My mother, a good Catholic
girl, married a Methodist. Because her mother, a
very good Polish Catholic girl married a Pennsylvania Dutch WWI
veteran, the little-rebel in both of them illustrated just how much they loved
their husbands. Love overcame any fear they might have had for them, or their
children, of never making it to heaven. That’s why, for my brother and me, the
whole steeped in sin and served up as serious religious thing, was relaxed a
lot.
My brother and I
attended my father’s boyhood Methodist church. I attended, he skipped. I got gold stars on my chart for learning
Bible verses, he spent his offering money on cigarettes at the Corner Store
across the Street from the rectory.
We were dropped off and
picked up two hours later. My mom stayed home to cook breakfast, or so we
thought. I later learned that Sunday morning was the only private-time my
parents had to spend together. I still find it amusing, we went to church so
they could ruffle the sheets.
As my parents aged I
noticed a growing distance between them regarding religion. My dad was a discreet
believer, never seeking to proselytize away my mom’s growing cynicism
concerning a higher power. It wasn’t as if they sat around talking about
religion but when the subject of heaven, hell, or the almighty came up, my
mother either went quiet or expressed a kind of distain for formalized faith. As
the years piled on that distain took on a down-right disbelief in God and
Christ.
Her sermon: “Heaven
and hell is lived right here on earth while we’re alive. When you are dead,
you’re dead. That’s it. No eternity, no meeting deceased relatives and friends,
no angels, no heavenly grace. Life now is what you get.”
My mother didn’t go
around spouting her pessimistic view regarding that which comforts many, we
just knew faith wasn’t her thing. That’s why, when my father had a stroke and
eventually died, that she had only us to lean on for comfort, was not enough.
After my father’s
death, my strong minded, my way or the highway
mom, became an empty husk of a woman we did not recognize. Depressed and
lonely was understandable; losing the person you’ve been married to for over 62
years does that to the partner left behind. Once in a while a glimmer of her
old self would rise to the surface for a few minutes when my daughters and I
visited, but soon she’d slip back and wallow in that quiet empty place that had
become her life without my father.
At the time I
believed that if she had the religion of her childhood or the one she wanted us
to embrace as children, to lean on, perhaps the transition to life without my
father would have been a bit more bearable.
With no one in the dark to talk to, no God and Christ to share and ease
her suffering during her long nights alone, she was lost. Without the spirit of
my dead-dad to hear her anguish and sooth her aching heart, eternity was
untouchable. Even the thought of my always patient father, waiting on the other
side for when it was her time to go, could not bring her comfort, “When you are
gone, you’re gone.” She believed herself alone without divine presence.
But what my mother
did not realize, and fought against to recognize, she was not alone. Every word,
every plea, every silent word was heard. Comfort was at her hearts door even
though she didn’t let it in.
On the pivotal night
which began her own two week journey to the end, she got up to use the bathroom
at 3am…fell and broke her hip…banged on the wall to wake my brother in an
upstairs apartment…was rushed to the hospital…lay strapped to a backboard for
two and half hours in the hallway of the emergency room…sent to surgery to
repair her broken hip…placed in a nursing home for rehab…entered hospice.
On the night she
fell I raced to the hospital and was taken to a section of a hallway adjacent
to the nurses’ station. A metal framed fabric screen cordoned off my mother
from the rest of the emergency room’s world of action. As I approached I could
see my brother’s feet below the screen. He was standing inside the cramped
made-up room, next to the gurney my mother lay on.
“All
of the examining rooms are full,” he said.
“Is
she asleep?” I asked.
“No,
I am not. How could I be, I’m strapped to a surf board.”
“It’s
a backboard mom.”
“I know what it is,
I was making a God-damn joke. Your father would have laughed.”
We
did not.
“My eighty-three year
old diabetic, cancer ridden mother, remained strapped to that backboard, with a
broken hip, in that hallway, for two and half hours. My mother, who could spout
profanity, like a fifth grader spouts times tables, my mother, who could spew
insults like a baby pukes milk, lay composed and quiet, as if the fiberglass
torture device she lay on, were a blow-up beach raft gently drifting on the
surface of Long Island Sound.
“I’m not going to
make it.” She whispered to me. Damn her. She was always right.
Once my mother was
gone I found comfort in knowing that her suffering without my father was over. To
me they were together again, for eternity. Though she believed, “when you are
dead, you’re dead,” I was amused by God’s nod and divine sense of humor.
My mother the lapsed
Catholic girl, the woman who did not believe in heaven or hell, the person who
ceased to give God or Christ a second thought, let alone a first one, died on
Easter Sunday. That she would ascend to heaven on the same day as the resurrection of God’s son
proves that always, and I mean always, God gets the last laugh and the final, I told you so.
In 1969 my mother loved a new hit
song sung by Peggy Lee, Is That All There
Is. She talked about it a lot. At the time I had arrived back in this
country after an exciting year away in Africa. I had a wonderful job I loved. I
was writing music. Life was spread out in front of me like the Great Plains in
front of a wagon train headed west for a new future. 