The writing of my memoir (sample below) has been postponed in order to compile and market a self-published book of essays, poems, and photos of my parents titled Down Life's Path with Mom and Dad. The book is now being marketed by Infinity.com. A sample review can be seen on bbotw.com by typing in my name or the title of my book. Many of the essays are reprints from my weekly column in The Jackson Herald. My pain is too fresh to write a complete memoir now.
November 1952: Walking home from church together on a bitterly cold night, my mother and I are bathed in headlights. A car approaches from the rear. Taking me by the hand, Mom guides me in front of her, like mothers will do. The narrow concrete road, sheeted with ice, tilts toward the creek. Hugging the bank, we give the automobile wider berth. The vehicle eases beside us, then begins a downhill slide.
An agile eleven-year-old, weighing not much more than goose down, I run in front of the car to the upper side. My mother, wearing heels and more like a goose fattened for the upcoming Thanksgiving feast, finds no escape. The driver fights the wheel, mouth agape.
Simultaneously, the front bumper brushes Mom’s legs, I scream, and Mom reacts. An adrenaline rush of fear sends her down the bank, plump legs stretching in long strides like those of Rubber Man, one of my comic book heroes. She takes one step in the narrow creek rippling beneath thin ice, then lands safely on the other side in one astounding leap.
Later, when the bass-drum-beats of our hearts have faded, and our knees have stopped strumming like tightly stretched, plucked rubber bands, my mother and I laugh about the situation. I tease her about being Wonder Woman, another of my favorite comic book heroes, bounding over buildings in one giant leap.
June 1992: Forty years after Mom’s airborne flight, my parents come for a visit. Leaving in late evening, my aging and less agile mother loses her balance on a patio step. My father waits at the car, once-broad shoulders stooped, hair gleaming in the rays of the setting sun like fine-spun artificial angel hair. Seeing Mom stumble, Dad starts, concern furrowing his already lined brow, but age slows his response.
I experience sudden deja vu. As surely as the car bore down on my mother that long ago November night, death now bears down on my beloved parents. Mom and Dad now walk the lower side of life, years sliding by and picking up momentum. My mind screams in silence but, this time, there are no avenues of escape.
The agility of their younger days has fled.
The tables have turned. I am now the one who reaches out to guide my mother to safety. I no longer depend on my parents. They depend on me. This has been the purpose of their visit, a trip to a mechanic for their aging car. I made the appointment, accompanied them there, and covered the cost.
The fear of rising costs doesn’t cause the same reaction in my parents income as fear caused in Mom’s legs in 1952. Their finances can’t stretch to clear the leap between employment and retirement. The weight of debt plows them down. Living on a slippery slope of encroaching poverty, they cringe as the cost of living cripples their budget and kills their dreams.
Earlier this morning, on the way to the mechanic’s shop, with my father following in his car, I loaned a sympathetic ear to my mother’s complaints. The loss of freedom since her stroke and my father's retirement, the close proximity in their home during the winter months, grate on her nerves. She yearns for former days of freedom; weekly bus trips to town, a full day of window shopping.
I stand helplessly by in this situation, too, unable to convince my ever-cautious father that Mom‘s debilitation isn’t severe enough to halt her private weekly excursions. Not patient with, or understanding, her desire for leisurely browsing of shops, Dad insists on accompanying Mom, yet haunts her every footstep with grousing: “Why waste time looking at items you can't afford?” “ Why don’t we get home?” “I’ve got work to do in the garden.” Recalling the fear of an icy November night, I understand his caution, in spite of his lack of enjoyment in the excursions.
After the car repairs, my mother reminds me about her clothing order from the department store. I reply that we also need to stop at the finance company to check the loan balance on my father's hearing aids. She exits the office confused, wondering why she owes more than she thought. My mother is often confused these days, misplacing money and important papers and neglecting monthly payments.
Dad burns food, sometimes forgets how to reach destinations, and occasionally confuses one daughter for another. But what can my siblings and I do but worry? Mom’s stubborn independence won’t accept offers of help. My father’s pride, too, is adverse to what he considers “handouts”, such as the money for car repairs.
"We’ll pay you back,” he promises after I steady Mom and help her into the car. Dad struggles into the driver’s seat and slides the key into the ignition. Eyes the color of spring bluets, faded with age and discouragement, pierce mine. “We’ll figure something out,” he says, ignoring my protests. “I've got a few ideas now." A few days earlier, he sold some copper, the month before recycled aluminum cans. Hunching over the steering wheel, Dad struggles to slip the car into gear. This man, who once owned a demolition business, who casually walked narrow ceiling joists, ripping out roof trusses, who expertly whipped dump trucks and flatbeds in and out of traffic, slowly backs the car and turns the wheel, creeping down our drive and into the rural lane.
