8,000 Feet In the mountains sleep comes over you, it’s not like there is a choice, one moment, you simply aren’t. Down here, the idea of sleep toys with the outer hairs of our frazzled brains. But there is no middle ground, No solution. Up there, the exhaustion follows; the trail is so intense and unattainable. Nearly. I stand in awe. Futurescape I scream, a tiny, muffled thing, before I fall to the ground, fall to my knees. I’d wondered how I would feel when he finally died, and now I desperately wish I’d given my own life instead. I lean over, my forehead touching the wood floor. I close my eyes. He was a different man thirty years ago, hair long, face smooth. How is it possible that he has now faded from this world? Those dreams of adventure never included the things found in a hospital ward. A plastic clip to measure heart rate. A long straw sticking out the top of a cup. Breakfast, never touched, long forgotten. In the end he left without me, waited for me to vacate the room, went on his own, alone into the light, or dark. The children—they will not understand. Maybe they will join me on the floor when the truth finally comes out, or maybe they will stay standing above the woman who counted on him the most, more than anyone else ever could. Year Four Sobbing, screaming. Father’s hands grip the wheel. They race away, leaving me behind. An accident, they say but all I know is my father comes home alone. Someone mops my brother up, and after a time, he is delivered to the house. My little heart is broken with him on the other side of that door. He will never be the same, and neither will I, forever knowing the threat of death lurks in the shadows beneath all the light.
The Interview #2
I think one of the worst and best things I’ve ever heard about myself was a comment at the end of an interview with my mother. She was dying, and I was holding a recorded meeting with her so that we could learn about her life and remember the stories she used to tell. I was doing it for school, and I had to interview someone over 65. She wasn’t yet, but since she was sick, the teacher made an exception. The fact that it was for school sort of gave me an out if things got too heavy. I was 18 and had no idea what I was facing. And the fact was, it was also giving me an in to re-establishing contact with her.
I felt incredible guilt about abandoning my two older brothers to care for her the moment I graduated high school, and I always will. But I was too young and terribly injured to be able to process what was going on. It was a time I didn’t want to spend any time with her at all. Seeing her sick and unmedicated was a disaster for me emotionally and utterly terrifying.
But there was no way out of it once I started. Once I committed.
Well, I sat there in that room with her, her wig askew, her skin sagging, her eyes hollow, and she told me all the old stories… about how my brother as a baby climbed up the kitchen cabinets until he was sitting on the counter with his fists deep in the sugar bowl. About how she almost went with that hairy Italian, but she knew her mother would’ve killed her. About how she had the same scar as me, the result from resting a bare calf upon a sizzling-hot motorcycle tailpipe.
I remembered those things, but those stories didn’t change the fact that I was scared.
I don’t know where those recordings are now, and while I cannot quote her verbatim, one thing she said to me that night hit me hard and over and over again for a long time.
What she said was that she wasn’t worried about me.
She was worried about my two brothers, but not about me.
Not worried about me? But… what about… me?
Maybe her words meant that she was telling me I was strong. Maybe she meant that I was so self-sufficient that she could take solace in knowing I could handle difficult things on my own without her. I don’t know… maybe she thought that in some offhand way she was paying me a compliment.
It didn’t feel like one, though. Just like I don’t like it when people say “you got this” to me when they find out about my cancer, I felt brushed off by her words. It wasn’t her fault. None of it was really her fault, I guess. Nevertheless, I felt left out in the cold, forced to try to make sense of what was happening to her, and its effects on me, on my own.
“We were smart as whips,” she said. “All of us.” As if it were the last thought she would ever have, her truth; and it was true. But what she didn’t say, and what we all knew, was that she was the smartest of the bunch.
When my mother died, the effect of it on me was less than some might’ve been able to understand. But you see, the bond was already broken by that time, so when she finally slipped between this life and the next, it wasn’t such a difficult leap for me to make. The difference between her being here and her not being here was negligible. You see, she’d left me long ago.
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Readers, I miss the mountains, and the truth is that I’m really not sure when we will be able to return. Family situations are… challenging to maneuver. I look at the beautiful pictures Brian took on our last trip out, and my heart aches to do more. We will find a time to slip away along with the cash to keep the household intact until we return.
Brian isn’t dead, so don’t worry, but sometimes I think about the possibility and how I might react if it were to happen before I go first. Last night he confessed that he has gray hairs sprouting all over his hairline. (Mine are hidden, but they’ll show soon; I’m letting my roots grow out so I can save the hairdresser’s payment and go to France. Maybe Margaret can bleach it for me when I get there. Though it seems unfair that I would continue to fake it while Brian faces the truth.) I can only imagine what the reality of a loss of him would be like, and exploring that in my work is maybe something I should put off. But the comparison between how I imagine I would feel upon his exit and how I felt about my mother’s is unavoidable. All I know is that it won’t be the same. I’ve now been with him far longer than I was with my mother. How unfortunate it is that our most delicate and impressionable years are our young ones, often the most difficult of our parents’.
I never thought I would find someone I would spend my life with. His patience as I slowly, slowly came around was vital, and through it all, he has taught me how to be kind, kinder than all the time that came before. After all, my experiences had little kindness in them save for that of my brother, and while he tried, it was too little to teach me to practice it in my own life. Those lessons have had to be learned over time, but I do remember him trying. He was the only one who did.
Dad wasn’t a picnic, either, but when my mother died, he was the one to step up for me as the others mourned. I was terrified of seeing her in the casket, almost as terrified as seeing her alive. He came to the rescue and defended my decision, putting his foot down to save me that last cut. I will never forget it. And if you read about his transgressions in these pieces, know that I forgave him in the end. Mostly.
Thank you for reading. I’ll be back next Sunday for another installment. Until then, take a deep breath and bite your sarcastic tongue. You just might save someone a little bit, and after all, that’s how we live our lives, one little bit at a time.
Jen
This week’s Post-It pile.
