last rights, wrongs and rewrites

I have taken the inconceivable drive from Manhattan, back to my last childhood home at 52 Hubbard Avenue. It is one hour and ten minutes in the direction of the Jersey shore. Usually more green, than truly scenic. This ride is time standing still, and a stream of blurred Garden State Parkway exits careening past. We rush home in hope of finding out just what this confounding accident my stepfather tells us, has landed my mother in the hospital. Just how does a well-deserved day off at the beach take such a turn?   

I am armed with the duality and a deep knowing that she is in fact dead and somehow hopeful she is comatose, unconscious or please lord, we are all dreaming. I am secretly praying for temporarily not alive and able, or a version of not yet dead that has me with her once more.  I need to think her deeply asleep and very much hope we will all awake from this madness that has suddenly become our life. Our story.  What is our family without her here to help us through this madness?

Upon entering the house and without a word, I take in the wilt of my stepfather’s austere face, the inward fold of his normally tall and commanding shoulders draping down and forward, bowing in on himself in a decrepit crease. In an instant I want to unknow his reality as much as I do not. I know there are deeply seeded and entirely missing fragments of memory caused by such shock.  Magical thinking sets it course from the very moment of his first call to me and I keep rewriting the scenes of a death, or catastrophic miscalculation as the ideas and graphs and pain unfurl before my eyes.  Like math equations scrolling in front of me in one of those edgy breaks you see in an indy film. My insides course with nausea, iced cold fingers, heat rising and then becoming all together numb.

Still.

Nobody has told me that she is dead.

Still.

I am not certain why I am asked to go. There has barely been a moment to let such stunning news land, metastasize or become even so much as semi-autobiographical. This returning to the scene for belongings, seems an errand easily tasked to a neighbor or relative.

One of the asks tasked to me in the immediate aftermath of my mother’s death, was to accompany my stepfather to the beach, to retrieve her car. Her giant sedans were always signature Ellen. The current whip was a silver Buick LaSalle with navy seats and trim. I think it replaced the French vanilla Cadillac. My petite realtor of a Mom, always chose to lease these long and luxe affairs to accommodate the families she shuffled and chauffeured from listing to listing in hopes of landing them their dream home.

Photo by Denis Saklakov on Unsplash

The “boats” as she coined them, always had so many fun new toys inside like drink holders, automated locks, digital readouts, stellar stereo systems and deep, deep, plush electronic seats. It was her virtual office, and the center console eventually housed the bag that held her remote phone. We were never allowed to use her “work” phone, but it was a badge of badassery that she was one of the first we knew to have one. Favorite family songs were belted in Mom’s car, teenage confessions made and the nonsense of the day she loved so very much rehashed. From here to there and there to here, she always made the seconds count. 

The car was left at Sandy Hook National Park, where she parked it to spend her day. I come upon it and wonder now why it was not towed to our home or splashed with tickets on the windshield. Perhaps the police had somehow marked it, or noted the plate number in whatever ancient system they used before cell phones or computers communicated such details. I do think it is unusual to ask me to return to the scene.  Peter is not thinking. Maybe this is just a busy to-do on his practical list. Why have we not headed for the airport to pick up my sister? She is flying, hours alone in the air with the same wonderings as mine. They have sent Peter’s brother Michael. He is not a stranger, Danna used to babysit for their family. But this all seems poorly planned and convoluted. Michael is hours late, and Danna waits not wanting to leave the sidewalk for a payphone check in, so she does not dare miss him.

We get to Mom’s car. Sitting alone in the sandy rubble of the beach drive. It is locked, but Peter has retrieved her key from the police. He clicks the doors open.  I am on the passenger side and sidle in. This is my seat in Mom’s car. I immediately look for her. The smell is pure mom. The scent of her lingers in the heat of summer. Opium and a bit of Bain de Soleil. I crack open the glove compartment. There she is again. A box of Jujyfruits candy is open and stashed inside. All that is left, are the black and green.  Mom has been known to hold each individual gummy up to the light of the movie screen so that she does not mistakenly eat these discards. I love the black ones and eat one then and there, like swallowing up a piece of her.  In the center console is a receipt. 

