It’s the First Day of Spring! And you know what that means! Arnold’s Christmas Story is here! I know it’s really late this year, but this one took some time. I hope you will enjoy it.
This year’s story is for anyone who has ever lost anyone – or who might lose anyone. And that’s everyone.
It’s a personal exploration of those final years of a relationship – It’s about living a full life and how for all of us, this life is a finite blessing! And how Lucky we are!
So, perhaps find an hour this evening to just sit quietly and read. It’s good for the soul. Take a break from the news headlines and think about what our life is really worth to us, and what we want it to be.
Please Note: Though inspired by real people and incidents, all the names, characters, places, and events in this story are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Christmas Day in the Morning
By Arnold J. Mungioli
“Oh, Darling! Thank God you called!”
She sounded overwrought.
“What’s the matter, Ma? Are you Okay?”
“No!” she cried. “It was just such an awful night! I was up with your father all night and then we had to take him to the hospital, and I didn’t get any sleep and now we don’t know if he’s going to be okay and we didn’t get home until the morning and by then I couldn’t get back to sleep!”
This conversation was quite disorienting, as his father had been dead for several years, and she had been living on her own since then.
“It’s okay, Ma,” he comforted her while quickening his step. “I’m on my way over. Don’t worry. I’ll be there soon. I just got off the train. I’m only about twenty minutes away.” Then, trying to normalize the conversation, he continued, “I was just calling to see if you needed me to pick you up anything before I get there.”
“Oh, Thank God! Thank God for you! Please just get here. No, I don’t need anything. Just you. Please come as soon as you can.”
“I’m on my way now, Mom. I’ll be right there. Ten minutes more. I’m rushing. Only ten minutes,” he told her.
Her son was with her when his father died. They experienced it together, all through home hospice care, and then that moment when the man stopped breathing. “Did he just die?” she asked, to which her son replied, not really having ever seen that before, “I…think…so.” She cried out her husband’s name, wailing with tears, and lamenting over and over again, “I thought we had more time,” as her son stood over her and held her, putting aside his own grief to support her in hers.
It’s difficult and somewhat pointless to speculate what happens for someone when they die. Are they filled with happy memories of all the good things they experienced in this lifetime, or do they immediately forget all those they’ve left behind, and move into a more welcoming place with all those that have gone before them? No doubt his father’s journey from here included the joyful exuberance of his children’s cries of glee on so many Christmas mornings. His dad had done so many things in this life less than he would ideally have liked, but that was the one thing he did unfailingly well. It came naturally to the man, mostly from growing up in the Great Depression and having awakened into so many of his own childhood Christmas Mornings with no toys – maybe just one or two times, an orange. And so, spending his adult life getting to see his children awaken to a plethora of toys every Christmas morning proved somehow healing for his soul, even if he appeared somewhat grouchy about it. And his beloved wife who brought him so much joy took pleasure in every day of her life with her family, but this particular holiday most of all!
~ This Morning ~
“Ma, it’s Christmas!” her son spoke loudly and clearly.
“Ma, can you hear me?” he repeated. “It’s Christmas!”
She was not very responsive this morning. He took her hand and rubbed it, as he sat across from her. “Ma. It’s Christmas!” adding super cheerfully, “Merry Christmas!” and again and again, more cheerfully each time, “Merry Christmas, Mommy!”
She stirred and her eyes focused on him, at last.
She mumbled something that sounded like, “Merry Christmas!” and smiled. He was certain that is what she said, and her smile gave her away. She knew it was he and now she knew what day it was. This was a better-than-usual day.
The apartment had developed the smell of old people’s homes: that odor of yellowed paper turned brittle, browning edges, and pressed flowers that were once beautiful and even fragrant having gone stale. They now had the unique scent of time passed – no longer of flowers at all – rancid, without perfume, and yet exceedingly rare like some newly discovered treasure of the antiquities that stirred excitement about what it could all mean and the stories that lay behind it. Oh, the Stories! One learns to develop the ability to appreciate such rare life-fullness and these odors have a way of bringing you into an elder’s world with mindfulness – not allowing you to distract yourself or to be somewhere else at the very same time. For better and for worse, you find yourself fully present. Only the elderly person themself can manage the bilocating of two periods in history, balancing the physical pain of present reality with the soothing balm of emotional memory…
Alzheimer’s. Dementia. Old Age Memory Loss. There are many names for it. And while we are aware of it and we all know it exists, as a nation and as a culture we choose denial, even as it touches most of our lives – eventually, deeply, personally. Resources are not provided and the effect that it has on the lives of adults has begun to feel like an expected and necessary rite of passage. If your parents live long enough, you will likely go through this.
Over 55 million people worldwide live with dementia – over 7.2 million Americans, and statistics show that that number is expected to reach 12.7 million by 2050. That’s a lot of people. Alzheimer’s is a disease that affects and involves way more selves than just the patient. For the patient’s loved ones it can cause complete upheaval, demanding a sharp refocusing of our lives. And if we can find in ourselves the willingness to embrace the situation it imposes on us, it can be one of our greatest teachers of what love means.
As she began to slip away – some call it fading – doctors offered differing opinions. It was never really made clear if this was technically Alzheimer’s or Dementia or Old Age Memory Loss, but it seemed noticeably beyond the latter by this point. And regardless, there really was no treatment, so it didn’t matter and when he would ask for clarification, the doctors would shrug it off and advise him off pat to get her on the waiting list for some residence to prepare for the inevitable. “If you don’t, then the only alternative for her will be a home and nobody wants that! Nobody!” they would admonish him. She would sit silently, and he wondered if her witnessing such conversations would ultimately be a contributing cause of her withdrawing further into herself. She had made clear to him that she wished to live in her own home, and to die there with dignity. And while he was no genie, he had promised himself that he would grant her that wish. He had seen to it that she had an aide who was with her around the clock. She had other children too.
Now it was Christmas Morning — once again, just the two of them. Over sixty Christmases in a row spent together – they hadn’t ever missed one – not since he, her youngest, had been born. And they never regretted a moment of any of them.
