LOSING MOM - Part 47

Later that evening, I was rummaging around Mom’s car looking for my missing phone charger when a piercing shriek sliced through the quiet darkness, freezing me in place. What the heck? Another shriek, and then a cacophony of high-pitched chattering followed by yet more screeching seemed to be coming from the edge of trees just beyond the parking area. A little nervous, but curious what could be making such a racket, I climbed out of the car, leaving the door open behind me just in case I needed to make a quick dash for safety.

Turning on my phone’s flashlight, I pointed it up into the nearest tree where the angry noise was coming from and saw three racoons, two of them together at the very top hissing and screeching at the third one a few branches below, who would then hiss and screech back.

“Wow, you guys scared me!!” At the sound of my voice, the chattering stopped and all three turned and peered down at me through the bare tree limbs, like three mischievous children caught by their mother doing something very naughty. 

“You should be nicer to each other,” I admonished, laughing at the irony that I should be witnessing such a spectacle while in the middle of my own squabbling threesome. Coincidence? I don’t think so. I mean, what were the chances I would have gone down to that parking lot, at that particular moment, on the same evening my two sisters and I were similarly, if not quite so vocally, sparring with each other? No, there just wasn’t any question in my mind those raccoons had a message for me...I just wasn’t sure what it was.

As a believer in signs I am always on the lookout for them, especially if I’m worried and in need of reassurance from the universe that everything will be okay. The past few days in particular, as Mom continued her slow but steady decline, I’d become even more vigilant, hoping for an irrefutable sign that this was the day, the hour, perhaps even the minute that Mom was going to die. In fact, the closer I got to losing her, the more desperate I was for proof that the spiritual connection between me and my mother was so strong that I would know, before anyone else, even my sisters, that she was gone.

Of course, the harder I looked for signs, the more of them I seemed to see, each one making me feel certain that Mom’s death was imminent, but time and again it turned out I was wrong.  Yes, I was definitely getting signs, but never the sign.

Like the morning I woke up and smelled the distinct odor of my grandparents’ kitchen, a smell I’d completely forgotten about until that moment. Unusual, but not unpleasant, it was a combination perhaps of oven pilot light, linoleum wax and dish soap, somewhat musky, but sweet, too, and totally comforting. The smell followed me into the bathroom, and then out to the kitchen where Sal was pouring herself a cup of coffee.

“This may sound crazy,” I said in way of greeting, grabbing a mug from the cabinet, “but I have the smell of Grandmom and Granddad McCarter’s kitchen in my nose. It’s so strange! Do you smell anything?”

Sal shook her head. “Nope, definitely don’t. How funny though!” Taking her coffee, she made her way back to the guestroom to get dressed, leaving me to ponder this strange olfactory experience. The smell was so real that if I closed my eyes I could be sitting in that long ago kitchen, eating a bowl of cereal Grandmom had put out for me while she busied herself at the kitchen sink. She was so old in my memory, her frail body, arthritic hands and snow-white hair just like Mom’s now, so many years later. 

Maybe it’s a sign, I thought as I sipped my coffee, my gaze instinctively pulled toward the mahogany desk that had been Grandmom’s before it was Mom's. Such a beautiful piece of furniture, it reminded me of them both so much - small in stature, but solid and elegant, its veneer worn smooth and lustrous with age.  Maybe Grandmom’s trying to let me know she’s here, I mused. Maybe she’s trying to tell me today’s the day.

But, no, even though the smell followed me from Mom’s apartment to her room at Hospice and back again, it wasn’t the day. Still, I was grateful for the sign, reassured that my grandmother was nearby, waiting patiently for Mom to join her.

The next morning as I walked to the car, my head down to avoid the cold, March wind, I noticed an impression of a leaf embedded in the cement driveway. My heart skipped a beat. Stooping over to take a closer look, I pulled out my phone to take a picture so I could show Sal and Lib. 

Ever since the Hospice doctor had compared Mom’s slow and unpredictable decline to that of a falling leaf, one that takes its time and moves with the wind until it finds the perfect place to land, I’d been seeing single, solitary leaves falling a lot, their slow, steady downward spiral calming my anxious heart like a warm salve, reminding me that Mom, like all the leaves I watched fall, would eventually find her way to the ground.  

So stumbling across this leaf impression, etched forever into the Swan Creek driveway, had to be a sign of some kind, right? How many times had I walked across that driveway and never noticed it before? Why on that particular day did I see it? Maybe today will be the day, I thought, glancing around to mark the spot so I’d remember where to find it. 

But no, it wasn’t the day...again. I was grateful, though, to know that leaf was there, its permanence in the concrete somehow reassuring that even after Mom was gone, like the leaf that had left its imprint, the essence of her would remain, etched irreversibly on my heart.

The screeching raccoons, however, were not, I was certain, a sign about Mom, but about Sal, Lib and me. Maybe their quarreling presence that night was just a physical reflection of the growing tension between us, but feeling like there might be more to it, I did a quick internet search of raccoon symbolism when I got back to the apartment. Not surprisingly, I learned that as very protective animals, raccoons are often a sign that you need to put your family first. And, even more interestingly, an encounter with one can also mean it’s time to let go of a situation.

God, I loved it when a sign was so clear it felt like I’d just received the most perfect gift from a dear friend, right out of the blue. Closing up my laptop, I promised myself I would take heed of the raccoons’ crystal clear message and find a way to smooth things over with Libby and me before it got any worse. 

But she beat me to it, sending Sal and me an email that we woke up to the following morning:

“If I’ve caused you both more angst than we’re already dealing with,”  Lib wrote,“I’m so sorry. I’m so grateful you’re there with Mom and I know I could get on a plane and be there too. I want to believe I’m okay with not doing that, but maybe my uncertainty is coming out in ways that make it harder for both of you. Please know that is not my intention.”

As I read Lib’s note, the word ‘angst’ popped out at me. What a great adjective, I thought, and though I knew its general meaning, decided to look it up to find out the exact definition. 

Angst: A feeling of deep anxiety or dread, typically an unfocused one about the human condition.

Oh my god, yes! Angst was the perfect word to describe my state of being, and lately it was all encompassing. Every single thought I had, or word I uttered, felt fraught with it - even in my dreams.

“Yes, the angst is overwhelming,” I wrote back, “and I’m guessing we’re all feeling it. Sometimes, at least for me, it’s hard to know the right thing to say when the angst is bubbling over for one of you, because my own angst is so overwhelming it feels impossible to take on more. So, just know, if I don’t say the right thing, or worse say the wrong thing, it’s not from lack of love or compassion...it’s just that I’m in the same boat as you guys and trying my hardest to stay afloat, too.”

Sal, too, chimed in, reiterating the intention she had set when we were helping Mom move out of her house of thirty years, just a year and a half before:

“I made a promise that I would love you both more at the end of dividing up Mom’s home than at the beginning. This promise still holds now more than ever, no matter what swamps each of us fall into!”

And that’s all it took. Three heartfelt emails between sisters and the tension dissolved, allowing me, and I’m guessing Sal and Lib as well, to breathe a deep sigh of relief. Because even though the three of us can hiss and screech as loudly and angrily at each other as those three raccoons that night, there was no one else in the world I would have wanted with me in the horrible, angst-filled boat we were trying to keep afloat as we waited for our mother to die, than my two sisters.