The Furious Spinner

As with Motherland, I wrote this and then posted it. I didn't even read it again. I asked Mario to read it for sense, so I hope it does actually make sense. It's long, the longest post I've ever written, I think. So here it is. I can only put the words out there and hope they provide healing or insight or something for myself and others.

It feels as though it’s been forever since I’ve written. So much has changed that I don’t know where to begin. I know I left off writing when I was on the train headed to Michigan. Now I’m on a train headed to Washington, only this time I’m not alone. My father is with me.

My train trip to Michigan seemed like a blessing, a magical mystery journey that eased me into the reality of my mother’s death. After I wrote to you last, I meet two more interesting people. The first one knocked on my door one night and asked if he could escort me to dinner, and I said sure. So we ate together. I mostly picked at my food while we talked about all kinds of things. He said he took the train because he wasn’t in a hurry to get anywhere. ‘I have a bumper sticker on my car that says 0-60 in about ten minutes.’ He was going back East to meet a daughter he’d just discovered he had less than three months earlier. She was in her forties. The mother of the daughter hadn’t known she was alive either: The people at the home for unwed mothers told her her baby died, at the behest of her parents. I was shocked. I didn’t know things like that happened in real life—it sounded like something out of a movie. People have the most amazing stories to tell. I liked him. He worked on a farm in eastern Washington. I’m not sure our politics or outlook on life would have meshed, but it didn’t matter. He was good company for dinner and then breakfast the next day.

When I got off the train in Chicago, it was cold and I had too much crap to carry. I should have gone with a skycap but I didn’t know we were so far away from the station. By the time I got inside to the ticket area, my heart was beating so fast and furious I was afraid I’d have a heart attack. And then I went into a full blown anxiety attack. The train station was busy and loud and there were so many lights flashing and anxious people everywhere. I saw two guys casing my bags—primarily my purse—and I tried to get a hold of myself. I had travelled all over Europe. I had backpacked all over Europe. I had been all over the United States and parts of Canada and Mexico. Come on, woman. You can do this.

Of course, my mother hadn’t just died any of those other times.

I decided I should just leave some of my bags behind. Why had I brought my computer? It was way too heavy. And the little cooler. Again: too heavy. And the kitchen: I hadn’t been able to use it on the train. At one point I asked this man for help and he didn’t want to help me and I started to cry. So this man picked up my bags and took me to my gate. The skycap asked for the elderly and the disabled to come to the front of the gate. Four older women got on his little car. I told him I didn’t feel well, so he let me come too. The four women hugged me and cared for me when I blurted out that my mother had just died. One woman’s husband had died a year earlier and she was from Brighton, which is where I’m from and where my parents live. She put her arms around me and held me close.

On the train from Chicago to Ann Arbor, I sat behind them. And behind me was a woman, May, and her granddaughter, Kay (not their real names). I loved being on this train. The whole car was filled with people from Michigan and all of them were talking to one another! This is what I missed about the place where I grew up: connection, communication, a sense of belonging. People were asking other people where they’d been, where they were going, where they were from. This does not happen in the West, as least in my part of the West. People keep to themselves and seem much more wary of others.

The Chicago to Ann Arbor train was packed, but I managed to get a seat by myself, and Kay came and sat with me. Within minutes, I was absolutely in love with this nine year old child, and she was in love with me. For five hours, we sat together and gabbed and huddled together. I didn’t have time to think about what was next for me and my family because I was in this beautiful sacred space with this child. Sometimes I regret not being a parent, but I am a good friend to the children I know. I am able to be present with them, to be in the here and now with them, and I think that’s important for children—and for everyone.

And Kay was extraordinary. At times she would just put her face right in mine and stare at me with her beautiful brown eyes. She spent a lot of time showing me her virtual cat at first. A virtual cat who ate and slept and meowed—and pooped, once, three months ago. We both decided that was way too long to go without...going. We walked up and down the train together counting the cars. We wrote a story together. She had a hard time sticking to the story, but when I suggested she draw the story, she settled right into it. It relaxed her the way writing with words relaxes me. She told me how sad it made her that her father worked so much. I was once again so grateful that my father had spent so much time with us when we were growing up. His work was never a priority; we were.

