I recall childhood instances when we would be out to lunch, my mother and I talking and laughing when suddenly, the laughter would be interrupted by a parting of lips: "Do you see that woman there," she would say, "if you don't get your act together, you will be just like her. Do you want that? Do you want to be like her?"
The words ring out in my brain, echoing from the long term memory file folder with "Mema" etched in salty tears. That was what we grandchildren called her. It always struck me as peculiar that I was called her "grandchild". She didn't seem to think I was very grand. She spent the next seventeen years tearing away little shreds of my self-esteem. She would often ask me if I actually enjoyed living the kind of life I was living. She brought diet pills to Thanksgiving dinner. She would discuss me and my lack of interest in changing my ways to various people, some of whom had never met me.
During my fragile middle school years she pulled me aside and told me that if I didn't do something to change myself, no boy would ever love me and I would be lucky if they were my friend. Again...the echoing of her voice haunts me. She never failed to compare me to my thinner, prettier sisters. Why couldn't I just be normal?
Over the years, I built up a high level of resentment for her and her failed attempts to "fix" me. But more than that, I believed her. I soaked up every negative thing she said to me; the Bounty quicker-picker-upper of emotional burden. She taught me how to hate myself. She gave my self loathing a voice with which to do the damage she had somehow managed to leave undone. It worked. I always realized that I needed to get a handle on my body. I just felt it was so far out of my control. I was too young to understand that the neighbor who molested me at five years old, stole much more than my childhood innocence. His foul touch and her sharp tongue created the perfect environment to breed a downhill spiral.
When I was 17 years old she was no longer able to live alone or care for herself. After years of being bounced around a small handful of nursing homes, assisted living communities, and children's houses; none of which could handle her presence, my aunt and mother decided to move her back home and pay caregivers to stay with her around the clock. It was a job that used to belong to my mother before she required 24 hour care. She was the only one who stayed close to home. We spent our live at her beckoned call.
I was going to college and working a really crappy part time job as a cashier when they brought her home. I was so dissatisfied with my work that I approached them about being a caregiver for her. Soon after, I quit taking sweaty money from the bras of old black ladies, to spend the weekends caring for an old white one. That was what she was to me: an old white lady. I hated everything about it at first. I hated being away from my family, I hated being in that house which seemed to suck the very life from my body, I hated being trapped there with her watching her watch me and hating what she saw. We fought a lot. I said she couldn't do something according to the list of rules I was given. She said God would punish me for my sins. She said I was a disappointment. I said she had disappointed me my entire life. She said I was hopeless. I told her she wouldn't know hope if it danced at the foot of her bed. She fired me two years in at the end of September.
That was it. Or so I thought.
I swore I would never go back. My mother swore I would never go back. My father wouldn't speak her name, much less speak to her face.
January rolled around and the lady who stayed with her at day time during the week quit. I needed a job, so I went back. Excuse me-she allowed me to come back. We still didn't get along every day, but I knew that at five o'clock I could go home. I felt I could fake it for at least nine hours a day.
Before long, I felt like I didn't have to fake it. I genuinely started to care. We watched birds. I tried to convince her there was not a squirrel stuck in her bird feeder. We watched Gunsmoke and bonded over the handsomeness that was Matt Dillon, wondered in suspense as the Cartwright boys escaped one mishap after another, and laughed at Lisa & Oliver as they tended their Green Acres. But I think the memory that stands out the most is the first time she ever watched Steel Magnolias. We laughed and cried, then laughed some more. Every now and then, I would look over at her as she laughed. At that moment, she could have been five years old again. She laughed without inhibition. Her head was arched back and her eyes seemed to glisten; her small body a quiver with the sheer force of her happiness. The sun was coming in the giant picture window on the side of her and it was that perfect time of day where the rays casted a golden glow that shrouded the room, as if God himself was saying, "This is important. Remember this." I did. I think that was the happiest I had seen her in my entire life.
When we got the call one lazy Sunday afternoon in early November that she was not having a good weekend, I didn't think much of it. They said she wasn't eating. No big deal, some days she ate like an anorexic bird. We made sure to at least get Ensure in her system. When I got to work the next day, I knew something was terribly wrong.
I called the local Hospice center, where she had been a patient for over a year. When the nurse came out and checked her, my concerns were realized. At first, I was immediately panicked about where I was going to find another job. I know that sounds horrible, but it really was my first concern. I don't think I allowed myself to believe that she could actually die. I tried to keep it together. I tried to ignore her ragged breathing. I tried to look past her blank expression. I tried to erase her skeletal frame. As I sat alone with her, in that house, with my mother in the other room; I sang her favorite songs. I kissed her forehead. I held her hand and tried not to fall apart as I told her I forgave her. I felt like a lifetime had passed between us, and I didn't want to let go.
November 18, 2009
I wasn't there when she died. My mother, cousin, and I had gone to town to run some errands. My mother was relieved because she didn't think she could handle it. I never told her, but I really wanted to be there. She was surrounded by family and people who loved her all singing her favorite hymns; but I wasn't there. And I wanted to be.
I never cried at the viewing. I never cried at the funeral. For the first weeks after that, I never cried. Thanksgiving happened, then Christmas and with the hustle and bustle...time just kept going. How does it do that? How does it have the nerve to keep going after someone has been ripped from our lives and we can barely keep going ourselves? I longed for people to stop looking at me with sympathetic smiles. I yearned for the day when we would no longer receive cards in the mail expressing sincere condolences. I was ready to move on. At least I thought I was.
I never thought it would be this hard. I couldn't have perceived missing her this much. I don't miss the drama. I don't miss the stress. I don't miss the fights. But I do miss fawning over Marshal Dillon. The Cartwright boys must feel abandoned and confused or at least they might if they were still alive. I hear a song that we used to sing together and I'm right there with her again. I miss walking out of her bedroom and saying, "I love you," only to hear her say, "I love you more." Those words echo in my mind too. They aren't always as loud as the others, but with time and love...I might not hear the others at all. These are memories I will always have of a time I can never get back. Of this, I am grateful and, can honestly say, I wouldn't change a thing.
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