~ Way Way Before ~
Two souls meet on the crowded cloud of souls – way up there and way beyond! Hard to imagine how it is: So many souls vying for a body — and a Higher Power willing to give every one of them a chance! So much freedom! So many Joys to be had: To taste, to see all the colors, to take in all the fragrances, to feel – OH, to feel!!!! To feel skin and cool water and to feel the breeze caress one’s face! Souls, though they have so many advantages, lack any of the physical senses! And so, they cluster and crowd and clamor for that opportunity! And it is granted! If people only knew how they themselves rallied and clamored for the opportunity to be here and to live exactly this life: Rich, Poor, Nice, Mean, Pretty or Pretty Ugly, Tall or Short, Physically Active or Overcoming Physical Disabilities – Every choice their own! Parents and family members agreed upon! Race, Gender, Eye Color, Hair Loss, Mental State… All of it! Not pre-determined, so much as chosen by each of us! Nothing random in the set-up! But all of it set up so we can learn, experience, know more, come back all the richer from the experience!
In the dimension of souls there is only Love: everyone loves everyone and every configuration is possible!
“I’ll be the elderly sick man!” “I’ll be the aide who comes from the other side of the planet to care for you!”
“I’ll be the young dreamer person and you be my abusive employer who squelches my dreams so that I can have an experience of forgiveness!” “I’ll do it, but more than that, I will teach you to depend upon yourself, and not others, for your own happiness! I shall empower you so greatly by this hell-on-earth journey we shall share!”
“I’ll be the greedy materialist!” “I’ll be the love interest who teaches you to let go of all that in favor of the more important things in life!” “I’ll be the child you will have, and you can teach me all that you’ve learned about what really matters and then we can share in that together and you will feel less alone!”
“I’ll rise to power and bring a whole country to war ignoring the needs and wellbeing of all my subjects!” “We’ll be the citizens who learn to love one another through mutual aid and taking care of one another and loving and fighting for the rights of those with less privilege in the face of your tyranny!”
Imagine, if you will, an endless array of joyful children riding down a sliding pond of infinity with their hands in the air, joyfully yelping, “Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!” as they descend from the cloud to arrive here via the birth canal!
“I want to go just to taste chocolate again!”
“I want to rediscover the ocean and swim in it again just for the feeling of water against my skin! I love skin! And that feeling alone makes it totally worth going!”
“I want to be single this time and just do what I want to do for the whole time! But I need somebody willing to break my heart enough that I will want to stay the course!”
“I want to go just to take naps! I love naps! That would be enough for me!”
“I just want to experience giving birth!”
“I do not want to experience giving birth!”
“I want to have lots of sex! Too much of a good thing! I want to see what would happen!”
“I want just a quick short stay this time!”
“I want to watch my hair turn gray! It’s so amazing to see that happen all by itself! And it’s so pretty!”
“This time, I’m just gonna’ listen to music the entire time I’m there! I won’t even care about anything else. That alone will be a great life to me!”
“I want to learn forgiveness and become whole all over again!”
“I’m just gonna’ go create! Create! Create! Create!!!”
“I want to go right now!” shouted one, jumping on the slide!
“Wait! We agreed to experience this one together!” shouted the other joyfully laughing!
The first headed down, grasping along the way choices of external appearance, race, gender at birth, year to be born, place on the planet, sexuality, economic origin – all of the things about ourselves with which we begin life so that we can grow from there.
“I’m coming!” shouted the other, following the same way and snatching their own choices. Time being an artificial construct, the first got there as a beautiful young girl with dreams of having a family of her own. And the second arrived when the first was 35 years old in physical earth time as a late-in-life baby according to the time period’s standards. And so, the first soul got to be the Mommy this time. And the second, got to be her child – her gay son. And the next fifty or sixty years would be a life adventure that would help to shape them and change them and they would grow, only to return all the more loving when they were done. The first to arrive would be the first to return, although that is not always the case. But it is always a given that once we manifest in human form, everyone and everything we love will die. That’s part of what we sign up for – unchangeable! However we manifest, whatever configuration we choose, no matter what the given circumstances, we will lose the people we love, unless we go back first – in which case they will lose us. There is no way around it. That’s a part of the teaching. One of the core principles of this life: The impermanence of everything! Some travel through with an unconscious awareness of this – others with full cognizance; still others study it and teach it, as the soul who manifested as Buddha did. But no one is immune to it. And whatever form it takes, Letting Go is one of the great lessons for which we come here. It hurts. But it helps.
And so, time had passed, although a life in earth time is merely a moment here. Any soul rides the slide down from the cloud and the brief time it takes to run back up to the top amounts to an earth lifetime later; no matter what the experience, they are even more excited to go again! Oh, the flurry of anticipation and the chattering about things we might never even consciously notice in a lifetime: the taste of watermelon, the scent of jasmine flowers, the thrill of a first kiss, the love of a child, the feeling of helping someone less fortunate than you with the simplest task in any given day – maybe holding an elderly person’s arm to support them as they make it forward a few steps to the door or to the bathroom, changing the diaper of a helpless infant…to see great art, to create great art, even to create mediocre art or lousy art – just the act of creation! Life is a gift of the Creator – and it is in the image of the Creator that we arrive! And those moments creating – that is when we are most fully the truth of who we are!
And so, this time with one another, this time as mother and son, they set about creating! They created art and circumstances and delicious meals, and games to play! They created celebrations and arranged patterns and colors and family structures in new ways than what they came here expecting! She sewed outfits with Simplicity patterns she bought from the Five & Dime, and when he was bored and restless she would place before him a pencil and a piece of blank paper and say, “Here. Draw!” And they created ways of loving, and ways of making one another’s lives better, and the lives of others, as well! And they loved every minute of it!
And now, in the blink of an eye, she was elderly and growing more frail, with one foot in each world – already having begun travelling back, but oh, so reluctant to leave at all!
And now, once again, it was Christmas morning!
Treasure those Christmases! While most of us get some 365 and ¼ days in any given year, almost no one gets even a hundred of these special days! Some barely see twenty, and others not even one! Many squander the very best ones by complaining about this Season of Hope as something of a burden.