Kay was pretty wound up after a few hours and it was getting late and I could see she was tired, so I told her the story of Broken Moon. She was mesmerized, especially when I talked about the Shadow Boys and Scharazad. She asked me to tell her the part about Scharazad again, in more detail. I was a little hesitant to talk about a king chopping off the head of his new bride every night with a nine year old, but I did—with gory details spared. Children really respond to fairy tales and it’s important not to gut their power by trying to sanitize them. We curled up on our seats facing one another as I told her the story. Her eyes fluttered shut a couple of times. When I was finished, she told me a story. It was so nourishing and nurturing. I hoped we could be friends for the rest of our lives.

We got to Ann Arbor, and Kay came to me for a hug, twice. I needed the hugs. Our trip together was extraordinary. I don’t have the words to explain how wonderful it was to sit with this child from Chicago to Ann Arbor. She and her grandmother went to their car, and a moment later my father and sister arrived to pick me up on a cold and icy night. I held my father tightly. He had aged considerably in the six weeks since I had seen him last. Probably in the last six hours.

I don’t remember much about that ride home. It was dark. It was sad. I don’t remember what we said to each other. Soon enough we were home. All of my four sisters were there. We were all together for the first time in about twenty-five years. I don’t remember much about that night either. One of my sisters was asleep. She had come back home right away and had made most of the arrangements for my mom’s Catholic funeral. She had lists on the refrigerator of when things were happening which was really helpful for me, since I was the last to arrive. The rest of us stayed up talking until about 2 a.m. Then we all tried to sleep. Two of my sisters slept in Mom and Dad’s room; another sister slept on some box springs in my mom’s sewing room; another one slept on a mattress in the bonus room (the room over the garage) and I slept in the loft above the living room where my father was sleeping on the couch. I listened to his breathing and his moaning for hours it seemed, afraid that suddenly he would stop breathing, before I finally slipped into sleep.

I think I went grocery shopping that morning, Monday. My sisters had already done so much and I offered to do this one little thing. I remember feeling dazed at the store and out of it. I hadn’t eaten or slept well in a couple of days. Everything kind of pulsed. As I walked into the store, a woman stopped to tell me she liked my hat and we looked at it together, trying to figure out how it was made. By Tibetans, I said. She was a knitter. It was comforting to talk about something so ordinary.

That afternoon, we got ready for the ‘visitation.’ This was where my mother’s body would be on view for family and friends at the funeral home. (We used to call it the viewing.) It was so sad and strange being in my parents’ house, the one my father had built for my mother less than 10 years ago. I kept wondering where my mother was. Yet, yet, yet...my mother had slept so much of the time during the last ten years of her life that it seemed as though she must be sleeping somewhere, and she’d just wake up and come eat with us. I liked being around my sisters. They all seemed so grounded and grown-up. Everyone was loving and caring toward one another and my father. We were all protective of my dad. We kept telling him he could cry in front of us, but he kept leaving the room or apologizing when he cried. He seemed beyond sad. I can’t seem to find a word in the English language that adequately describes his anguish and sadness.

We went to the funeral home. There was my mother’s name up in lights. Would have been cool except for the “funeral” part. We went into a large room with chairs all along the walls. My mother’s coffin with my mother’s body in it was at the front. Vases of flowers were all around her. My mother did not look like my mother, and if my sister hadn’t had her arm around me, I don’t know if I would have fallen down or screamed or what. Where was my mother? I thought when my sister told me she looked peaceful that meant she looked like my mother, but she didn’t. Except for her hands. Her hands looked like my mother’s hands. She was dressed in her pajamas, with one of my father’s quilts tucked in around her from the waist down.

The relatives came. Relatives I hadn’t seen in years. I got lots of hugs. I felt better being around my people. And that’s what it felt like. Like I was amongst my own. I wondered why I had been gone so long. Why did I leave the people who were connected to me by blood and by the land we shared? Two friends of mine from college showed up as I was sobbing at one point. I hadn’t seen them in fifteen years maybe, and I just put my arms around one of them and held on. Later I looked around the room and noticed everyone in groups talking. And away from it all was my mother’s coffin. I said to someone, maybe one of my sisters, that suddenly I felt like I had when Mom was alive: That she was all alone in a group of people. One of my sisters said she’d been feeling the same way and wondered if she should take a chair up there and sit by her. I said go for it and later that’s what they did.

