housekeeping

It comes to me today, as I'm dragging my body to my car and readying myself for the commute to see Mom. There's the ice chest to fill with one diet decaffeinated Coke, the lunch to broil and squeeze into a small Tupperware container, the "rug bag" to fill with three bottles of water and what ever else I might need --like antihistamines and hydrocodone and reading material for Mom (all emergency measure). Yes, it comes to me amidst these dehumanizing repetitions that I am numb. Ready to be done.

When I arrive at the Mirabella about noon, Mom is waiting in her chair with the adjustable table pulled up next to her chest--she is awaiting lunch which, as we find out, will be a tuna sandwich on wheat bread with pickles and chips and chicken noodle soup. Mom doesn't eat the latter three items, so when lunch is brought in and arranged on her table, Lorna immediately shunts these uneatable, unmentionable items away from Mom's view. Out of sight, out of mind. All she has before her is the sandwich, a small bowl of diced melon and her vanilla ice scream.There's also a small piece of chocolate cake, or maybe it's a brownie, tucked behind the soup, but Mom doesn't see this yet. There hasn't been a day in which Mom refused to eat this dairy treat--no matter how much lunch or dinner she's eaten, those first few mouthfuls are nothing short of bliss. They cause her lips to curl and open and all her recalcitrant speech to fall way. No more--"I WILL NOT eat anything more." It's a amazing how clear she can be when ice scream is involved.

Mom eats half the sandwich and then tries to pawn the rest off on Lorna and me. I say "No"--showing her the cold, previously broiled hamburger I'm eating from my Tupperware. Lorna says "No" as as she has one rice and vegetable lunch (prepared last Sunday) to eat later on in the afternoon, now conveniently stored in my mom's in-room refrigerator, thanks to cousin Paul. But not even this can stop Mom from her tantrum--"I WILL NOT EAT THIS--YOU CAN"T MAKE ME." These words come trumpeting out, like sitting in the front roar where someone like Neil Young or Steven Stills is strumming so loud you don't even need to try and listen, you can just close your eyes and the notes just fill up your pores, drown you, leaving no room for anything else. Mom's words sound like this to me--loud, unbearably near. So here, listening to Mom, I'm thinking--no, that's true I can't "make you" eat and neither can Lorna. I watch as Lorna gives up on the sandwich and stabs a small piece of chocolate cake instead. She presses it to Mom's lips but Mom's lips remain tightly closed across her teeth, drawn, like a curtain where nothing gets in--no light, no air, no chocolate brownie cake. Nothing. "Okay," Lorna says, with her particular Filipino tilt of tongue. "Here comes the ice cream," Lorna finishes, her voice singing like a happy little show tune--the kind that Mom would hum when I was growing up: a short, sprightly little jingle from the 40s and 50s that makes you have to sing along. Mom's mouth is now wide open, at the ready. Here comes the ice cream.

Once lunch is cleared away, I bring out Box #1 of the boxes I rescued from Mom's house on Saturday. There's a dizzying assortment of things crammed into this box. I can't even begin to imagine how 13 unused wedding invitations manage to lay along side three partially used ration books from WWII, eight years of pay stubs (1942-1950) from Frederick & Nelsons (as well as her "Discount Authorization Card)," an employee manual (and pay stubs) from the IRS (apparently Mom worked as a typist for the IRS during the summer of 1942), two admittance stubs (and a card certifying that Dorin Anderson Schuler "is a charter member in the 21st Century Club..."a ticket to tomorrow") from the Seattle World's Fair in 1962. As a retail clerk and later a member of the "Sales Promotion Department" at Frederick & Nelson, Mom earned anywhere from $2.50 to $29.85 per week (depending on whether she was working during summer vacation or during the school year). She even has stubs from the scholarship Frederick & Nelson payed to the UW for one year of Mom's schooling once she had become a business and economics major. At the Bon Marche, where she worked part-time during the school year of 1942/1943, (she was working at F&N at the same time it appears) Mom made $12.95 per week. Mom was a busy working woman it seems. I marvel at how she kept at all these jobs while she kept her grades up (I also find in this box the Commencement Program for 1946 where Mom is listed on the front flap as Magna Cum Laude at the UW) and pursued the myriad of on-campus activities she did while attending classes. No wonder she feels grief that she she didn't have time for her Mom during the late spring and summer of 1945 when Berntina was so ill--she didn't have the physical hours in the day. Her schedule was maxed.

