Jonathan's POZ Blog

I sit in the uncomfortable wicker chair, made only marginally bearable by the thick pillow in the seat. The air is bordering on the dry, enough to make my lips chapped. It is hot, though a brief snow flurry cascades outside in the dark. Mom likes to keep the temperature up, though she admits that, like me, she used to be a cold-weather person. At the commercial break, I steal a glance at the leather easy chair next to me.

Mom is old, finally. Old and not in the best of health. Her hair, neglected, is a translucent grey-white. Her face bears more than one liver spot. Her hands are weathered and withered. Her body is a shapeless series of lumps in her cranberry satin pajamas. Open carelessly at the neck, her shoulder is exposed, and with it the beginning of a single, cruel scar from her pacemaker surgery a month ago. It is red, puckered, and still angrier than I would like. And it reminds me that every moment, every heartbeat, every instant with Mom is a borrowed piece of time. And no one can tell me how long, how much time there is.

I spent the last week doing light home repair, making some calls to get Mom connected to services (someone will pick up her trash from the side of the house, as she can’t drag the fifty-gallon drums around) and generally making sure that things are not in such disrepair as to warrant attention. I have stood on ladders to change light bulbs, installed new thermometers, hand-scrubbed floors and made calls. But mainly, I have cooked for us, light snacks while we watch our requisite three hours of Will and Grace. Sat in the uncomfortable chair (or sprawled out on the floor) next to her. Been what she really needed, what she really craves, another living being in her world.

The roses I sent her for Valentines Day are dying, and every day she snips a few more buds and places them in a dish so they may dry. The rosebuds retain their yellows, their oranges, their reds. But they are dead, and Mom saves them because she loves them so.

We sat in line for over an hour so that she could apply for a passport, and get her photo taken. This I take as a commitment to some measure of continued vitality. But still I wonder if, like when my Dad was diagnosed with dreadful, incurable cancer nine years ago, I am in any position to do anything but whistle through the graveyard.

I simply do not trust myself to see the truth. I see what I want, I accept only what I absolutely must, and information means less to me, as invested as I am, than hope. Hope which steals sleep from my tired brain at night, as it is wont to dance with despair.

Mom mentions on several occasions that, when she was flatlining on the surgery table (she did so twice), she saw my father, wearing a long black coat or cloak. He was not the feeble old man who died in his bed. He was vibrant, handsome, with a big smile on his face when he saw her. He grabbed her, twirled her around as he did when they danced. Mom says that this has removed any lingering fear of death. “It’s just the next thing that happens,” she tells me. “It’s natural, and it’s painless. It’s simply the next step.”

I agree. I agree. And yet I don’t. Because her next step removes the last trace of family, the last vestiges of security and safety from my life. I agree, and there will come a time when it is the necessary next step for her. And I should celebrate that. Intellectually, I do.

Emotionally, I am a lost child, who sees a dwindling parent nearing the horizon even as he struggles to comprehend the disappearance of the other. I am scared beyond the telling of it. I have some good friends, who fight one another to take care of my ferrets while I am away. I have good friends across the country and planet, who are a Skype call or a Dungeons and Dragons login away. I know this. I am not abjectly alone. I know this. And I am grateful. I am, however, still scared to be orphaned, to be truly adrift, to be at the mercy of whatever currents guide my life.

My mother is better. She is walking around, going shopping, seeing friends, driving her car, playing bridge. She is an eighty year old with congestive heart failure and a pacemeker. She gets tired. She gets weak. She needs help sometimes. But even though the allure of a handsome man who she loves very much awaits her on the other side of the membrane. She still wants to get a passport, go on a cruise, see the world. She wants the opportunity to live just a little more, and I want to help.

Will and Grace is over. The snacks I prepared are eaten. Her very weak martini has been finished, and the dishes washed and put away. I lock the doors, turn out the lights, and meet her in the hallway between our bedrooms.

Gnight Mom, I say, and hug her impossibly small body. Her arms circle my back, and for an instant I think I feel her heart beating against mine. The smell of bath salts, fabric softener, and powder linger in the air.

I love you Mom, I say.

I love you, she replies in a voice that is tired, happy, aged and weak.

She sleeps well. I do not. But I suspect that’s simply going to be the way of things, now.