One

 I can’t remember who, but someone had told me that my father was dead.

My mother and brother and sister stood next to me while I bent down to kiss his embalmed cheek below eyes that no longer looked at me. His face felt cold and waxy, like lip balm. He didn’t tell me, “I love you.” He could have been sleeping, but probably not in a suit and tie in a shiny-silver bed of sorts, with brass handles on the sides, embraced by several flower arrangements.

So this is what being dead was all about. He’d only been in the hospital a few days, and our babysitter had spilled a whole gallon of milk on the kitchen floor, and I was whisked away to stay with Aunt Pat and her family, and I had to kiss a bunch of aunts at St. Mary’s Church, which is a dreadful thing to ask of a shy kid, and that’s about all I remember.

Daddy sure was dead all right. I never saw him again.

I was five.

A few months later, Mom packed us up and moved us from Columbus to Marion, Ohio, where she was from, into our new, fatherless home. I don’t remember much about that time, but I remember realizing that people die, even parents, and they up and leave you, and even though it’s not because you were bad or they were bad, they’re not sleeping, they are just dead. And Daddy left us behind because, well, because God needed him in Heaven way more than we needed him on earth, and he will look down on us and keep us from harm, sort of like another guardian angel, which is even better than a daddy, and he will be with me all the time now, even when I’m at school.

When you’re five, you don’t question God or His Infinite Wisdom, and you think that thirty-two is pretty old, that it’s a normal age for dying. My brother, who was eight, must have felt the same way, so he convened a meeting of us three siblings in the bathroom. He shut the door and began. “Who do you want to live with when Mom dies?”

I didn’t have to think long or hard. “Aunt Pat,” I said. I loved going to Aunt Pat’s house, home to six girls, three older, two younger, and Clara, whom I adored. When Daddy was in the ICU in Grant Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, I’d stayed with them, bunking up with my all-time favorite-cousin, Clara, in her powder-blue bedroom, and we’d play with her Barbie dolls. Sharing a twin bed with your female cousin is not a big deal when you’re five. I was sure they would be able to find room for me after my mom died.My brother wanted to live with Aunt Reed and her family, most likely because they had a lot of boys and motor bikes. My sister didn’t get a say since she was only three, so she would live with me and Clara at Aunt Pat’s.

So there. We knew our mother would leave us, just as our father had left us. If being orphans was to be our destiny, we simply had to plan for it, matter of fact, so we did.

The thing is, and much to my amazement, our mother lived. She watched us grow up and graduate from grade school, then high school and college. She watched us get married and have babies, all of us. And at the age of sixty-three, Mom even took a train to Massachusetts and watched her oldest grandchild, Paul, graduate cum laude from Boston University.

Still, from the moment of the Simpson children bathroom convention in 1968, our mother’s ultimate death had unwittingly become a part of me. It was unnatural and unnerving, this doom-and-gloom cloud constantly hovering over me. As a child, I would stand over her while she slept, waiting for her chest to rise and fall in rhythmic breathing. When she would leave the house and return, it was a jubilant homecoming, always. It would lead me to excessive worrying when I discovered she had a Last Will and Testament, and later motivate me to convince my sister that we needed to hop in her car and head to Marion from Columbus during blizzard-like conditions to make sure Mom, who hadn’t answered her phone that morning, was okay.

It would even inspire Mom to finally tell me, “Jesus Christ, Janemarie–and I do mean that prayerfully–stop worrying about me! I am fine.”

By September, 2000, Mom had somehow landed in Pennsylvania, where she maintained a humble apartment close to my brother’s former wife and children, her much-loved grandchildren. I had somehow landed in Kentucky, and we were hours and hours apart from each other. Although our relationship had evolved from child-needs-her-mother into child-loves-but-doesn’t-necessarily-like-her-mother, I knew I had to find a way to move Mom closer to me. She was 65 and retired. She had not fulfilled our orphan prophecy and had lived much longer than I’d ever imagined. Still, I knew something terrible was bound to happen sooner or later, and ever-practical, I reckoned it would be easier for everyone if she lived closer to someone; since there were no other takers, that someone was me.