So Mom and I sort through these treasures, Mom attending as best she can and me excited, despite my tiredness, to discover more about my mom's secret life, the life she had before I was born. Mom wants to feel, touch each piece of paper I remove from the box--some of them are intriguing--like the pay stubs--but others are just pieces of paper, some of them clippings from newspapers (that neither Mom nor I can recognize) and some of them empty sheets of paper and note cards with no apparent use. She wants to touch each of them and after doing so, she says the same thing--"Let's keep this one so that...." and then her speech gets muddled and I am unable to discern what it is she want to do with these pieces of paper from her life. Each of them has significance, even the blank sheets of paper, and I am reminded that Mom is ill, has been ill for a long time. Here is the evidence of a hoarder--the meaningful and the meaningless right along side each other--and having no ability to throw away the things she no longer needs. Even now, here in her "dying" room at the Mirabella, she thinks that blank white note cards are of such value that we had better make sure their kept safe.

But really, at this point, where's the utility in commenting on Mom's hoarding tendencies. She is who she is and, to be honest, I am lucky she literally saved everything. How else would I know that she and Dad and Deda, Mom's father, took a road trip down the Oregon coast and into San Francisco in late July and early August of 1948, if Mom hadn't kept the postcards she mailed to her nephews (Mark and Craig, Marguerite's children, though I can't figure out how she has them when they were clearly posted) and the napkins and coasters from the places they dined. And no, I am not exaggerating--paper napkins from "The San Fransisco Drake Hotel," "Goman's Gay 90s Please" and the "Cliff House." Mom was impressed by the latter, as she writes to my cousin, "Master Mark," that "We've dined and cocktailed at the Cliff House" where the view is "magnificent." There's a coaster from a lounge, "Top of the Mark," a postcard from "Castagnola" on Fisherman's Wharf and a rather swank business card with illustration from"Sorrento Pizzeria and Restaurant" on Columbus Avenue. It appears my parents and my mom's father have a very good time eating their way through San Francisco. They started their journeys at Port Angeles, and worked their way through Sekiu, Cape Flattery, Cape Alava, Crater Lake, Ocean Lake (lodged at Dorchester House), Yachats (where they spent the night at Sherwood Lodge whose brochure argues that "Robin Hood Would--You Should"), Gold Beach (where they rented a boat from "William's Boat House"). When they get to Eureka, Mom writes to "Master Mark" that "we're really enjoying the wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful sunshine." Apparently, sunshine is in high demand. Near Fortuna, CA she writes that "we visited the Sea Loin Cave" and "there's lots of fog, but sun is coming out." More commentary on weather. At Big Sur they stay at "Richardson Grove Lodge" and dine at the "Big Sur Lodge." All of her postcards are signed, "Deda, Paul, Dorin," without variation. There's an order to things and Mom knows how to fit smoothly within this order. While Mom is yet to get married, this happens in September of the same year, she sees herself as trailing the men in her life, her father, her soon-to-be-husband. When I ask Mom about this trip, she can't tell me much, except that it was before Mom got married. The postmarks on the cards mailed establish this to be true.

Later that day, after Mom's OT (where she successfully plays "ball" with Becky and bicycles her arms for ten minutes), I have dinner with a friend of mine at our favorite bar in Ballard. Over "tannini's" (Oolong tea martinis) Laura asks--"Why is it that you need to know...need to know about your Mom?" I don't know how to answer this at first, so I am glad for our plates of Pad Thai and Fried Tofu, for our bowl of Won Ton soup--keeps our tongues and stomachs busy. Why indeed, I ask myself? What difference will it make if I know that Mom, Dad and Deda dined at the Cliff House in early August 1948? Laura adds--"My own mother was, is a mystery....she died a mystery." What do I say to that? I feel small, inadequate--that somehow my need to know is a defect that should be corrected, and soon. My mother kept herself private, away from scrutiny. Not even her children knew the kind of woman she was. What makes us lock up tight, never give ourselves to the people in our life? Why are we so unsafe?

