.

Shhhhh.

Did she whisper in my ear as I slept. It’s all right, darlin’. It’s all right.

I remembered sitting at the kitchen table with my mother in October and showing her my photographs from my to D.C. trip. I had taken snapshots of some Mary Cassatt paintings, mostly to show her. She called to my father to show him the one with the girl in the green slouching in green chairs. A few minutes later she said to me, ‘You know I really love you, don’t you?’ It was a funny thing for her to say. As though she really wanted me to know. ‘And I love you, too, Mom,’ I said, and I kissed the top of her head, just like I used to when I was a girl.

I also remembered walking with her and my father up some stairs when I was home, and she had to stop to rest. She said, ‘I shouldn’t be so tired.’ I didn’t think anything of it then. I often get tired going up stairs, and my mother is 78 years old. But now I wish I had pressed the issue. I should have done something...

As though I had that power.

Some people believe everything happens for a reason. Well, sure, things happen for a reason. There is an explanation for everything. But I don’t think that’s what people mean when they say that.

I dreamed they were spraying pesticides on the train and they accidentally sprayed me. Little welts popped up on my arm where the poison touched me

In the morning it feels like I’m in a nightmare. I call my father and say hello and start to cry. I don’t mean to. And he cries. He should have fixed it, he says. ‘I feel so bad I couldn’t save her for you kids.’ Oh man. We keep talking. I pray silently that the phone doesn’t go out, that he gets to say everything he needs to say. A coyote—or a wolf—walks across the field followed by four deer or pronghorn. Or is it the other way around. I can’t tell the details because I’m too busy trying to keep the ether phones in tact. It works. We talk until his battery starts to die.

Mario urges me to go eat breakfast, so I go to the dining car. I ask the host if I can start out sitting by myself. The question seems to irritate the host. He wants to sit me with a talkative blond mom and her yelling three year old and another man. I stand at the table and the boy screams, so the host takes me to another table without me having to say another word. He sits the next woman who comes in with me. She’s on her way to visit her brother in North Dakota. She laughs a lot, quietly, a strange childish laugh. I feel easy with her. She doesn’t ask me lots of questions and she likes looking out the window with me. She doesn’t seem to understand everything I say and I wonder if she’s deaf, at first, but then I realize it just takes her a while to process what I say. Or something.

She asks me if the sleeping cars are expensive. I say yes. ‘Maybe they’d make an exception for me because I have a disability,’ she wonders. ‘Maybe,’ I say. She talks in a singsong, like so many Native Americans. When I find out she’s originally from North Dakota, I ask if she’s Lakota. She nods and says, ‘Chippewa and a little Irish.’ I watch her. My mother looked Native. Whenever I was with older Yakama Nation women, I felt like I was sitting with my mother.

My breakfast mate eats oatmeal with a roll. She holds up the roll. ‘I don’t like my bread wet,’ she says. ‘Me, neither,’ I say. I put Tabasco on my well-scrambled eggs. ‘Do you want some for your oatmeal?’ I ask. ‘Noooo,’ she says. ‘I’ll put sugar on my oatmeal.’ And she opens one sugar after another. We look at all the dead trees on the slopes. ‘Dead trees make me sad,’ she says. ‘And all the ice melting in the Artic.’ I nod. ‘All the pollution,’ she says. ‘I think people are crazy,’ I say. ‘They don’t realize that it’s all connected.’ We look for animal prints in the snow. ‘I hope we see some animals,’ I say. ‘Me, too,’ she says. We stay together in the dining car for a long while watching the sun come up on the snow-covered mountains. She tells me the brother she is visiting is tall, even though he’s her younger brother; she doesn’t like being short. ‘That’s the Irish in you,’ I say. ‘All of us are little.’ ‘Irish are little?’ she asks. ‘All the ones I know,’ I said, ‘in my family. We’re all leprechauns.’ She smiles and says the word ‘leprechauns,’ almost to herself, seeming to savor the word—and imagining herself one, perhaps.

After a while, I finish my Zen tea and I feel the need to sleep again. I ask her her name and she tells it to me. I tell her it was nice meeting her and she says the same. ‘Have a good Christmas and New Year,’ she says. She says it so purposefully, as though it’s the first time she’s said it and it means something to her. “You, too,” I say, and then I go back to my room.

It’s almost dark now. I skipped lunch. I’ve stepped off the train a few times to breathe the fresh Montana air. It seems like there should be more snow. An ice storm is heading to Michigan and Illinois. I hope my oldest sister gets in all right. She doesn’t like to fly either, but she forces herself, and she isn’t happy about the ice storms. Mr. Gabriel told me the ice wouldn’t affect the trains. It might affect someone picking me up in Ann Arbor. But that’s a day away.

