LOSING MOM - Part 43

Feeling a bit deflated after Julie left, I sat down heavily in the recliner and looked over at my sleeping mother. Her mouth was slightly agape, her loose, pallid skin greyish in the early morning light, her breathing shallow and uneven. She would have never made it to Maine, I thought to myself. What were we thinking?      

Gazing out the window at the overcast, March day, contemplating the empty hours that lay ahead, I wasn’t sure who I was feeling more sorry for - Mom because she wouldn’t get to see Maine again, or me, because I wouldn’t be able to take her. The flurry of activity that morning had emphasized the tedium of the past few days, and selfishly I would have welcomed the disruption that a cross country ambulance ride would have brought to my lonely vigil.

Mom stirred, her frail body shifting ever so slightly beneath the bed covers as her eyes, squinting open, stared out the window for a brief moment before slowly closing again. She looks so sad, I thought, watching her from my perch on the recliner, wondering what it must feel like to wake up to yet another day, waiting to die.

She stirred again, this time reaching her gnarled hands toward the tray table in front of her. I jumped up and moved to the side of the bed, pulling a chair up so I could sit down close to her.

“Thirsty, Mom?” I swished the pink sponged swab around in the plastic cup to absorb some water then held it over her mouth until her lips opened and I could ease it in. Turning my head slightly to avoid the stale, fetid odor of her breath, something Mom would have been so mortified about if she knew, I rolled the sponge over the inside of her cheeks and gums until the stringy threads of dry saliva coating her teeth and tongue began to disappear. A quick flash of revulsion bubbled up in my throat at this visible sign of Mom’s physical decline, but I swallowed it back, distracting myself by dipping the swab back in the water cup.

‘More?” I asked, touching the sponge to Mom’s lips, and she opened her mouth again, much like a baby bird looking to be fed.

When it seemed she’d had enough, I left the swab in the water cup and dabbed some of the lip ointment the nurse had given us on Mom’s dry lips, pressing as gently as I could on the dead, peeling pieces so as not to disturb them. Tempting as it was to pull them off, we’d learned that doing so left deep cuts in her lips that were even harder to heal.

“Thank you,” Mom murmured with a faint smile, ‘that feels better.”

I leaned over and kissed the top of her head, careful to avoid the long, pink scar from where they’d stapled the gash closed from the fall she’d taken four weeks before. The fall that had, it turned out, been the beginning of the end, though we didn’t realize it at the time. How could her cut have healed so well, I wondered, when the rest of her body is shutting down? How is it possible the body can heal and die at the same time?

The scar actually made me a little angry, its presence taunting in its proof that some of Mom’s cells were still working, and working really well, as all that was left of the six-inch cut, so deep it had required twelve staples to close up, was the pink, healthy scar tissue left behind. And the way it traversed her head made Mom look like a younger version of herself, her hair now parted on the side like a little girl, making me want to weep and smile at the same time.

The aide poked her head in the door. “Sorry your plan isn’t going to work out,” she said when she saw me. “For what it’s worth I thought it was a good one.”

“Thanks. It was worth a try, right?”

“Definitely. Are you guys okay in here? Need anything?”

Assuring her we were fine, I watched as she disappeared back into the hall, as Mom, with her eyes still closed, murmured “What plan?”

Smiling to myself that this mother of mine, despite being on her deathbed, still didn't miss much, I explained what we’d been trying to do.

“But I guess there’s just no way,” I finished with a sigh, “which makes me really sad. We’d do anything to get you to Maine if we could. You know that, right?”

She nodded. “I know," she whispered. "You’re wonderful to try.”

A pang of regret shot through me. Did I try hard enough? I wondered, suddenly worried that maybe I’d given up too easily. Maybe I should have asked to speak to the doctor, I fretted, or called the ambulance people back and asked them what would happen if Mom died on the way.

Maybe if I’d been a little braver, a little less quick to accept that there was ‘no way’ we could take Mom to Maine, we might actually have figured it out.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

“Hey, Mom?” I touched her shoulder and she opened her eyes to look at me. “I know we can’t get to Maine in real life, but how about we try going in our heads? Let’s pretend I just picked you up at the airport, and we’re about to get on Route 9. Close your eyes, and I’ll tell you what I see, okay?”

With a small smile, Mom did as I asked, closing her eyes as I began to describe everything I could remember about the 2 hour drive from Bangor to Robbinston, a trip we had both made countless times over the years.

At first I was a little tentative, not sure Mom’s memories would be the same as mine, but soon the familiar landmarks were flashing by in my mind as though we were really together in a car, driving to Maine.