I continue to think about Laura's question as I make my way home through what is now an early dark, thanks to the end of daylight savings. Perhaps I don't have answer. Perhaps it's only serendipity, happenstance--that Mom at last is wanting to tell me about her story, her life, and I am here to listen. At last she is forthcoming and feels the need, as her life comes to an end, to have someone else be the repository of her life work, her life secrets, her life mistakes. Mom has anointed me with this task--to be her biographer, so to speak, to be the person who will keep Mom's life safe for another generation, whether or not Mom is alive to tell the stories herself.

So I have stacks of relics spread over my carpeted office floor, rubber-banded papers I've carefully sorted into the genealogy of Mom's life. Middle School, High School, College Life and the Years Before Marriage, Early Marriage Years, Employment History. We've got ten more boxes to sort, many more stacks of Mom's life to retrieve. I'm hoping there's time, but will there be? And I do see it as this--a race against death, a time-dated opportunity to bring back Mom's life to her, the life she can no longer remember and the life I was never privy to know anything about.

I'm tired--I'll admit it. So tired I can't stay awake during daylight hours. Yawning has become a sickness. Unavoidable, contagious. I'm a pariah, a body to be quarantined. It's been over two months since Mom's stroke. Each day is a crisis, each hour a grieving, a letting go, no matter how tired I am. How many more of these days can I live through, tolerate? It seems there's no limit. None whatsoever. Perhaps my brother Eric has it right--to stay away from the Mirabella is to preserve one's own living, one's own sanity. Eric is running scared.

But I can't do this. I need Mom and Mom needs me. Leaving never fixes anything. Maybe it's a as simple as this--Mom's "things" are a lifeline, something to clean up, make sense of. Reviewing, sorting, stacking, rubber-banding are all activities that have a definitive beginning and end. They are coping tasks that can be begun and worked through to the finish. In contrast is my mother's life--an interesting but messy conglomeration of joys and mistakes, like all of our lives. There's nothing simple or easy about Mom's living or dying...but recording and evidencing Mom's life and the process of her dying brings an order to what is everything but an orderly process--the letting go of the living. Perhaps this is why I spend hours "housekeeping," going through the accumulation of Mom's life--sorting boxes of musty papers and clippings, fingering stained napkins and trite Hallmark cards that are simply signed, no personal message. A way to grieve, a way to get through what seems unimaginable--Mom no longer being here to exchange words with me, no matter how pleasant or irascible. Maybe Mom's housekeeping too?

She tries to tell me so as I put on my coat to leave--"It's a way, you know..."

"Way to what?" I ask her.

"A way to...you know...get...."

"Get what?" I ask with a twinge of frustration--it's the end of the day and I'm ready to be gone, back to my own life.

"A way to get...get..." she sputters again.

I look at Mom, at her lips twisted with speech or the lack thereof, the muscles of her jaw pulled tight with the effort. Here we are, hanging on her words...expectant...exhausted by her struggle for speech. I find my own lips forming the troublesome words--"a way to get...get..."--wondering what could be next. I'm stumbling along with her vowels and consonants, willing her sentence to complete itself.

"A way to...you know...get...get..." she tries again.

Where have the words gone?

And just when I think we'll have to give up, leave Mom's thought unfinished, forgotten, the words appear, an avalanche sliding past the roof of her mouth, accelerating through her teeth and gums like they've been waiting there all along--

"A WAY TO GET THROUGH GRIEF," she finishes smoothly and with emphasis.

Her words take me by surprise. There's a quaver to her voice, like there's tears there needing to get out, and as she releases the final consonants, her body slumps dramatically to the right. A collapse. The effort of speech has taken something from her, something only sleep can replace.

I nod "yes" to her in reply, buttoning shut the collar of my coat.

As I touch both her cheeks in goodbye I think, Mom knows. She understands what we are doing. Working though grief.

And all the while, I can't help asking--who will retrieve my life? Who will meticulously sift through my papers--my school reports, my love letters, my dried, crumbled roses? Who will be my historian? Why does this matter?

When I die, my mother dies with me.

Deeply, a mother's daughter
--this is alifewithmom--