We went home for a breather. Then we went back to the funeral home for the rosary. I met the priest then. I wanted to give a eulogy for my mother at the funeral the next day. The priest told me I had three minutes. I said ‘what if I want five?’ He told me not to get snappy with him. I said my mother had just died so I could get as snappy as I wanted. He told me I could give a eulogy now, before the rosary. In about five minutes. I wasn’t prepared, I told him. He shrugged and went on his way. I was furious. F.u.r.i.o.u.s. I went downstairs where they have a place for the family. My youngest sister was sitting there with two of her friends and I came in swearing and saying vulgar things about the priest (sexual in nature). When I calmed down I went back upstairs. My sister followed me to go talk to the priest, even though I asked her not to and told her I would deal with it on my own. A few minutes later she came over to me and leaned down and whispered in my ear, “I have just confirmed that the priest is a dickhead.”

Now that was funny.

My father liked the priest, however, and I was not about to make any kind of stink, especially since I think my dad was a little afraid I would. After all, he tells people I’m a witch. When it was time for the rosary, my father and his five daughters sat in the front row. While we were away for our “break,” they had moved the chairs into rows so that we were all facing my mother. The priest came to the front, and we said the rosary together. Yes, I said the prayers (Hail Mary and Our Father) clearly and loudly so that my father could hear me. I believe it was the respectful thing to do. I wish I could say that this ritual and these prayers made me feel healed or brought me some semblance of peace, but it didn’t. It felt lifeless, dead, like so many Catholic rituals I’ve participated in. I hoped that it was healing and reassuring for my father.

Afterwards—or was it before?—an old friend of my father’s asked me to sign her copy of Broken Moon. Because this person was dear to our family and to my father, it didn’t feel strange. However, a friend of one of my sisters came over and asked me one question after another about my writing, rapid-fire. I thought, my mother just died and you’re cheerfully asking me about my writing? I eventually extricated myself from that conversation.

For the most part, people were so kind and loving. My mother was one of eight children. She was the first of five sisters to die. She was not the oldest. All four of Mom’s sisters and her one living brother came to the visitation and the rosary. A couple of them weren’t speaking to one another. When I heard this, I just shook my head. Does every family have this kind of crap going on? I love my family, and I enjoyed spending time with them even under these trying circumstances—and I wished they could just like one another and realize that life is too fucking short for pettiness. But I also understand that members of a family can hurt one another like no one else can. Sometimes I think family sees us for who we used to be, not for who we are, and therein lies the problem.

That night after everyone was sleeping I sat on the couch with my father. After dinner every night, my parents would sit on the couch and my mother would look for something to watch and my dad did crossword puzzles. Now, since Mom died, Dad was sleeping on the couch, often with the television on. After a while I said to him, ‘Do you think you could go to sleep now?’ He said, ‘yes but I don’t want you to leave.’ ‘I’ll stay,’ I said. So he lay on the couch and I sat close to him on the couch and held his hand and watched TV until he fell to sleep.

The next morning we went to the church early for one last time with Mom’s body. One of my sisters and my father kissed her. Then they closed the casket and we (the family) draped the pall over the casket and then they wheeled it down the center of the church to rest just below the altar with immediate family walking on either side of it. Everyone else was already seated in the church, I think, or maybe they followed us.

We were in St. Patrick’s Church, which was my church when I was growing up. A new church stood on the footprint of a beautiful old church (where my parents were married) that was demolished years ago. A more modern church replaced that old one. My oldest sister got married in that church. We went to mass there every Sunday. That church had been remodeled in the last many years, and it no longer looked like a Catholic Church. It reminded me of one of those megachurches. Catholics are always accused of being idol worshippers, and I wanted my idols. I like dark Catholic churches, full of mystery and shadows. This one was well-lit and modern. It felt sterile.

And so the mass began. My father and my sisters and I sat in the designated area, in front. I don’t remember much about the mass. At some point the priest was singing something like, “Hosanna to the highest.” I almost burst out laughing because he sounded so high-pitched and silly. (He’s very young. Did I mention that?) I had visions of me laughing at my mother’s funeral like Mary Tyler Moore did at Chuckles the Clown’s funeral. I got myself under control and then one of my sisters elbowed me and I almost started laughing again.