I took her past the motel with the billboard ‘Sleepy People Wanted’, a seedy looking place that had been looking for sleepy people as long as I could remember. We drove through the town that flew American flags from every telephone pole, and the trailer campground on the lake, the one I always thought looked like so much fun with all the boats and floats when I was little. We passed by the Eagle’s Nest restaurant whose parking lot was always full, no matter what time of day we happened to be driving by, and then the long stretch of miles with nothing but Maine woods as far as the eye could see.

“Halfway there,” I said, going by the Wilderness Lodge, an outpost of some unknown (at least to me) purpose that somehow, no matter how fast or slow I was driving, was always exactly halfway between the airport and the camp. Then came the old fire lookout station, and the life size Smokey the Bear with his fire danger level sign. There was the ice cream place we sometimes stopped, though usually not when I was driving because, well, by that point I’d been in the car for close to eight hours and I just wanted to get to the camp.  Then came the rest area we’d had to pull into once when my cousin got carsick, with its pretty stream where Mom had gotten him cleaned up. And finally, the old Lord’s Well Drilling truck hoisted high up on a tall, metal shaft so it looked like it was hanging in mid-air, always a welcome sight because it meant we were nearing the end of Route 9.

“Getting closer!” I said as we turned onto Route 1, passing by the old Baring airport, really just a hangar and a grass-rutted landing strip, where we’d once anxiously waited for Dad, flying in from Bangor on a tiny, charter plane. We passed through the Moosehorn Preserve, looking to see if there were any ospreys sitting in their nests, then around the rotary and the turnoff for the shortcut that would take us past Walmart (that we hated) and Shop & Save (that we loved), cutting off a few precious minutes before spilling us back onto Route 1.

It was funny because the closer we got to the camp, the more excited I was getting, just like in real life. Passing by the little cemetery where Dad was buried next to generations of Mom's family, my heart sped up with anticipation as we rounded the big curve in the road and got our first real glimpse of the river. Even in my imagination it was like seeing a really old friend I hadn’t seen all winter and I sighed happily.

“Okay, we’re turning down the driveway now! Look how tall that little pine tree has grown!” I exclaimed, gratified to see a tiny smile pass over Mom’s face. She really loved that little pine. “Going around the bend now...there’s the boathouse, and the camp! We made it Mom! We’re in Maine!”

And so for the next day or two, whenever Mom was at least a little bit awake, I would take her to Maine again. We did all the things she used to do - from walking down to the camp for breakfast, to sitting outside her bedroom with a small glass of cranberry juice in the late morning sun. We had cocktails on the porch and watched the osprey fishing, and sat out on the knoll having a sandwich watching the tide come in. We went for a boat ride on the river to look for seals, and walked through the woods to the Bluff, where we sat looking upriver at the clouds skirting over the horizon. We even went to Shop & Save, and over to Canada for a little lunch at the Kingsbrae Gardens, one of her favorite places to go.

And when I ran out of ideas, I reached out to the rest of our family for some help, reading Mom their emails as they came in, one after another, holding back tears as I shared their memories, so intertwined with my own.

From Kate’s ‘the salty taste of the river after a boat ride', to Elizabeth’s ‘the smell of the camp when you walk in for the first time every summer’, and Nick's ‘the parade of people and hugs whenever someone new arrives', the love I felt pouring from their words was almost palpable, swirling around Mom and me like a warm breeze.

'The sound of someone dialing the rotary phone', wrote Claire, 'And Grandmom working in the garden by the camp with the bumble bees buzzing in the clover'.

Jack shared, 'Eating the massive blueberries off the bush by the boathouse, and always checking the weather stick, even if no one really knows if it works'.

'Lounging around in front of the fireplace on that big, round rug like a family of lions', Bill wrote, adding with a smiley face, 'and jumping off the roof deliberately in front of Grandmom'.

Mom’s eyelashes fluttered, and the ghost of a smile flickered over her lips. I smiled, too...she hated it when anyone jumped off the roof, and I did, too.

What a gift she’s given us all, I thought, not for the first time, glancing over at Mom , whose tenacious spirit had turned a rundown old camp into a place where her family could build so many shared memories. And as I read the last email and stood up to stretch my legs, it occurred to me that maybe the reason Maine without Mom felt so impossible was because her spirit was so imbued in all of our memories of it.

And so for us, for me and my sisters, for our husbands and our children, Maine is Mom, and she will always be there, whether we can see her or not.

To be continued...