Living with me and my family was not an option. (Been there, done that, happily gave up the rental deposit by breaking the year-lease agreement three months early in 1993.) I settled on Hathaway Court Apartments, a complex for senior citizens living on fixed incomes, a short distance from my home. It didn’t take much convincing on my part to get my mother to appreciate and agree to my vision. So, within a month, my nephews Paul and Addam loaded up a U-Haul van with her meager belongings and drove her from Quakertown, Pennsylvania to Covington, Kentucky.

I would like to report that our time together was chock-full of happy memories and Kodak moments. I wish that I could look back on those months and know that I, her eldest daughter, had honored my mother well and had loved her even more.Trouble was, there were times I could barely stand to be around her. I thought we were nothing alike, nothing at all. I was 40 and busy loving and raising my own children but growing more and more emotionally distant from her. I sincerely doubted we would ever bridge that gap, and several years ago, when a co-worker asked me how I’d feel when Mom died, I said, “Probably indifferent.”

On Sunday morning, October 13, 2002, I puttered about my house, occasionally looking outside. It was a glorious autumn day, full of sunshine and a smattering of fall foliage on the trees in our backyard. While my family slept, I watched a movie and enjoyed the quiet, all the while dreading my daily phone conversation with my mother.

She insisted we talk to each other every day. “What’s wrong, Janemarie?” she would ask me for the thousandth time. “Talk to me. We never talk anymore.”

“Mom,” I’d say, “when we talk to each other every day, there’s not a whole lot to say. Can’t we just skip a day sometimes?”

“Why do we need to do that? I just want to make sure you’re okay, hear your voice. Sorry if I’m being a bother.”

“You’re not a bother, Mom,” and I maintained our phone-call ritual; although it annoyed the hell out of me most days, it was much better than mom-guilt. We soon settled into this routine of I call you, you call me, and every Sunday for almost two years, Mom would call me after she came home from Mass, around noon. (I don’t care how sick or tired my mother was, she’d never, ever commit the Catholic venial sin of skipping church.)When 1:30 p.m. rolled around and my phone hadn’t yet rung, I figured she’d stopped for a bite to eat with her friend who drove her to church. At 2 p.m., I nonchalantly dialed Mom’s number. No answer. She’s probably changing her clothes, I thought.

By 3 p.m., I began playing the mental math game with which I was quite familiar–I may have even invented it. Church over by 1 p.m. Lunch, maybe, but that wouldn’t take more than an hour or so. Maybe they went shopping. Nah, Mom didn’t like Elaine that much.

By 3:30 p.m., I began dreading the the thought of never hearing her voice again.

I’d been in this place before just a few months prior, when she’d decided to attend some Bingo/dinner function in her apartment complex. I rang her up, like I did every day after I came home from my job, and worked myself into a frenzied state of worry-wartedness before she finally called me around 7 p.m., and she promised me she’d always tell me if she decided to leave her anti-social cave again. “Not that I’ll be doing that soon, if ever,” she said. “Those old people are boring as hell, plus you can’t smoke.”

I called again at 4 p.m, and the phone rang, and rang, and rang. In between dialing her number, I called my husband, Wes, who was at work. “Something’s going on with Mom,” I said. “She won’t answer her phone, I’ve been calling her for hours.”

“She’s probably okay, but it is weird,” he said. “Let me know when you get a hold of her.”

I convinced him to come home early. It was 5 p.m. and growing dark outside, and I still hadn’t been able to get a hold of my mom despite dozens of desperate dialing attempts. By 5:30, Wes and I were outside Hathaway Court Apartments, where I was fumbling for the key that would get me into the building although, I soon realized, I didn’t have the key to get into her apartment.

I knocked on her door, first tapping it gently, then knocking on it, then pounding it. From the crack underneath her door, I saw that it was pitch-black save the light from her television. I smelled urine and the indescribable stench of death that I hadn’t smelled since leaving behind my short stint as a nursing assistant at Good Samaritan Hospital.One of my mom’s neighbors, a friend, came out into the hallway, and she let me use her phone to call for emergency assistance.

