Mom has now been dying in the nursing home for more than 1,070 days.The foot-tall Santa I put on top of her cabinet has made her say this: “Do you see it way in the back? An old-time Christmas.”
He cost $19.99 at Kroger, so probably he was made by poor Chinese workers; but he has a fine white earthenware face and hands, and his plush red and white suit is impressive, as is the black belt with its shiny buckle, the French horn in his sack and the fat gold rope dangling from his hand.
She seemed to see him, and she seemed to be enchanted.
“Do you see it way in the back? An old-time Christmas.”
There was something that felt knowing about the way she said it, and also there had been something knowing in the first thing she said to me when I arrived, which was, “Have you written a book yet?” I had to tell her no, not yet, but that I wanted to write a book for children. Maybe one about a seagull that steals a cheese sandwich and learns that he doesn’t like cheese.
But Christmas was the theme today.
It felt great to have a genuine gift for her: the word “Joe.”
When I told her Joe would visit Sunday, she grinned a beautiful big grin, an emotionally present, happy grin. She might not have remembered 60 seconds later, but in the moment that she heard Joe was coming, her Joe, she was blissful.
And then she asked if I could see the old-time Christmas, way at the back.
She said it so often that it got me to think back on our family Christmases and how they might have felt to her. That was something I could talk about for her, and so I described the walk-in closet full of presents wrapped and waiting to be wrapped. The tree big enough for two Christmases. As I was talking, I realized she must have had fond hopes for her beautiful children’s happiness. She was working more than full-time, teaching and going to night school, and still she made Christmas for her 6 children. She really did that.
My older sisters created the decorations, and they enforced the traditions, but Mom’s dream of love was why they did. I hope they see that now.
I tapped those memories and talked to her about midnight Mass, and I sang snippets of the hymns we sang, in Latin and English. As I sang the ones I love I knew she loved them, too. I did my best to describe the candles, garlands and the unearthly calm, marble face of Mary in the alcove of the church.
I recited the bits and pieces of “A Visit From St. Nicholas” that I recall. Aunt Mary McCoy used to live in the house across the street from the house where that poem was composed. Mom liked that poem. When I got to the part where he lays a finger aside of his nose, winks and up the chimney he goes, Mom lifted her hand, which was swaddled by her blanket, and although it was hidden in the blanket, she laid a finger aside of her nose, and she winked.
Suddenly I was choked up. So I gathered my bags, made the clever cheerful exit that does not admit one is leaving, and I slipped out. But I was really weepy.
Just then a new aide came down the hall. She looked about 20 years old, if that. I saw her see me, and I saw her decide that she was going to heal me. That healing me was her calling, and that she was up to her calling. That she was put on this earth to foist some compassion upon me.
Hell.
She dragged me back into my Mom’s room and showed me my Mom and shouted, “Hello, Julia!! She does understand everything! And I know! We have a connection! I look her right in the eyes and she looks back at me and I know she understands! She won’t eat but then I make a big mouth at her and she eats the food before she knows! She is in good hands!!”
I was getting even more weepy, and when that happens I leave the room because Mom is an emotional mirror: She feels whatever you project. If you grin, she is happy. If you become sad she feels more sad, and if you are upset, it upsets her dreadfully, and so I LEAVE. It is CRUEL to stay.
But I couldn’t explain that to this girl fast enough to save myself from her. Instead I stood there and allowed her to torture me with her compassion for my guilty feelings, which she wanted to make sure I understood were not justified, because I am “only one woman with ten fingers and ten toes.”
(And actually, I liked her for that image. That was a sweet thing to say.)
She wouldn’t stop hugging me and talking about her connection to Mom. My glasses snagged on her hair and WE connected.
As we disentangled, from a distance, from the internal distance that feels like one is standing high above oneself, I saw this as an absurd situation. My mom — my mom — would have relished my predicament, recognized it and quietly laughed her ass off. Because that was her smug daughter Cecelia being obliged to be nice. She so loves her smug daughter Cecelia, but also, it is so funny to see her discomfited.
Oh, my Mom. How I miss your seraphic irony!
The deal was, I had to be nice and let the idiot instruct me or I would be a Bad Lady — and shame my mother.
After a while I recognized the aide’s name on her name tag.
And I remembered the name because Sunny talks about her.
Sunny positively hates her.