Yet, in the case of these two, both of them fully embraced the hallowed and gracious sacred magic of the time, even in years of dire circumstances. That loving action they would take back with them, and their practice of joy would shine a light forever!
~ Long Past ~
She had been born into the Great Depression. As one of seven children herself, there was very little to go around. The gifts of Christmas morning might consist of a new dress her mother had sewn for her, sometimes a new pair of socks, and perhaps an orange in her stocking. And what bliss! What joyfulness this brought! How happy children were then with so little… Now fully present in her memory, she could feel the rush of waking up and seeing that new dress folded for her under the tree, taste the burst of sweetness and the fresh scent of peeling that orange, smell the small, simple cake her mother hardly ever made baking in the oven on Christmas morning, and hear the Christmas songs on the family radio: Bing Crosby, The Andrews Sisters, Fats Waller, Tommy Dorsey…
As she grew into a woman, she understood more fully the sacrifices that her parents had to make in order for that morning to be the most Full-of-Wonder of the entire year! Her mother took in extra beading work, and her father stayed late and took on more haircuts at the barbershop – well, it was mostly to do more haircuts, and occasionally to fool around with the female estheticians in the back room. Still, her parents worked harder, more hours, and their payment was the smiles on their children’s faces. As a result, she grew up not with a sense of entitlement, but with a desire to work like that to make her own children happy. And like so many women of that era, it brought her heart so much joy! And it made her a better person, as giving always does — for when we give, we are acting in the image of the Universe that gave us Life.
~ Now ~
Now some four score years later, you might see sitting before you a decrepit elderly shell of a woman who needs to be Hoyer-lifted from her bed to her chair and back again. Yet in her mind she is so fully alive in the lifetime of good memories that she has accumulated! The importance of keeping her clean, fed and comfortable is so that while sitting there she can fully relive every joy she has ever experienced and every moment of love she has ever known. The Dementia serves the purpose of allowing her to experience these happenings over and over again as if for the very first time. Going back through her life in this alternative but equally valid reality, she finds herself time after time amazed, surprised and delighted by how many different kinds of love she has known and gets to live now again: the love of her husband which was unsurpassed, her love for her children which surpassed even the unsurpassable love of her husband, the love for her mother – as when she’d discovered as a young girl her father with the young esthetician and chose to not tell her mother about that, the love for her family, siblings, nieces and nephews, cousins — in the era she grew up, that was everything – and even her love for the unfamiliar person: the elderly neighbor to whom she brought so many homemade dinners, the homeless person to whom she would give change she could barely spare, the sick person in the hospital to whom she brought homemade meals… Be mindful of your good deeds and loving acts, for when the time comes that you may be no longer physically or mentally able, these acts of love will be your comfort and the memory playground in which you prance about, frolic and gambol. The joys that you have brought to others will be the only ones you keep. The playground of her mind was so rich and colorful, it was as if Henri Matisse had created the entire Fauvist movement specifically for her to be able to live in such a dimension as this!
While seated, staring into the distance, perhaps drooling, in her mind she is young again, visiting this or that boyfriend on some military base during the World War II years; she invariably attracted the eye of the most stalwart and handsome young soldiers. She was Beautiful! And she enjoyed that!
Her grandchildren, once viewing old black & white photographs of her with these handsome men, exclaimed, “Grandma! Who is this!? That’s not Grandpa!” She would look over at the photograph, smile as her mind flooded with delicious memories she would never tell, and shock them by reminiscing with a sly, satisfied smile, “Ohhh, I was a naughty girl!”
Billy was her great love from that era. The man she married was a more practical choice and she indeed loved him. Theirs was a love that two people build together by way of time, dedication and actions. But Billy was the kind of love you never recover from…
Her son had inherited her lust for life and her eye for men – or was it the other way around?
~ Throughout ~
Life does not happen as a series of conclusions. Life happens as a series of unanswered questions. Unanswered and unanswerable.
Although the world is quite different today, like most mothers of the last century, she would not have chosen to have a gay son in that era. But parents don’t get to choose. As a girl she had dreamed of an ideal family, as defined by an American culture based in the puritanical ideals of those on the Mayflower who had escaped religious persecution, and whose descendants would come to persecute others with their religion: heteronormative, lots of grandchildren, eventually lots of great-grandchildren. She came to have all those things. A gay son did not fit into the picture of what she knew or what she had been taught. Yet, love above all! Mothers understand this. To love and to be loved in return is everything! At Christmastime, she would sing along with Frank Sinatra whenever eden ahbez’ “Nature Boy” played,
“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return.”
It’s what we’re here for… Any human. Every human.
And that’s how it played out. Although it may have been an unexpected turn for her, he had known it in his heart from childhood — and truth be told, she did too — a mother always knows. Their hearts grew and as a result, each of them was able to love more and better and share that greater love exponentially with so many others!
His father, not surprisingly, preferred his brothers. They were more athletic, built model cars and trucks, and had a knack for fixing things. His father taught them the skills inherited from his grandfather who had been a plumber – so his siblings learned how to repair things around the house. His father could never really accept having a gay son. Yet, growing older and weaker in later years — surprise! — it was the gay son who showed up – who was there holding his mother as his father departed the physical body. The great irony of his father’s life proved to be the man’s realization that his gay son would defend and protect this man’s beloved wife from all that was to come for which his father would not be there. The man saw this clearly, well before that moment of death, and now from the non-physical realm wished to express deep thanks, although as things stood, only she had the ability to hear her husband. His beloved mother knew what he did for her even though she had no means left to articulate it, and he knew it, himself, and that changed him. A human never knows how good a caregiver they can be until they are called upon to give care. Only upon acceptance of this invitation to interrupt and intrude upon their life with the trial of an insistent, relentless, and inexorable love do they come to know and truly understand their own life’s inestimable value.
His father never communicated to him trusting him to do all this. But unbeknownst to him, his father died with that trust being the only sense of peace the man would feel in that moment. The man was grateful for that. And even though his father was gone now, he could feel something he had never known in his childhood nor his adult life: his father’s confidence.