Burger King

1 small O-ring

1 small Coke

It is from Burger King a few days back.  I smile to myself with some sort of happy knowing. Mom was always five pounds away from her version of her perfect body. We had lived through her crazy Rice diets and a fit of fads in her hope to be a smidge smaller. I wish she could have really seen herself without all of that static. She was perfect to us, and those whose heads turned in her presence. I am grateful she treated herself to this drive through moment. I hope there were many. Even as teens and twenty-somethings, we often share Happy Meals. The small but decadent treats we admire as a girly trio. As I am quickly rummaging for proof of Mom, the electric door locks flip the button up and down.  I look quickly to Peter. Did he hear what I heard?  He does. The key is in the ignition. I know she is near.  Here.  Not sure if she wants us out of her business or is glad I know that she treated herself to candy and a small onion ring? May this be the first of many signs, because this girl believes.  Needs to believe. 

I somehow drive her car home the 30 some odd miles down familiar roads never taking in a site. I see the red, yellow and green of the stop lights. I am on auto pilot. I am numbly rummaging down my memories of beach days past. Jumping off the bridge like fools. Collecting for a keg. Never enough sunscreen. Her spot in the driveway welcomes me back. Still nobody is talking.

My little sister Danna is living in Denver at the time she is called. She has been plucked by some elder Cornell alum-slash-ski-bums, who started a hotel management company. On a trip to campus they name her their 21-year-old comptroller. Mom had just been to Denver weeks earlier, to tuck her into her new apartment. She is not the shopping sister between us, and Mom takes her to all of the home stores in town to get her place settled. It is a high-rise in the middle of downtown, and Mom is there to make it feel like a home away from home. I recall being very jealous of the Papasan chair she is treated to, that signature wicker scoop with the deep pillow, so very cool, cozy and single girl chic. I recall all of the sweet accessories that make it feel like Mom had been there down to the decorative dish towels strung over the sink, copious rolls of Bounty, and layers of bedding with hospital corners color coordinated and adorned by Mom. Just the idea of their shopping together without me insights desirous longing. I know there are laughs, walks replete with hand-holding and kisses. Her words of interiors advice are the least of the why I am green, it is just them without this piece of our trio that tugs at me. 

Danna is finally dropped off by Michael. We hug and sob and melt into one another as she walks through the door and somehow there is knowing, but hopeful disbelief. She is so young I think. Too young not to have a mother. I have always felt maternal toward my sister, we are five years apart.  Today I feel I must be strong for her, not merely with her. 

I ask, “Is there anything you would have said if you could?

No.

You?

No. Me either. “

If the last time we spoke to her is to be the last, neither of us holds a regret, or an I’m sorry.  Each call, and we spoke every day, always ended with “I love you.”  Forever knowing those are for always the last words we heard will never prove a salve, only a reprieve from guilt or shame. We are good daughters.  We were good daughters.

I don’t recall any sit down to tell us.  I know that Peter has uttered the words aneurism and brain dead.

We are ushered to a private room at Monmouth Medical Center.  Beeps and cords and our tiny Mom cover a bed. I have just witnessed her dead-ish body for the first time. Her chest is heaving up and down, the will of machinations and the hope of someone waiting for her vital organs. We have to make a family decision if we will execute her wishes, and we agree to all parts, but her eyes. Somehow, we think she will need them where she is going.

My sister recalls that she kissed Mom on the forehead.  A kiss of affection we had known from her on many a sweet occasion. Often, she would lean in and say, “let me feel your keppy”, Yiddish for forehead. Her lips were a better indicator of us having a temperature than a drug store thermometer. Danna also remembers tugging up the covers around her naked shoulder and breast and giving the nurse a look for not noticing herself.

I have no recollection of doing the same. I long to return to this moment and cozy up with her in the slim bed, hold her hand, talk to her. Kiss her and kiss her. It would be thirty years until a gracious therapist named this sudden loss, a trauma – and reminds me that my body was likely holding itself together in some kind of freeze state.  With this understanding I have forgiven 27-year-old me, for not making this last moment more, or better or something else. I rewrite it in my minds eye, like today. I ignore it all together most days that I look back on our memories. They are replaced with a sea of better firsts and lasts and the glorious in between of being hers.

We find a receipt for pounds of Santa Rose plums she bought that last day and the empty produce bag. Knowing she had those favorites brings me some deep sense of joy. We plant a plum tree at her grave site. Also, we somehow scooped the sand remains from the bottom of her beach bag, and place it in a Ziploc. I don’t recall doing this, but feel so glad that we did. Years later we have filled a small charm with a pinch of grains under glass – like her last day at her favorite place on earth encapsulated, bottled, stored and ours forever.