“How do you know something’s wrong with your mother?” the 9-1-1 operator asked me. “Maybe she’s out, it’s still early.”

“You don’t understand, my mom hardly ever goes out, we have this routine, we call each other every day,” I said. And I can smell her, so help me God, I really can. I gave the operator my mom’s phone number, and she dialed it, and she didn’t get an answer, either, so she dispatched emergency rescue personnel to my mother’s apartment.

I always thought I would be prepared for this moment. I should have been, having waited for it for the last 35 years. As it turned out, I wasn’t prepared at all. I recognized the familiar gut grumblings and churnings, the sweaty palms, the palpitating, pounding heart that would surely beat right out of my chest. But nothing had prepared me for the emptiness in my soul or the mental wailing and teeth-gnashing waiting to erupt for this woman from whom I’d grown so detached but now couldn’t imagine living without.

Oh, God, Oh, God, Please, God, I’m not ready for this yet, you can’t leave me, I need you so much, Mom, I love you so much, I’m so sorry, Oh, God, Oh my God, no.

Things must have been awfully slow in Covington, Kentucky that evening, for soon Wes and I were joined by a police officer and his bike, two paramedics and finally a firefighter with the master key to every apartment in Hathaway Court. Ten minutes is an eternity when you’re awaiting the final verdict.

*************************************************************************************As As it turned out, Mom, your insistence that we speak on the phone daily was a good thing, very good, indeed. It may have even saved your life. I wonder now if that’s why we called each other every day. I know it comforted you knowing I was home and safe for the day. Maybe you were checking in with me, too.

From the hallway, I listened as these men talked to you in loud but kind voices. “Mrs. Simpson, do you know how long you’ve been in here?” and “You’re okay, Mrs. Simpson, we’re going to get you out of here and get you all fixed up.”Several minutes passed before I saw you on the stretcher. Eyes wild, hair matted to your head, a bruised and swollen left cheek that you kept touching. “No, no, Mom, don’t touch it,” I chided. “There, there, you’re okay, it’ll be okay.”

We had just visited you in your apartment three days earlier, your sixty-seventh birthday. We came at the end of our day, tired and rushed, out of obligation rather than celebration. I picked up a last-minute present for you at Walgreens, which didn’t excite you. (Were you feeling ill? Or did you suspect my rather apathetic intention? Mothers just know.) You and I visited at your small thrift-store table, smoking cigarettes, drinking weak coffee. “I’m just not happy here anymore, Janemarie,” you told me.

I pulled you close, hugged you with my strong arms, smoothed your hair. “What’s the matter? Why are you sad?” I gently pulled away and patted your cheek. “Why don’t you come home with me for a few days? I’ll take a few days off, my boss won’t care. We can hang out, watch some movies, drink some beers. I’ll even cook for you, or watch you cook for me. You make the best fried chicken.”

Except nothing of the sort happened. I honestly don’t remember what I said to you then. I’m sure I felt defensive, as if you were accusing me of not making you happy, as if you wished I was one of your other children, as if I could never be good enough, as if I could read your mind. I do know that I’ve wished a thousand times for the power to snatch that moment back for a do-over.

We left you a short while later. You called me Saturday morning to thank me for my gift, and you would’ve called me Sunday after church except for that damn cerebral hemorrhage that knocked you off of the commode and onto the ceramic tile on your bathroom floor.

In one instant, our lives were changed, except neither one of us realized how much, or how one sudden brain bleed would provide us with the backdrop for our new relationship, much like the relationships of many parents and their adult children, the “sandwich generation.”

A day or so later, in a bed in the cardiac unit that you thought was in Marion General Hospital in 1972, you said, “I heard the phone ring, but I was just too tired to get up and answer it, and I must’ve fallen back asleep.”

I was now the caregiver, much like a mother to a young child. You were now dependent on me for many, many things, something I’m not sure you ever understood. I don’t think you ever fully grasped that you’d suffered a stroke, and if you did, you quickly forgot it.

That was the bad news. The good news was that you were still alive.