This love that he and his mother shared was timeless, eternal, limited by neither the parameters of physicality nor years, and even now had much to teach them both. It brings into sharp relief the tragedy of those who will not love fully – when we will not forgive, when we refuse to let go of what we thought we knew and surrender to what we are being taught – what is being asked of us — we may miss the opportunity to grow in love. That doesn’t make it a wasted life, of course. But it is a wasted opportunity and that burden must be carried into the next life and worked out there. They had both perhaps been guilty of that in other circumstances, as most of us have been. But, neither of them made that choice in this circumstance. Both of them welcomed this as the lifetime they would change and grow more loving – they might achieve Parinirvana, as the Buddhists call it. Then, for each of them, it would be their last lifetime here. And so, just in case, she had chosen to hang around as long as possible and savor every moment of it, even if only to enjoy the food – most of her senses still worked, if to varying degrees, and those were gift enough!
She was legally blind, but her doctor had explained to him that this was not a bad card to draw at her age – at least she wasn’t in agonizing pain, as many of this geriatric doctor’s elderly patients had come to be. Her doctor was pleased that she still had a good appetite and she did. He cooked for her three nights a week and froze the leftovers in individual serving sizes so that the aides who came in would be able to simply defrost a portion, heat it up, and feed her a meal she would enjoy. “Oh my God,” the Jamaican aide would say, heavy accented and with a boisterous smile and arms waving, “She love your food! She eat so good when you cook for her! It is so easy to get her to eat because she love your food so much!”
~ Every Week ~
Filling the pillboxes… The all-too-familiar sound of each pill clicks as it drops into each small plastic compartment of the pillbox: Morning, Afternoon, Evening, Night… 4 compartments per day, 7 days per week. Every Week. Fourteen pills a day, some of them vitamins, times seven… 98 pills to load up every week. He would work as fast as possible to get out in time to catch the train for the three-hour sojourn home. But the aides cannot do that – they are not allowed to handle prescription medications. If a family member takes the pills from the prescription bottle and moves them to a pillbox, only then can they administer the medications to the patient. So, it has to be done. He never lost sight of the goal: to keep her home, as comfortable as possible, as well as possible, as long as possible. As with most great accomplishments, the task amounted to 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. It was wonderful that she could live so long and so well. People would react with awe and admiration when he would tell them that his mother was 98 years old. Every time he arranged the ambulette to get her to her doctor appointments, it required him strapping her into a wheelchair, getting her down the flights of stairs, across the courtyard, and back up the stone stairs of the entryway, and then strapping the wheelchair into the van to be locked and chained in place. He would sit with her in the back of that van during those terrifying death-defying drives. Each visit, her doctor would always acknowledge that her good health was a tribute to him – she could only be doing so well and stay in such good health because of the excellent hands-on care she was receiving at home, as she had stopped being able to do things for herself quite some time ago. He appreciated the acknowledgement. But this accomplishment was mostly the result of an endless array of mundane tasks: cooking, grocery shopping, arranging deliveries, changing the smoke alarm batteries, fixing the handles on pots and pans that broke while the aides used them (or maybe just banged them all over the apartment, who could tell!?), picking up special shampoos and laxatives and cranberry pills and all the non-prescription products so essential to her well-being, unpacking the gigantic cartons of diapers and pads that arrived and storing them under the bed, winding and resetting clock chimes, rewiring and readjusting extension cords as new equipment was added, repairing everything that fell into need of repair and that was everything… He regretted not a moment of it –though unremarkable when distilled down into an endless list of chores, banal, routine, everyday, and distressingly dull, it was even so a kind of noble heroism. Yet, one must acknowledge the trade-offs of time working, time spent with one’s own spouse, time pursuing one’s own dreams. His mother had done so much for him and cared for him so selflessly in his youth that his care for her now was the fulfillment of one of his most treasured dreams and he was living it: To give back by seeing that she was cared for in her old age and making it all as wonderful as it could be all the way to the end of her life! He saw it as truly the least he could do for all the years of her life she had devoted to him. And yet, the clock-tick sound of each pill hitting the plastic edge of each compartment as it dropped into the pillbox was a reminder that he would not come out of this a young man anymore. He had no idea how long – how many more years – this would go on. That clock-ticking sound had gone on now for some fifteen years since his father had passed. Fifteen more years or fifteen more minutes… It didn’t matter. She did not abandon him, ever; nor would he abandon her.
~ Half His Lifetime Ago ~
When he came out to his family, she and his father had such a difficult time of it. When he said to her privately only a few minutes afterward, “I am sorry if you feel I’ve done something wrong,” she struggled for words to express her feelings about something she simply could not understand and pulled out of the ether the following: “I…don’t think you…have done…anything…wrong. I…am…thinking…it is…I…who was wrong…in…how we reacted….”
Many years later, on the Christmas Eve when he announced to his family that he and his partner of nearly twenty years would be getting married now that they legally could, she was already widowed and under the heavy anvil of Alzheimer’s; she said nothing in the presence of his siblings who were nonplussed at best. After they had left, he sat with her alone and asked her if she understood what he had announced and if she was okay with it. Now, with speech itself more of an obstacle than confused emotions, she returned to that place of compassion beyond all bounds, and from the ether once again drew words to attempt to describe feelings too large and a love too great to articulate. “I…want…what makes…you…happy,” she described. “If this…makes you happy…then…I…am…happy.”
The infinite joy she had known when he as a baby spoke his first words on Christmas Day was only ever matched in his receiving of the words that she said to him that Christmas Eve. He realized in that moment that she had been the love of his life. Of course, she had always known that he was hers. There is no greater gift.
~ Half Her Lifetime Ago ~
“Come help Mommy!” she would say to her youngest. The others were older and they were fine on their own by this point. But while doing everything for them, she mostly had to keep an eye on this one. So, while cooking meals for so many people in such large volume – dinner parties and entertaining at home were big in the Sixties — she would give him some of the dough she’d made with which to play and she would encourage him to make his own little pizza which she would then put in the oven and bake for him. Slowly, gently, playfully, and joyfully, she taught him all about the joy of cooking.