But most of the time, it was just sad. And I think I was way out of my body. I didn’t want to cry because it clearly upset my father when we were upset, so I tried to keep it together. So I just looked around the church wondering, where is my mother? The priest came down from on high and stood by the coffin and talked about my parents’ 53 year marriage. He talked about my mother as though he knew her. We all appreciated that. He said the right words. Still, he lacked warmth and depth. He seemed to be somewhere else when he spoke, as though he was trying to remember something he memorized.

Then it was my turn to go up and say a few things about my mother. In three minutes. Although what was he going to do if I went longer than three minutes? I walked by the priest and the altar and went up to the podium. It was too tall for me and I couldn’t reach the microphone. I said, ‘whoops. Well, I am a Kelly girl, and we’re a little people.’ Or something like that. And someone came and pulled out a stool and I stood on it and began to talk about my mother.

If I get the energy later, I’ll write down what I said and post it, but for now, know that I talked about how my mother nurtured and encouraged the uniqueness in all five of us and then I read the quote she had shown me when I was a child, the quote that gave me permission to be the little oddball I knew myself to be: “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”

And it was over. It was time to go to the cemetery. It was cold and rainy out. My father, sisters, and I got into the black limousine in front of the church, and the driver followed the hearse with my mother’s body in it. We snaked through town, our procession of cars, to the graveyard where my grandparents—the Antieau’s and the Kelly’s—were buried, and we drove down a long paved road inside the graveyard. Used to be a dirt road. The driver told us a parishioner got tired of driving on the potholes to visit a relative’s grave so he paid for the drive to be paved.

When I was a girl, one of my mother’s sisters and her family lived close to the graveyard, and we children sometimes walked through the woods and over the hill to it. In the summer, it was cool under the trees, and the grass growing over the graves was wildly lush. Grandma Kelly’s grave marker had a statue of Mother Cabrina next to it. Grandpa Antieau and Grandma Antieau’s graves were right next to one another, with one headstone. For many years, the stone had Grandma Antieau’s birthdate on it with a dash after it. To be filled in later. When I was a child, I thought that was scary, almost dangerous. To me, it felt as though my grandmother was tempting the fates to kill her. How could she actually acknowledge and concede that she was going to die? She was giving in instead of trying to find a way out.

The driver told us to wait in the car while he got out. I think they put my mother’s coffin over her grave while we were in the car. I had a glimpse of the coffin, and then I looked over and saw a small red tent covered the grave and coffin and the six chairs in front of the grave. Finally we got out. It had started raining or sleeting. It was cold, the ground icy, snowy, wet. Someone from the funeral home put umbrellas over our heads and lead us into the tent, and the six of us each sat in one of the six cushioned chairs waiting for us, my father first. My mother’s oldest sister had trouble walking and standing (she’s 90 something), so I got up and had her come sit with us. We all scooted over, so that two of us were on one chair. The rest of the family stood behind us.

The priest said something. I don’t know what. Sending my mother’s soul to God? Then it was over. Everyone slowly left. A couple of my sisters and I stayed for a moment. I ran my hand over my mother’s coffin. We took a rose each. My sister had arranged for there to be a red and white rose at the center of the bouquet of flowers on the coffin, to represent my parents, and around them were five pink roses, to represent each of their daughters. I took a petal from my rose and left it on the coffin. I put another petal on my grandparents’ gravestone and another on my Grandma Kelly’s stone. The pink was in sharp contrast to the snowy ground and the bone gray of the gravestone, like a spot of blush on Mrs. Haversham’s cheek.

We went home, and soon after relatives started coming to the house, and they stayed most of the day. It was sad and comforting. I asked my aunts if my mother was ever happy. A couple of them said that it was difficult to get to know my mother, but yes, they thought she had been happy during times in her life. One of my sisters had set out an old scrapbook of my mother’s for me. Inside it my mother had pasted in old restaurant menus. Some of them were from Atlantic City.

I remembered when I was a girl Mom had talked so fondly of Atlantic City and the boardwalk. She was never someone who wanted to travel overseas or see exotic places, at least not when I knew her, so I wondered when I was a child what kind of place must Atlantic City be to charm a woman like my mother. Inside the scrapbook was also a notebook where my mother wrote about wanting to be a writer. She listed all the qualities she thought a writer needed to have: They had to be interested in everything, they had to have perseverance, they had to be able to deal with rejection.

I hadn’t known my mother wanted to be a writer.

Where is my mother now? What about her hopes and dreams? Her life?