I keep thinking about what my father’s life will be like after we all go back home. His job was taking care of my mother. What will he do without her? Two days after the funeral, he’s supposed to see his heart doctor to see the results of his tests. He may have to have open heart surgery again. Doesn’t seem like that would be wise now. His heart has already had a tremendous trauma.

That’s all in the future. Gotta stay right here, right now. The train is passing by a farm. Old battered farm equipment fills one meadow, littering the ground like bones after a massacre. The sun has sunk and now the horizon is muddy red with sundown and pollution.

When I can get reception, Mario and I talk on the phone. But he’s at work, and I’m wordless. Or something. I call my father one last time for today, maybe. Some of my uncles, a cousin, an aunt, and three of my sisters are at the house. He tells me all is ‘looking bright for now.’

All my life, I’ve felt as though my mother was alone. Even when she was with a group of people, she often seemed somewhere else, some place solitary. Sometimes she was so quiet, I’d forget she was there, and then she’d be gone. And I always felt bad. Why didn’t I try harder to make her a part of everything?

When I was younger, I felt like she thought I could cure her, save her. She was sick with depression one summer while I was in Europe. She came to the airport with my dad when I came back, and she told me that she knew when I got home, she’d feel better. But she didn’t. I wanted so much to be able to give her something, tell her something, be someone who could make her well and happy. She struggled so much to find...something. I don’t really know what. An outlet for her creativity? Happiness? A voice? Good health? She said to me once, about ten years ago, ‘At least I know I did one thing right. I was a good mother.’ The statement surprised me because I never thought she really wanted to be a mother. I told her then that I appreciated her so much, that I was amazed at how much she was able to accomplish—like raise five daughters—in spite of her being ill nearly all of my life. She said, ‘Aren’t you glad you feel that way now instead of figuring it out after I die?’ I laughed and said, ‘Yes, I am.’ But I wish I’d said so many other things.

My mother was so unlike any mother I knew in ways too numerous and, right now, too heartbreaking to recount. And of course that was the way it should have been. My mother always danced to the beat of a different drummer. She taught me to do the same.

I hope it was enough for her.

Labels: grief, travel

8 comments

8 Comments:

My thoughts are with you Sister Kim, and I so wish I could be with you right now. Much love, Cate

By  kerrdeLune (Cate), at 9:08 AM  

I just lost my father a few months ago and I too wish now I could go back and say so much to him that I never did. He too was a rebel, a free thinker and taught me to do the same. Thank the Goddess for their presence in our lives for without them what would we be?

By  Beverly, at 10:07 AM  

Kim,
This morning 47 people in Virginia danced for you. We gathered in anticipation of the winter solstice to prepare for the season of the dark soul with hope and light and love. As you find yourself in your own personal dark season just as Mother Earth prepares to plunge us into the dark, we hope the light and hope and energy and love we danced your way will help you to weather the gloom and find peace within.
Susan

By  Saulte, at 11:02 AM  

When my father died and my son was suicidal at the same time,I found myself repeating Julian of Norwich's mantra: All will be well, All will be well, And all manner of thing(s) will be well. This, and knowing I was not alone, kept me from going completely off the rails.

Blessings & Hugs, S

By  Susan, at 11:21 AM  

Thanks for sharing memories of your mom. That brought back many memories to me of mine. Maybe you can still learn a lot you may not know about your mom from your dad. And learn more about him in the process. My sister and I told each other many things we didn't know about our mom and wondered how we didn't learn those things from each other when we were younger.

I hope you have a healing visit with your family and friends.

By  Kevin, at 7:45 PM  

I just wanted to say how sorry I am for your loss. Just as your Mom became ill mine did also. I am the reader who lives West of you and has relatives in your little town. My mom passed in her sleep tonight. She was 90. My heart goes out to you and I wish you strength during your journey back home. Goddess Bless!
Allykatt

By  allykatt, at 4:08 AM  

Dear Kim,
We've never met but I read and loved "Coyote Cowgirl." I do believe your mother visited you on the train. A friend had a similar experience when he was flying across the country to his mother's funeral. He was a tough news reporter, but he told me he was sure it was his mother who came to him on the plane and reassured him. He was greatly comforted. May you be comforted too.
Blessings,
Ramona

By  Ramona Ramon, at 11:36 AM  

Thank you so much for all your comments and emails. They've meant a lot to me. Although I didn't have internet access, I did go to the library once and download my mail which included the comments and when I felt especially bad, I'd read what you all said again and again. I'm so sorry that we all have to go through these things in our lives, and I'm sorry for all of your losses. My father was touched that you all danced for us, Saulte, and me, too. All of you, thank you so much.

I am home now, but I don't know for how long. My father is sick (long story) and we're trying to get that taken care of.

Blessings on your holidays!

By  Kim Antieau, at 6:56 AM  

Post a Comment

All photographs and written material copyright © 2003-2008 by Kim Antieau unless otherwise indicated. May not be used without permission.