“Salt. Pepper. Parsley. And garlic powder.” That’s what she would say. “If I’m ever not here and you want to remember the way to do Mommy’s cooking and to make it taste like you remember, just remember those four things.” Some people live in terror of leaving, giving up their place here in this world for we-don’t-know-what-comes-next. She was always secure about it. She was here to make sure her children were taken care of — and she did that. Ironically, the more we show up for the life we have, the less we will miss it when we leave to return to the non-physical realm.
“Come here and stir this for Mommy, please.”
And conjuring the holiday meals for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, throughout the Twelve Days of Christmas, including her near famous “Little Meatballs” on New Year’s Eve, and throughout the year, she had basically trained him to cook like her. And by this, she set herself up to enjoy all the recipes that she had invented, carried on through tradition, and/or improved over so many decades, well past her no longer being able to cook them herself. None of his siblings, nor any of their children, showed much of an interest in her recipes or in cooking at all, and he realized this great gift would probably die with him at some point in the future – and it would. That seemed a shame. But he was not about to fight the world of AI, UberEats and DoorDash to start a YouTube series or vie for position as a culinary influencer at this stage of his life! That’s the thing about taking care of an elderly parent. When you come out of it, when they have completed their journey through that final stage of life, you realize that slowly, imperceptibly, while you were very busy, you had begun yours.
~ Yesterday — Christmas Eve Morning, Like So Many Other Mornings ~
At a certain stage of later life, so many nurses show up. They just appear at the door, come in, take blood pressure and vitals, and then give you a list of what you need to do for this elderly person. Overburdened with too many clients, whether they are sent by Medicare, Medicaid, some agency, or even private care, it is rare that they are able to delve into what the unique needs of the individual might be. Patients’ needs at this stage of life must be formulaic and expedient for them to complete their rounds any given day. It may help some – hopefully, it doesn’t hurt any. But things definitely go better if there is someone there!
Yesterday, Christmas Eve morning, yet another new nurse showed up and declared that she would give his mother breakfast. His mother’s aide sat back and watched with a stirring resentment at the disruption to a routine she had worked long and hard to establish. The nurse took the eggs and toast that the aide had just prepared and put it in front of his mother. The nurse then broke to him the devastating news that his mother was no longer eating and would need to be placed in end-of-life hospice care. It had always enraged him when anyone in any situation would declare something without asking first about what they did not know and learning the lay of the land. Presumption is a cultural epidemic – people presuming they have taste or presuming they are right, or presuming they know how to be President — or like his siblings, periodically walking into a situation about which they knew relatively little of the day to day onsite realities and making pronouncements from their lack of knowledge insisting upon what would now need to be done.
He recognized, as Charles Dickens warned in A CHRISTMAS CAROL.
“’This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!’ cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. ‘Slander those who tell it ye. Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end.’”
Prescient! Indeed, in the world outside their cocoon of this living denouement, it felt as though every day the ignorance of the current governmental and health administrations brought us closer to abiding the end, and day by day, Dickens’ ominous admonition grew ever more relevant.
A few years earlier, one of these random nurses who showed up once and then never again, gave his mother the cognitive assessment test, and when the nurse asked, “Who is the current President of the United Sates,” his mother turned her head with loathing and murmured, “Oh! That Moron!”
“I would give her that one,” he offered.
Today, having developed some sense of calm in the face of adversity from what was now years of training on these unique battlefields defending love, he asked this nurse if anyone had told her that his mother was blind. The nurse, noticeably taken aback, was next instructed by him, “Why don’t you try putting some of those scrambled eggs on a fork and then touch it to her lips and see what happens.” As soon as his mother felt the warm food to her lips, she opened her mouth and gobbled it right up enthusiastically, making sounds of pleasure.
He spoke sternly, “You ask me what my mother needs! You don’t tell me!” He tried to be as gracious as his mother, though he knew he never would be. He just didn’t have that beautiful quality she’d always possessed of treating every single person with the utmost kindness, compassion, and respect. He tried. But as she would always reflect to her son, “You got no bazhenza!” (In English, one might say, “patience.”) And she was right.
Still, although he meant no disrespect, he felt that what he said to this newest nurse was so much more polite than what he truly wanted to do which would have been to stand up and shout at the top of his lungs in a big booming voice, “beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it! Slander those who tell it ye. Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end.’”
Woulda’ been fun! And woulda’ felt appropriate as it was Christmas Eve, after all! But he restrained himself and felt he oughta’ get some points for that!
Perhaps only to save face, the nurse declared that a woman of 98 would henceforth have to have all her food pureed because it was a choking risk if she ate the food she enjoyed so much the way that she enjoyed it (which this nurse had just witnessed her doing without any problem). Understanding that eating may very well have been her last pleasure remaining – and one he was willing to defend for her, he quickly retorted asking how this could be determined with no evaluation. Were there not certain exceptions? For example, his mother enjoyed eating her hard-crusted rustic bread more than anything and she’d never choked on anything a day in her life, including having lived some eight years into her nineties. This nurse who had just watched his mother eat a meal with no problem whatsoever chewing and swallowing, barked a cursory and immediate “NO!” and set the rule.
As soon as the nurse left, he worked with the aide to cut up her food into very small pieces but not puree it, trying to find a happy medium so that she could still chew and enjoy her food, while satisfying the relentless, insistent, ever-increasing lists of conditions and requirements being placed upon them all. This extra step would now need to be taken for all meals and with all food after cooking and before it went into the freezer.
And the clock-tick sound of each pill hitting the plastic edge of each compartment as it dropped into the pillbox got louder and louder as the hours passed. And the trains were often missed. And the three-hour sojourn home became four.
~ Sitting in Her Chair ~
Music had always been one of her greatest joys! She never played a musical instrument, nor was she any kind of professional singer. But she would sing joyfully — sometimes while washing the dishes and other times while cooking or cleaning the house. She had a very beautiful voice.
It was funny that the emotional memories to which she would now retreat and which brought her such comfort included so many recollections of cleaning house, cooking meals, in her housedress taking down heavy Venetian blinds from the tops of windows every two weeks and washing them in the bathtub on her hands and knees – arduous tasks, but she loved taking care of her family and she would always be listening to the radio and singing along while she did these things. The music kept her spirits buoyed – especially the American standards and songs of World War II to which she danced with her husband (or with Billy before him) when they were young and started dating.