The next day one of my sisters left unexpectedly. It was sad, but it was probably good for her. We all needed a break, and she had been there a long time; I was very impressed with how much she had organized and taken care of for the family. I spent half the day with my niece. I hadn’t seen her since she was a child, and now she was a grown up woman with two children. We had a great time just being together and going grocery shopping. One night she sat on the end of my mattress on the floor and she told me about her life.

My parents had bought us all pajamas for Xmas, so we wore them and watched TV together and lay on my parents’ bed talking and curling up next to one another. I was so exhausted and every part of my body pulsed unnaturally, it seemed. I’m sure my other sisters felt the same. My father wanted us to go through my mother’s jewelry and each take something. We looked through her boxes. So much of it we didn’t recognize. My mother didn’t wear a lot of jewelry. She had various pieces in little red bags. One of my sisters said Mom would sit there at the dressing table and open up the bags and look inside. Something about that was so tender and beautiful and sad that I could hardly bear it.

The day after the funeral my father went to my mother’s graveyard. He saw deer tracks in the snow on my mother’s grave.

Eventually my oldest sister and my niece left. Then two of my remaining sisters, myself, and my father went to his cardiologist at UM hospital to get the results of his latest echocardiogram. The doctor was very kind about my mother. He examined my dad and then told us that the echocardiogram showed that my father’s valve was closing up even more, but since he didn’t yet have symptoms they would put off surgery for now. He had to come back in six weeks for another echocardiogram.

It wasn’t great news, but it wasn’t the worst news he could have gotten. We were afraid he’d have to have heart valve replacement surgery right away, and we didn’t think it would be a good idea for him to get surgery so soon after my mother’s death.

Afterward, I drove my baby sister to the airport. By that time I had barely slept for almost a week. I hadn’t been able to get the food I needed to stay healthy because I was with my family nearly every minute and the weather was bad and the stores were far away—plus I was too exhausted to cook. I had a sinus infection and a cold: prime territory for the return of the polyps. And mostly I felt bad that my mom was gone and so sad for my father. Imagine that every moment of his life was about my mother, and now she was gone. He couldn’t stay still. He couldn’t decide what he wanted to do next, where he wanted to be. As we drove to the airport, my sister said something about me having very strong opinions and that everyone knew how I felt about my dad’s surgery. I said, ‘well then tell me my opinion because I don’t know what it is.’

Members of my family often believe I have certain opinions because they try to interpret what I’ve said instead of just listening to what I have actually said. I explained to my sister, as I’ve explained to my family before, that I believe health care is personal, as personal as religion and sex. More. How we decide to care for our sweet selves is entirely our own business. I didn’t know what was best for my father so why should I have an opinion about what he should do?

And I told my sister that if I’m having a conversation with someone, it means I have enough respect for them, most of the time, to be having a conversation. And when I say my opinion, that’s my opinion; that doesn’t mean other people have to share that opinion. I expect people to be adults and stand up and say something themselves. If they want to go home and talk about how opinionated I am and say, ‘poor me I didn’t say what I wanted to say because Kim’s opinions were so strong,’ then that’s tough. Stand up. Be an adult. Speak your piece (or your peace) to my face and then we can have a dialogue. If you don’t want to speak your piece, get over it and move on.

I’m saying all this as I’m bawling my eyes out driving 70 mph to the airport. So not unexpectedly, you might say, we got lost. I groaned and said, ‘shit, Dad’s gonna kill me if I don’t get you to the airport on time.’

My sister really listened to all I had to say instead of taking any of it personally. She said, ‘see, I learned something new from this conversation.’ And I really admired her for that. She’s a recovering alcoholic and an ex-smoker and the baby of the family. During all the stress we’ve been under, she didn’t drink, she didn’t smoke, and she didn’t get pissy or make it all about her (at least when I was there)—which was something that used to happen frequently. She seemed a lot clearer and more grounded than most of us. Although physically, she seemed about ready to collapse much of the week.

I eventually turned the car around, and we made it to the airport; my sister got on her plane on time by the skin of her teeth.

I went back home. One of my sisters was still there. She lives nearby in Royal Oak, Michigan, and she could stay as long as she wanted. For the next week, the three of us became our own little family unit. My dad wandered around restlessly. And he had a constant headache. He often sat with his head in his hands. We kept wondering if something terrible was happening to him. Was he going to die suddenly too? He insisted he was fine. We couldn't tell if he was grieving or sick.

