A Death In Vermont

A week ago today at my mother’s memory-care facility home, I pushed the combination to let myself in and met my mother at her door. She was dressed and clutching her handbag in anticipation of our outing. Two weeks prior she had fallen, tap dancing, and broken her humerus so she held her purse in her right hand and wore a sling on her left.

As we drove down the road she commented how green it was, how nice it felt to get out. I looked over to be sure the seat belt wasn’t tugging on the injured arm and felt good about being able to give her a change of scenery after all that had transpired.

We were taken to a booth at our favorite diner and she looked at the menu for a long minute. I knew that she had recently become unable to read much and so I waited quietly, then offered up the suggestion of a hot dog on a grilled bun with mustard and relish telling her that I knew it was one of her favorite summer treats and wouldn’t that taste good? She looked up, her eyes a mixture of excitement and gratitude. She ate every bite of the hot dog. I leaned over and wiped a smudge of the yellow mustard from her chin and we laughed.

On the farm we finished dropping seeds into chocolate-brown soil, my refusal to wear gloves resulting in perpetual dirt under my nails. I’ve grown in letting things like this be part of what I do. We mound hay around budding potatoes, trim scapes, twisting like green garter snakes through garlic plants and take hold of delicate tomato-hands​ and train them to hold onto the rope attached to the top of the greenhouse: water three hanging strawberry plants sharing living space with the many varieties of tomatoes that we grow, then turn the hose to our movable garden wagon that holds rows of delicate onion spires, Shashito peppers and the new, rounded, bush-like basil plants we decided to try this year.

Sheep are grazing in pastures around the greenhouse, continuing to chew as they look up from their lunch. Our green bee hives stacked tall, bees flying in and out, their baskets filled with clover pollen.

Life everywhere.

Monday morning I receive a call that my mother is dying. I can’t seem to understand the absurd speed at which things have changed from less than a week ago and nobody is able to explain it to me.

I stand at her bedside and apply chap-stick to her cracked lips. Her mouth is opened in an “O” like in Munch’s “The Scream, her breath coming in and out as if she is snoring. I sit and watch her breathe, willing her to catch her breath, to swallow hard, to close her mouth. I am shocked, stunned and frightened.

Our son and granddaughter arrive for their annual summer visit, not knowing the way life has twisted like our garlic scapes.

I spend the next two days alternating between smiling and crying. I sit in my mother’s room and watch her disappear, slowly shrinking into elsewhere. I talk with Hospice workers who stroke my mother’s head and tell me that they feel that she is leaving. I ask if they can give me a time frame. They shake their heads, knowingly. I feel bewildered by my own lack of understanding, needing some kind of impossible figure to hang onto with my dirty fingernails.

The moments I am at home, I make up beds with sheets taken off the clothesline, make quick runs to the grocery store for food for guests and I feed chickens. My cello sits in the corner, remanding but understanding. “I need you” I message, telepathically, “It’s OK, I’m here.” it comforts.

Wednesday morning I wake early and head to where my mother lies. I notice her position has not changed at all, the same breathing, the same lack of motion. I sit, look out at the parking lot and wonder if I’m wrong to wish for something to move in some direction.

Her friend arrives and I have a need to smooth her hair, she would want that. He speaks with her and I watch for something, anything.

Nothing.

I leave mid-afternoon and rush to get home to spend promised time with my granddaughter. I recognize that I am failing at being enough for anyone. I pick her up and we head into town to do some shopping in a thrift store that she loves. We show each other our treasures then head out to the diner next door. I realize I have left my phone in my car. The moment I pick it up I notice I have missed seven calls.

I set the phone in my lap and look away.

There is chaos in a house getting ready for more family to arrive and for us all to leave for the lake. I notice a buzzing in my brain making it difficult to put thoughts together.

We are on day three of our vacation week. The sun is warm, the water like a mirror as I sit in my straw hat. I have spent time reading, swimming, playing Yahtzee. The buzzing has left. I feel rested. I know I have thoughts to process: my relationship with my mother complicated. I’m allowing all thoughts access, including feeling orphaned,

Our sons are fishing in order to have our yearly perch fry. After dinner they head out across the glassy water and I watch them go. Later, sitting near the outdoor fire pit I see them come back, cutting through the water beneath the sunset. I am seven again and I hear the creak of the oarlocks in the wooden row boat bringing my father, and his catch, back to camp where my mother, sister and I stand on the screened porch in our nightgowns, waiting. I slowly begin to realize that, in these traditions, my parents live on and that so many of our memories are born, like me, from them.