Now, in her chair, the songs entranced and revitalized her…frisson…emotional contagion… Music is stored in a higher part of the brain – physiologically up toward the top — scientific research shows consistently that people with Alzheimer’s respond to music better than words. Their mind and their memories emotionally reactivate in response to music. He witnessed firsthand the revivifying effect it had on her.
His father had left her provided for. As far as her husband was concerned, that was this life’s mission. And this man achieved it. May we all be as lucky!
Sometimes her mind would drift to all the things she used to worry about… her hair going gray, seeing wrinkles on her face in the mirror – she thought most of these matters silly now: matters that no longer mattered! But the concern that hadn’t waned was for the well-being of her children. They were all fine. Some of them stayed in touch. Some of them, less so. With the years comes a profoundly enhanced perspective and even wisdom. Now she could see that none of those things she had feared were particularly threatening nor especially important. She forgave everyone for anything. She forgave herself for everything. And she forgave her children too.
It must be Christmas! She could tell because she looked over and in spite of her vision loss, she could make out the prettiest lights – they looked like the shape of a tree, and so that must be a Christmas Tree over there and she knew that only appeared at Christmastime. She could perceive shadows beneath of the beautiful figures of the creche; although she could no longer make out the details, she knew every one by heart!
How she enjoyed the music! Oh, and Yes! It’s definitely Christmas! Religious hymns are playing, of course, but also the delightful songs of childhood depicting Santa Claus, Rudolph, and all the traditional Christmas characters. She listened intently to the lyrics and she particularly enjoyed and could still comprehend the lessons these fables offered. She had her favorites and would immediately tune in when Lou Monte’s Christmas album played. “Santa Nicola,” “Dominick the Donkey,” and her absolute favorite, though not technically a Christmas song, “Pepino the Italian Mouse!” Oh, how it made her laugh when Lou Monte would threaten the mouse saying, “If I ever catch you, I’m gonna’ throw you right in the bagnarola!”
“Bathtub!” she would exclaim, translating and laughing with delight!
~ Seated in His Chair ~
The music played. He enjoyed it too.
His husband, whom she adored as her own son, had painstakingly, over multiple visits, — Surprise! She didn’t lose a son. She gained a son! — uploaded her very large CD collection onto a playlist on her computer so that all it took was the press of one button to activate her mind and transport her to full-on happiness. Yip Harburg, for whom he had worked many years ago, and who wrote The Wizard of Oz and “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime,” among other things, used to say, “Music makes you feel a feeling. Words make you think a thought. But a lyric makes you feel a thought!” He knew it to be true back then, and now he saw it even more clearly in her, as he watched her thoughts and emotions come to life.
He would always play her music for her and instruct that all aides and caretakers do the same. It was surprising to him what an uphill battle this proved to be. He found it wildly frustrating when he would arrive and her music was not playing. He would turn it on and instruct the aide yet again in what to do, hoping against hope that the repetition of this direction would produce a more dependable result. And during the pandemic, trying to teach the aides over a video call how to turn it off and back on showed him that they had not really paid attention, even once. Endless challenges — so many things that seemed like they would take a moment proving to take hours. Days. Weeks. Months. Years… The pills continued to make that clock-tick sound as he dropped them into the pillbox. The music helped her. But it helped him too.
From mid-December through January 6th, he played her Christmas music for her… It was his way of bringing her into the present moment and helping her understand what time of year it was, what day it was, even the passage of time. Truth be told, she spent so many hours now on an entirely different plane of existence, there seemed no real reason to bring her back to this physical world.
He looked over at the little Christmas tree that he had decorated for her so lovingly every year – just a three-footer. It reminded him of how he used to get her a real boxwood tree every year delivered from a local high-end florist just a few towns away. She would relish the bows, baubles, and the decorations – some years it came adorned with angels, other years small Santas or tiny bright foil packages or candy canes. Her joy about it made as nice a memory for him as his sending it made for her. But over time, as her mind began to deteriorate, she would forget to water it and it would dry up very quickly. So, he and his husband found her this pretty little artificial tree and decorated it with lights and a few ornaments each year. And every year they carefully unpacked the fragile figures of the creche and set up the nativity scene for her beneath her tree.
He looked over at her without her dentures, with no make-up, with her hair barely styled, yet so peaceful. And, odd as it may seem, she looked somehow even more beautiful now.
Yes. She was teaching him about life, even now – even without words. If you are beautiful toward others – if you make the world more beautiful with your life, then you will always be beautiful! …like the hand-painted face of the figurine of Mary glowing from beneath the lighted tree.
He looked at her staring toward the Nativity scene and the brightly lit sparkling tree. The lights reflected in her eyes…
~ Past ~
Oh, the Five & Dime had the nativity figures for this year! Such Joy! It was the second week in December and they’d gotten them in! They were exquisite – imported from Naples, Italy, and each figure had a stamp on its green paper bottom that read “Hand Painted in Italy” Over the years, she and her husband had collected the Madonna, Child, Joseph, the Three Kings, some shepherds and a couple of animals. Last year they had finally saved up enough for the stable. She would keep her eye on them. It was early – still a couple of weeks until Christmas. In those days, Christmas merchandise wasn’t on display from Labor Day Weekend. Christmas didn’t enter anyone’s mind until mid-December at the earliest. But your life was lived mostly within the confines of your neighborhood, so whatever handful of stores you frequented had the advantage of reinforcing your desire for whatever was on display by repeated exposure to the item every day. And if it were a seasonal item, you knew it would be gone soon or sold out sooner than that – man, that was real FOMO! The algorithms we live by now merely attempt to recreate effects which happened quite naturally back then. If it were something you wanted, it tempted you relentlessly.
She had saved some change. If she could reconfigure the dinner menu this week, perhaps she could scrape together a few more nickels and get the pink angel with the gold painted wings this year. It would take some juggling, but she had developed a keen knack over the years for kitchen sorcery. She was able to make a nutritious, satisfying, and delicious low-cost meal out of flour and water, tomato, breadcrumbs, and cheese that would feed her large family and all her kids. She would stay up late at her sewing machine – the old-fashioned kind that folded up into a table – and she would make gifts for the children and even her husband. She had been a factory worker as a teenage girl and while she didn’t love sewing, she was good at it, and she was fast with a needle. These skills came in quite handy raising a family, and particularly at Christmastime.