I made three meals a day for them and myself. My heart seemed to be beating hard and fast; I couldn’t seem to relax. Dad kept saying he wasn’t hungry, but he ate everything I put in front of him. After dinner, which was at 5:00 p.m., we’d all put on our pajamas. They watched TV while I cleaned up and then I came and sat with them, often with cotton in my ears because the TV was so loud. Dad sometimes did crossroad puzzles. My sister and Dad liked watching those real life cold case shows. I usually curled up on the couch or in the chair and tried to sleep. We were all exhausted. I missed Mario more than I can express, and each time I ached for him, I thought of my father who would never see my mother again.

A few days after the funeral my father picked up the death certificate from the funeral home. It said my mother died of respiratory failure, bilateral pneumonia, and septic shock. After each cause they wrote how long it had been going on. Respiratory failure: hours. Septic shock: hours. Bilateral pneumonia: Days. My father was quite upset over that. ‘Saying it was going on for days makes it my fault, like I should have gotten her help sooner.’ I told him we didn’t know how they got those times. They could have had some kind of standard chart for each cause. And in any case, Mom was fine three days before she died. And a day before she died, she just thought she had a little cold. He couldn’t have done anything. He couldn’t have known anything. I hoped he didn’t keep beating himself up over this. Regrets can eat a person’s life away. I understood, though. I kept wondering what we had missed, how she could be dead. But she was. And we all needed to accept it.

One day, it snowed twelve inches. It was lovely outside, but we couldn’t go anywhere. After a day or two, I got outside and walked in the two lanes across the yard, which are actually one lane now and a private drive, but I decided if anyone said anything to me about trespassing I’d tell them my family had been walking this land for one hundred years, and I myself had been walking it for almost fifty, so get over it. In the snow, I saw lots of deer tracks. Solitary deer tracks. One or more were traveling alone. I also saw lots of wild turkey tracks, arrows pointing in the opposite direction of where the turkeys were traveling, a crafty misdirection. I talked to my mother and asked her to help us and my father. Show us a sign that you’re there. But there was nothing. Just the turkey tracks leading me nowhere.

I went with my father to the graveyard one afternoon. I saw the deer tracks on my mother’s grave. I wondered if the deer had come to eat the flowers. I asked my father, ‘do you feel like Mom is here?’ ‘No.’ ‘Do you believe in heaven?’ ‘No. Not like how some people believe it. I do think there is more going on than we know.’

My father told me to take one of my mother's bowls. 'I know you like bowls,' he said. 'Take one. Take more than one.' I picked a green one. I wrapped it in my new pajamas and packed it in my suitcase next to a pair of my mother's pajamas and a couple pairs of her comfy slacks. He urged us to take whatever we wanted of her. I wanted something she had sewn, something her hands had created. Then I remembered I already had a tiny quilt she had made me and my Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls.

Do you remember I was writing this on the train? I am on the train still. My father is sleeping. At least I hope he is. I’ve left him in our roomette. I had to yell at our asshole attendant to fix up our room. I tried to do the room myself, and I failed. The attendant is, in the words of my sister, a dickhead. My father is ill. Did I mention that? I don’t know if he’s dying, has a cold, or is in grief. He got sick the day before we left. I suggested he not go, but he wanted to. Now he’s on this train, and he is miserable and I am miserable. I am left with our remaining parent and all I can think of is my mother was sick for two days with a cold or something and then she fucking died. What if that happens to my father?

And you know what else I’m thinking? I’m thinking why aren’t I handling this better? Why aren’t I Zen? Why don’t I give up control? Why am I asking these stupid questions?

I’m also thinking that I really want to go to Arizona. I really want to be at the Old Mermaid Sanctuary. I want peace and quiet. I want to mourn. I am surrounded by hundreds of people on this very packed train, and I feel as though I’m part of a herd. I’m coughing a lot. Those tubercular sounding cough, throaty and mucousy. The kind where people look at you and want you to go away. No Martha or Kay this trip. Just me staring at my practically comatose father wondering if he’s about to expire. I try to help him. I sit next to him. I rub his back. I pat his legs. The fucking attendant thought we were married. Do I look like I’m 75 fucking years old?

Ah. The eff word. Must be anger rising to the surface.

