Quarter

"some dreams get taken before they
get broke and there are some who claim
that stars need their own galaxies
a vacant stage waiting for a scene"

["Deck in Between", Pathological Lovers]

Quarter.

For a few weeks leading up to today, I have been wondering what to write about.  I knew I likely would.  Even setting aside the date, several times of late I've come to Blog Spot intending to write and either opened a new post or re-opened the unpublished start of "46.1" that I tried several times to write a while back, typed a little, and then likely discarded what little I'd done before walking away.  It's unusual for me to feel like writing and yet feel like I have nothing to say.  This blog is normally quite the opposite.  I only write because I have something to say.

And so March 2nd arrived, along with that certain expectation that I would write.  If it is not on the part of my handful of readers, then on my own.  I like to blame them, but the truth is that it's a yoke I carved myself.  If there's one day of the year that the people close to me really know to just step back and give me space to do as I like, it's this one.  But I always expect myself to write.  I usually want to.  Seldom does the day come and go without me at least sitting to try. 

"Quarter".  That would be my title.  When I woke this morning, that was all I could decide.

It's been a quarter of a century since my mother died.

The idea of demarcating my life by milestones of "time passed since my mother died" is a bit sad.  I don't think of it like that though.  Not day to day, certainly.  I don't want this to be like that, exactly.  But I do take this day every year as a "day of reflection", and on it, and leading up to it, that question always pops into my head.  Wow.  How long has it been now?

I had lunch with Nancy, as I often do.  (Sometimes Susan, too.)

'How much do you still remember?' she asked.

"Bits and pieces," I said, "Just bits and pieces."

For a man who has cheesecloth in that part of the brain that's supposed to house memory, twenty-five years is a lot of erosion.  So much of it is gone now, worn away by time.  Lost.  'Like tears in rain.' 

My sister and I spoke a while, about many things, some of them the struggles of our youth.  The unfortunate truth is most of my childhood was watching my mother's downward spiral into quadriplegia.  The only memory I have of her actually walking is a foggy one I can't tell is a real memory of an actual experience or just a vivid recurring dream I had through my teenage years, and I'm inclined to think it is the latter.

So as much as I speak fondly of her and of the things I learned and of our time together and my immense respect for her, as a mother and as a person, most of my memories of childhood are not particular pleasant ones.  They are of the horrible, painful part of her life, and of ours.  They are of her struggle through MS.  Sure, I heard the stories of the past.  I remember the tales of dancing and skating and going for long walks with my father.  "I wore my legs out," she would say.  "Some day I will dance again," she would assure me.  I believed her.  But those were just stories for me.  I never witnessed any of those good times of her younger days.  They were legend.

Legend has it, there was a time when her life was full and fun and wonderful.  Legend has it, there was a time when it wasn't pills and wheelchairs and being carried to and from bed and up and down stairs, or struggling to find the strength to cough, or drinking with a straw because she couldn't raise a glass to her mouth.  Legend has it, there was a time when she was dating Dad behind her parents' backs and they came home early and he climbed out the kitchen window and she pretended she'd absent-mindedly poured two cups of tea instead of one when her suspicious mother asked.  How they loved to tell that story.

That was a great legend.

And that's why when I write of her, it's always about all the things she gave me, taught me, showed me - in spite of the odds being stacked against her - and not about the 'truly happy times' we shared, because, well, there simply weren't that many.  But don't think me ungracious.  She was, and a quarter-century after her passing, remains, an incredible human being.

After lunch, as I drove about running a few errands and picking up Dan, one of those few vivid memories I still have of her did surface and rattle around my head.  Twenty-five years of erosion hasn't left me much, but I'm glad it has left me a few things.  Bits and pieces.

Her whole body quivered.  She rocked and shook in her wheelchair.  She kept opening her mouth to gasp for air, but she didn't have enough strength to get the air into her lungs.  So her mouth opened and closed and opened and closed, and she shook her head in frustration.  She tried desperately to make a sound but no sound came out.  I could see tears welling in her eyes.

It was what I had just told her.  I did this.  I was filled with a flood of mixed emotion.  Telling her  was the right thing, but now the fear that I'd actually hurt her was rising up inside me.  I did not anticipate such a physical response.  This could be serious.  What if she really couldn't catch her breath?  Do I shut up or keep going?  She's so weak now.  What if this is the thing that kills her?

I kept going.  I wasn't sure if it was the right thing to do, but I kept going.  I couldn't stop.  I had to press on.  And she continued to rock and shake and struggle as I kept blathering on.

I have long ago forgotten what it was I told her.  I have long ago forgotten what tale of tomfoolery or winding joke or perhaps even drunken escapade of my friends and I it was that I spoke that day which got her so wound up into that state.

But I remember how her whole body shook and how she gasped, tearfully choking out an occasional audible chuckle, with her ear-to-ear smile.

I remember how sweet and precious a sight that full-body laughter was coming from her tiny, fragile frame.  It was a rare, chance miracle in our life together.  You.  Have.  No.  Idea.  

But let me assure you, if you did, you'd have kept going too.  

I had never before seen my mother truly, truly laughing her ass off.