The pink angel did indeed appear in the creche that Christmas. She did it! She saved enough! And he was fascinated by the newest figurine. All of their hand painted faces were so expressive. They were all representations of living a miracle and radiating the astonishment of that event. They told the story! The world had been in such dire straits back in the time these figurines depicted. Herod was such an evil ruler, turning over the world for personal gain – murdering innocent people, his own citizens — even women and children. An obsequious pawn to Caesar Augustus of Rome, Herod turned the country’s military force against his own citizens, built large palace ballrooms, punished enemies with impunity and the people wondered in horror and revulsion how it could be that a tyrant such as this could be running the country. Then, with Caesar Augustus controlling him like a marionette, this puppet king played the card of that insane immigration crackdown to further divide the people! So, although Mary was pregnant, she had to go with Joseph to Bethlehem to be counted in the imposed census, as all men were required to return to their ancestral homes with their wives. Herod had convinced the people that immigrants were their enemy The world was seemingly past all hope! Dark and perilous times overshadowed people’s lives! And at the individual level, the people experienced even greater hardship. Eight and a half months pregnant, Mary rode a donkey some 90 miles across rough terrain for a week – and then gave birth with neither a doctor nor a midwife on the dirty ground inside a smelly, crap-strewn stable with cattle lowing. Okay, so maybe the hand painted face of the Mary figurine looked a little too happy and a little less weary than may have been reasonable for the circumstances! But still, these beautiful figurines conveyed hope and the blissful joy of a miracle that came to the world when the world, fraught with hardship and despair, felt like a miracle couldn’t happen. For God so Loved the World… That is the point of the story. One way or another, we’re going to come out of this! And this one pink angel didn’t kneel like the others. This angel stood.
She had been an artist. She knew the power that art could have and how it could convey emotion beyond words. And the expression on the pink angel’s hand painted face made it worth saving her pennies. It was an expression of compassion, hope and wonder – it was adoration for the light that radiated from this baby, and thereby for the light in every human being! The blue angel figurine with her gold-painted wings was down on one knee, in a state of complete adoration, mesmerized by the subject of its adoration. It exuded such love; it was as if the light beamed from its heart! Both angels gave off a feminine demeanor glowing with masculine prowess – divine and without gender — as if both were fully present and eminently capable of loving and protecting that which they loved, be it this baby, the entire human race, or any one of us. Though only Cartapesta which was a unique style of Papier-mâché that was done in Italy and used for religious figures, their expressions exuded light! It seemed to his child eyes that these angels were real!
He would inherit the creche from her, and he would treasure it his whole life.
~ Present ~
“She’s a vegetable!” his siblings would callously chide him. “You’re crazy! You spend so much time with a woman who can’t even speak anymore. It’s the disease! Her brain is gone! She only speaks gibberish!”
Well, he hadn’t noticed that.
After they said it, though, he became aware that over the past decade or so while he had been spending time with his mother, this looked as if it had actually come to be true. He began to wonder how long this had been going on – when did she stop using actual words? He saw her so regularly. He understood her perfectly. They still had countless conversations. How was it possible that they could understand one another so well when she was speaking gibberish that no one else could make out? Well, thank heaven for all those theater classes he took in college! Nevertheless, they continued talking and communicating, even as they would when she finally would leave the non-physical realm a few months later. Their love was beyond language!
And yet, had he lost her now, he wondered. Had the disease taken hold and was she truly gone? Was he fighting to protect her when really, she would not have known the difference? His siblings advocated for placing her in a home. From what they could see, she wasn’t “really in there” anymore and so her wishes would no longer need to be honored as they insisted that her mind wasn’t there, so what could the difference possibly be!?
He continued to have conversations with her and he could understand every word. This convinced his other family members that he was as gone as she was! And he began to wonder if maybe they were right! Perhaps, after nearly fifteen years of this, he had lost his mind as surely as she had lost hers! Perhaps. But he remembered how she would always tell him, when he was in doubt, to follow the truth: Honesty. The next right thing… And with no one to support his decision, and no reason to think he hadn’t lost his own mind at this point, he stood, like the pink angel. He stood by her. He would honor her wish to live out her life in her own home. He would trust her sounds of gibberish which were filled with love and wisdom and truth and which made complete sense to him – much moreso than the very clear words and directives of those who would not honor his mother and who perhaps had their eye out for their own personal gain – they made no sense to him whatsoever. It would not go well for him from here. That did not matter.
His mother had always taught him to do the right thing. And when he failed in that – when any of her children failed in that – she would comfort them and support them. She taught them that it was always okay to make mistakes while learning. She taught them that it is not, ‘I am a mistake,” but merely “I made a mistake!” and once she got them back up on their feet, standing like that pink angel, she would give the directive – the uncompromising mandate, “Now, make it right!”
It would be dishonest to pretend that his mind did not drift just briefly to the place of wondering what it would be like to let go of some of the physical burden in both tasks and responsibilities. Love conquers all, of course, but anyone with the experience of taking care of an elderly parent approaching 100 can tell you of the crushing weight it is to bear and the escalating frenzy both inside your own mind and in the physical environment of the patient as it goes on: the snowballing responsibilities, the unremittingly spiral.
Early on, after his father had died and he found himself in this role, he had been overwhelmed by it all and somewhat resented the responsibilities. He learned of a friend of a friend who drove a half hour in each direction to visit their elderly mother every single day. When his friend told them how admirable that was, they responded, “Oh, I feel privileged to do it! Just think how many people never get an opportunity to give back!” This story reached his core and, in an instant, it changed how he thought — about it all of it – he assented and it set up a contract for however long it would take. He too would appreciate the great gift and the great honor and opportunity that he was privileged to be given by this. He accepted the terms — Life on Life’s terms.
He was his mother’s son, and her wishes would be honored. On this particular life adventure, you decide that more than once. You think it’s decided, and then things change. Then you decide again and things change again. You find yourself revisiting decisions so much more than you had ever imagined you would. Now, again, she would live out her days in her own home, not at any institution — in spite of the fact that at this point his siblings would just as soon see him put away first!