I watch the ancient maroon Oldsmobile disappear from sight, then hurry inside. Closing the door behind me, I lean on it, trembling with rage, breathing deeply to stop threatening tears. Dad’s automobile is once again in good repair, but what might break down tomorrow? Or what scam artist might call, preying on my father's desire for self-sufficiency?
I want to lash out at someone. Shouldn't there be a way to stop leeching of the elderly, some miraculous progress in the war against Alzheimer’s and diabetes? What will I do if my mother's incapacity to keep a budget worsens, if my father becomes more susceptible to "get rich quick" schemes? As the car bearing down on Mom those many years ago frightened me into immobility, the passing of years, and with them, illnesses, senility and financial worries, frightens and immobilizes me now. I feel as if my hands are tied, as if there’s nothing I can do but watch death approach.
Summer, 2000: More years have sped by. My siblings and I fret over Mom and Dad like parents over helpless infants. Some problems resolve themselves. Dad’s increasing debilitation and confusion have robbed him of the ability to drive, eliminating automobile expenses. Meals are now brought in, easing fear of him catching the house on fire. Mom’s senility forces her to allow my sister power-of-attorney over her finances, a part-time caretaker to assure cleanliness and safety.
Although the aging of my parents solves some problems, we now face more insurmountable ones . Dad no longer confuses us one for another. He completely forgets our identity. Mom loses patience with his worsening debilitation. Stubborn independence won’t allow her children to take them in, move in with them, or perform necessary tasks to improve matters. Caretakers, bearing the brunt of Mom’s occasional tirades, quit. New ones are hired. Medicines and their costs inflate. Doctor’s visits become more frequent.
Although these circumstances prove stressful, there is one inevitable problem that I feel I cannot face, yet know I must; how to say goodbye to these two who have been so much a part of my life — who have given me life. How do you give up your beginnings?
October 2000-April 2001: I learned how. You do it with tears, regrets, and deep, deep sorrow. My confused father wandered from home one horribly cold night in October of 2000. My mother grieved herself to death, collapsing alone of a massive heart attack in her back yard on another bitterly cold night in February, 2001.
I was away from home at the time, and no one could find me, in spite of exhaustive efforts. Mom had been dead two days by the time returned.
I was also away from home when Dad died. Two months after Mom’s death, April 19th, six months after his disappearance, his remains were discovered, caught under a barbed wire fence. The collision had come. I found no escape. Like the trembling child of my youth, I could only cry out as calamity struck my parents down.
Dad had died not more than three hundred yards from home, his body deteriorating and eaten by animals. How had community efforts, three search dog units, service beyond the call of duty by police and fire departments, hundreds of flyers, phone calls, radio and television and Internet alerts, plus thousands of search miles on our vehicles allowed this to happen? I felt the same rage I experienced the day I leaned against my door and wept bitter tears for my parents. Only now, the pain and anger proved more intense.
Our parents’ deaths solved all their problems and many of ours. I don’t like the solution. Some burdens are better borne. But guilt is hard to bear. Why did my siblings and I give in to our mother when we knew her thinking was impaired? Why did we delay putting our parents in a home or insisting they live with us when we knew Mom wasn’t able to cope? Foresight convinced us we did what we did out of love, but hindsight has left us with doubts and regrets.
There is comfort in knowing my father did not have to endure Mom’s death. There is more comfort in knowing Mom didn’t have to bear the immense sorrow we bore in the knowledge that the husband she mourned lay dying, his body deteriorating, so close to home while she went on about her days.
My parents were both Christians. Although my father seemed closer to God, Mom grew more spiritual after losing Dad. I don’t doubt her salvation. As my mother leapt to safety that cold November night in 1952, both she and Dad have now taken leaps of faith, landing safely on the other side of life, but we felt the impact as their bodies were laid in the cold graves.
One good thing, in that eternal place where they now dwell, Mom and Dad’s troubles are in the past. There are no financial worries, no scam artists, no debilitating diseases.
I imagine Mom once again leaping, like Wonder Woman, over Heaven’s Elysian fields. I imagine Dad catching her in strong arms, his mind clear, his body youthful. She greets him with no fear as to whether he will recognize her or not. He welcomes her with no recollection of the times she fretted and berated him over his forgetfulness and strange doings. I consider these changes worth all the tears we have shed.
Readers of my newspaper column “Down Life’s Path”, printed weekly in The Jackson Herald, have asked me to write a book about my joint tragedy. “I can’t!” I at first declared, the wound too deep and painful to abrade. Then one day, not long after Dad’s funeral, the story began forming in my mind. The following is a tribute of love to an inseparable mother and father whom death forced apart, but who now live on forever, together, in Heaven, and in my heart.
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