LOSING MOM - Part 39

It felt strange pulling back into Hospice by myself a couple hours later, an odd combination of dread and anticipation at being there on my own for the first time since Mom had been admitted, now more than three weeks before. It was like I’d just been promoted to a bigger, more important job and though I was looking forward to being the one in charge, there was also a certain amount of anxiety at having so much responsibility without anyone there for support.

Like my sisters - the one home in Maine with her brand new puppy, and the one on her way home to California, who I’d just said goodbye to.

Dropping Lib off at the airport had not been uneventful. We’d purposefully gotten there early thinking we could grab a drink together before she had to board, but it turned out that Toledo’s small, regional airport only had one bar, and it was on the other side of security.

“I think I saw a restaurant on our way in,” Lib suggested, climbing back into the car after having gone inside to check out our options. “Let’s go try that.”

She was right, and a few minutes later we were walking into a nondescript, Mexican restaurant just outside the airport entrance, its parking lot surprisingly full though it wasn’t even quite 5:00pm.

“Pretty popular spot in the middle of nowhere!” I laughed, following Lib through the door into an open, bustling dining room. At first glance we weren’t sure there even was a bar, but weaving our way through the crowded tables we spotted a small counter at the back with a couple of empty stools.

“What can I get you?” the bartender asked in a heavy accent, polite but distracted as he filled a pitcher with beer from the nearby tap.

“Umm, do you have any chardonnay?” I asked, glancing around hopefully for some kind of wine list.

“Si, we have white wine. Dos?” he looked at Lib, who nodded, though I could tell by her face she wasn’t so sure.

Moments later he deposited two single serving bottles of white wine in front of us, like the ones you get on an airplane although maybe even smaller, along with two equally small wine glasses. Lib and I, both self-confessed chardonnay snobs, grimaced sideways at each other as we looked at the bottles doubtfully.

“Well, how bad can it be?” I whispered, unscrewing the top and giving the wine a little sniff before pouring it into the glass. Lib followed suit.

Clinking our tiny glasses, I took a small sip, braced for the worst.

“Oh, thank god,” I gave a little laugh under my breath, “I don’t know if I’m just desperate, but this doesn’t taste so bad!”

“I think maybe we’re just desperate,” Lib smiled back, then took a sip herself. “But you’re right! It could be worse!”

It’s funny how some moments, inconsequential though they might have been at the time, have remained so clear in my memory while other bigger, more important moments have completely blurred. Sitting in that random, Mexican restaurant sipping cheap chardonnay with my younger sister, laughing at ourselves because it turned out that when push came to shove maybe we weren’t such big wine snobs after all, is one of those moments.

I can’t say for sure why it sticks out so sharply when I look back on that day. Maybe it’s because we were surrounded by people just going about their normal lives, having an early weeknight dinner with their family or friends. Maybe it’s because there was so much boisterous energy swirling around us that I was reminded how life isn’t always so sad. Or, maybe, it’s just because for a few blissful minutes we were nothing more than two sisters sitting in a bar, having a few laughs. A bright spot of normalcy in an otherwise abnormal situation.

Sadly, our little moment of respite didn’t last very long, and soon we were two sad sisters again, tearfully hugging each other goodbye in front of the terminal. I watched from the car as Lib made her way through the revolving door, waiting to see if she’d turn back for one last wave before disappearing inside. She did, and I blew a kiss back, hoping she could see.

Trying not to cry, I pulled away from the curb and headed toward the airport exit, realizing as I did that I wasn’t exactly sure how to get back to Hospice. Lib had been in charge of directions on the way over, and I hadn’t paid the least bit of attention to where we were going, just turning when she told me to turn.

Luckily there was a red light at the exit, so I grabbed my phone to pull up Google maps, only to discover the battery was dead. Crap. Knowing there wasn’t a charger in the car cause I’d left mine back home in Connecticut, I stared at the sign for the Ohio Turnpike on the other side of the light and wondered which way to go - east or west?

Now you’d think that since I’d grown up flying in and out of the Toledo Airport I would have some idea of how to get back to Perrysburg, some internal compass that would point me confidently in the right direction. But it had been years since I’d actually flown into that airport, always flying nonstop to nearby Detroit rather than having to change planes to get to Toledo.

So, sadly, no...I really didn’t have any idea which way to go, and when the light turned green made a very-spur-of-the-moment and clearly-not-well-thought-out decision to head west.

At first everything actually seemed familiar, so I relaxed a little, letting my thoughts drift as I followed the highway, a road so straight I barely had to hold the steering wheel. Of course, everything in northwest Ohio looks pretty much the same - just miles and miles of flat, rural countryside, one cornfield followed by another, interspersed here and there with aging farms and giant billboards - so I probably shouldn’t have let my guard down quite so soon.

But it was so peaceful driving along, my thoughts taking me back to when I was a teenager and, needing space from some family drama, real or imagined, would take one of my parents’ cars and go for a drive. The roads around Perrysburg, like the highway I was on, all ran straight as far as the eye could see, and I would just drive and drive, singing along to the radio, relishing the solitude and freedom as the miles flew by.

And, incredibly, there I was, so many years later, driving alone again in a parent’s car across the familiar, flat Ohio landscape, feeling a similar sense of solitude and freedom as my long ago teenage self. I couldn’t sing along to the radio, it had suddenly stopped working, along with the clock, a year or so before and Mom hadn’t really cared about getting either fixed, so to keep myself company I sang old Peter, Paul and Mary songs that I mysteriously, having no recollection of learning them, seemed to somehow know all the words to.

Between the songs and the landscape I was happily lost in a time capsule of memory, until a sign for Archbold, a town where a good friend of mine had grown up, caught my attention. Archbold? That couldn’t be right! Archbold was nowhere near Perrysburg, a fact I knew well because Becky, my friend, had complained all the time about how long it took her to get to school every day.

Alarm bells started ringing in my head and I sat up a little straighter, my hands tightening on the steering wheel as the realization sank in that I had just driven really, really far in the completely wrong direction!

Jesus, how long had I been driving? Without a clock or a phone I had no idea, and chastised myself for not paying more attention, for being so absorbed in my thoughts that I’d lost all track of time. So irresponsible! I scolded myself. What if something had happened to Mom while I’d been gone so long? I got a little panicky then, realizing that not only was I miles away from my dying mother, but if something happened to her while I was gone I’d be the last to know because my phone was f..ing dead - no one could even reach me!

Pressing my foot down on the accelerator, I sped up as much as Mom’s old Honda CRV would allow, getting off at the next exit so I could turn around and go back the way I’d just come. Such a waste of time!

But then again, maybe it wasn’t. Looking back, the time I spent driving the wrong way down the Ohio Turnpike is another one of those inconsequential moments that remains sharp in my memory, unimportant as it turned out to be in the big scheme of things. Maybe it’s because, like drinking wine with my sister in a random, Mexican bar, driving by myself through the flat landscape of my youth, reminiscing and singing old songs to myself, offered me another little respite from the reality that I was losing my mom, and for those few blissful minutes, I forgot.

The early evening light cast deep shadows around the remaining cars scattered in the Hospice parking lot when I finally made it back, and I pulled into a spot near the main entrance. Sitting for a minute, I stared at the low, brick building in front of me, thinking of all the sadness pulsing within its walls, waiting to encompass me again once I was back inside.

And though part of me was wishing I could be anywhere but where I was, another part knew I was exactly where I wanted to be.

(To be continued...)