I just called Mario and cried and said I was losing my mind. I’m so mired in this that I don’t have perspective. When I got off the phone, I started talking to the couple next to me in the observation deck. Or they started talking to me. I said, ‘my mother died unexpectedly a short time ago and my dad wanted to come on this train with me and now he’s sick and I’m afraid he’s going to drop dead, too, and my sisters would kill me. And that’s way too much information.’ They smiled and said, ‘no, that’s all right. it helps to talk.’ I said, ‘they were married 53 years and now he’s got to do everything without her and he feels responsible for her death because he’s the man and he thinks he was supposed to save her.’ They listened, and saying it outloud to someone on the train felt good. Some of the pressure I’d been feeling eased. The woman had deep beautiful wrinkles in her face; the man leaned forward and ran his fingers over his thinning hair. They’d been married nearly sixty years, and they had a farm. We began talking about gardening. How people who’d never had veggies straight from a garden didn’t have any idea how delicious they were. We talked about composting and how to keep pests away with fences and various plants. He’d heard vinegar in the garden would help keep away bugs. When they were called to dinner and had to leave, they both said they’d be thinking of us. The man asked me my father’s name. ‘Lloyd,’ I said. ‘Lloyd,’ he repeated. ‘We’ll be praying for him.’ He said this with kindness and warmth, and I was grateful to him.

I eventually went to sleep after several more frantic calls to Mario (and to my older sister who reassured me that all would be okay). I slept in the tiny bunk above my father. I heard him snoring softly and felt reassured that he was well. Then sometime in the night, he got up and went to the bathroom. I could still hear the snoring and figured out it had to be someone in the roomette on the other side of us. Finally in the morning, I saw my father’s face. His right eye was swollen grotesquely and the rash on his forehead looked like leprosy. I was appalled and terrified. I said, ‘dad, did you see your eye?’ ‘Yes, but I feel better.’ If I just looked at the right side of his face, he did look better. ‘Well, I suppose except for the Quasimoto hump on your eye, you don’t look so bad.’

We only had a few hours to go on the train from hell. We sat together and watched the sun come up. The Columbia River appeared, came into view, showed itself to us. I was almost home, home, home, home. I would get my father to a doctor. I would be with Mario again. I would never ride a train again. Almost there, almost there, almost there. We passed by the huge goddess-shaped hills that make up part of the eastern end of the gorge. Home, home, home. I felt rejuvenated. I felt like I was home and this surprised me. I would find help for my father soon, soon, soon. Water flowed over some of the hills making waterfalls here and there. We saw a great blue heron near one of the inlets.

Almost home, almost home. A break in the clouds. Blue sky. Sunshine. A glimpse at a snow-covered W’yeast—Mount Hood. I was in the mountains again. A rush of joy filled me. This was home. Familiar and beautiful. I knew what this place looked like, felt like, sounded like during all the seasons of the year.

I was also getting closer to Mario.

Then the train stopped at Bingen. It didn’t even stop at the platform. There was Mario, my sweet Mario, my home. The attendant from hell—no Hecate he—practically threw my suitcase on the gravel. I didn’t care. My feet touched sacred ground. Mario was there, and we’d get my father help now.

Some people get their sense of home from place, from the land; others get it from the people they love. My father felt at home in the world as long as my mother was in it. Perhaps as time goes on, he will find home again in the land and in the people who love him. I feel at home most where Mario is, and I can only imagine how my father feels.

I knew as I stepped off that train that life was never going to be the same for my father or me. Only two weeks had gone by, and it felt like months. But I was back home. For now. The train disappeared from our life, and my father and I walked across the gravel to Mario.

Afterward:
My father has shingles. His eye is affected so now he’s being treated by an ophthalmologist. We are in medias res, I suppose. Not at the beginning or the end. Trying not to wait but waiting. He is miserable, so sick and on so many medications. We are hopeful his eye will heal. We’ve found a great ophthalmologist who is seeing Dad every day, even though it’s the weekend and nearly Xmas. She’s from Arkansas and when she first saw Dad she said, ‘wooo-eeeh!’ One hour at a time, we’re getting through it. I’m not thinking about Tucson or sunshine or rest. I’m thinking my father needs to get well, and what better place to do it then here, with Mario and me.

Labels: grief, travel

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Friday, December 14, 2007

Motherland