This Season of Miracles now feels more important than ever! Even after the human race has lived into more than 2000 Christmases, as we continue to forge our chains in life, we still are saved by our acts of charity and kindness: getting the prize goose for a family with children that cannot afford such a thing, forgiving and making amends, supporting worthy causes that help the poor, treating one another with kindness – Kindness. Kindness. Kindness. — these are the things that free us!
Giving. Loving. Taking care of one another… And even if someone is riddled with dementia, speaking gibberish, and if their quality of life has been severely reduced from what it once was – even if it appears that their wish to live out their days in their own home is no longer viable — it makes us better people if we can visit, be present, maybe even cook a meal, give a gift, or hold their hand through the night… We can stand up for those who are more vulnerable than ourselves! We can help! We are powerful beings! Each of us has within us the power of love! We can choose, for we also have the power of choice. Our choices determine our actions, and our actions determine our character, and our journey here is so very much about simply figuring out how to be good! Christmas comes but once a year as our annual reminder to check in about the choices we are making and the person we are becoming.
We are always becoming.
And there is always the power to choose more wisely.
Merry Christmas, indeed!
~ Now. Here. And There. ~
She sat enjoying a midday coffee klatch with all of them – conversation and laughter and tea. It is really a much more complete circle than we realize — those who have entered the non-physical realm and those who are still here, or left behind, one might say. But she sat in her chair, as she did now most afternoons, with one foot firmly planted in each world. She could see and vibrantly enjoy being alive in a complete circle that most of us miss in our day-to-day lives… It was a privilege. It was a time of life to be treasured — pretty much the only stage of life, excepting early infancy perhaps, at which we get to see the completeness of it all – or perhaps it is only so late in our journey, when everything else has been shed and dropped away, that we allow ourselves to see what (or who) has been there all along.
She had lived 98 years. 98 Christmases. That’s more than most people get. Still, to him it seemed she would live forever. He had never known life without her. But this would be her last Christmas in this physical realm — their last Christmas together here. He treasured it as much as any other — no less — and so did she. Perspective changes. Our vantage point may be different in the various seasons of our lives. But somehow we return to that touchstone, that Season of Joy, that Hanukkah-Christmas-Solstice-Kwanzaa joyful time when the days grow shortest of the year, and in response we choose to light the lights more brightly and more colorfully than any other time. We understand when darkness descends that we are the light, and we can bring the light. And we do — in any way that is possible for us, even if it is only in our mind…
We learn over and over again: “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” – John 1:5
Although Christmas gift giving often ties people up in feelings of obligation or resentment, she lived her life completely unaffected by this. She was always so grateful for the opportunity to give and to share the abundance of what she had. She had enough. And she wanted to share it with those who did not, or even with those she felt could just use a little boost! She was also such a gracious recipient!
Only five years ago when she was a bit more coherent, his husband had given her a box of candy for Christmas. She adored her son-in-law and she really adored the gift of these candies – always her favorite: butter crunch toffee. Her aide, a somewhat formidable woman, admonished in that familiar thick Jamaican accent, “Do Not Give Mom any candy! It will spoil her dinner!” So, her son-in-law then gently moved the box away, so that she might forget about it.
A moment later, as if it were a new idea, she called him close and whispered, “Do you have any of those candies that you bring me sometimes?”
His husband explained to her, so gently and lovingly, “Mom, your aide says that I can’t give you any candy as it will spoil your dinner.”
She looked up, crooked her finger, and whispered, “C’mere.” Then, pulling her beloved son-in-law in even closer, she proclaimed in full voice, “I’m ninety-three years old! Who gives a shit if I finish my dinner!? Give me the candy!!!”
As the years went on, it became more difficult for her to make it to the dining room table. Eventually, he would bring the dinner he made to her chair in the living room where she would sit upright, alone, but looking around the room and murmuring, quite engaged. When he would arrive with a plate of food, she would look at it, then look around the room, then look up at him, then laugh. He would explain to her, “It’s your dinner, Mom,” and she would say with a mixture of surprise and embarrassment, speaking quite clearly “You bring this for me, but you don’t bring any for them?” gesturing across the empty loveseat, sofa, and chair.
Was it Dementia? Was it peduncular hallucinosis associated with lesions in the midbrain – if one wished to get scientific and very technical? Or Charles Bonnet Syndrome characterized by complex visual hallucinations in the presence of normal cognition in elderly individuals, almost always occurring with profound loss of vision — if one wished to get even more scientific and technical? Or could this be something more? She seemed quite clear, even percipient in conversation with whomever was there that no one else was able to see. But just because he was unable to see them, did that mean they weren’t there? Who was to say that her experience of the room was a hallucination and his was accurate? In hospice work, it’s referred to as “visioning.” And no one in medical science has been able to prove anything to indicate that his experience of the room was the true one. But he knew in that moment that for all of her vision problems, he was the one who couldn’t see.
At Christmas Eve dinner just the previous Christmas, it was visibly just the four of them – her and him, his husband and her aide, though for so many years she had hosted her entire large extended family – more than twenty people. They mostly didn’t come around anymore – rarely, if at all, and at the holiday they made other plans with each other. In spite of so many conspicuous absentees at her small dining table, she seemed to be enjoying the company of many guests. Although physically just a small round table without even the need to put in an extended leaf to expand it, she looked around delightedly! She could see the three of them, but they could not see whoever else may have been there. Seafood was the tradition and for the chilled appetizer course that year, a small lobster adorned each plate Then, at one moment, apropos of nothing, she held it up in the air and announced in full voice, as if to a crowd, “And if it snows, I’m gonna’ say, ‘Poo on You! I got a lobster!’” She laughed, delightedly, then continued eating.
His life was filled with enchanting moments like that – countless bursts of jubilance!
She imparted to him her love of Christmas, and through the years, as Christmas fell out of popular fashion, this became yet another thing that made him seem even more eccentric. He secretly liked it. They both did.
~ Eventually… ~
It was peaceful. It was pleasant. It was magical and loving right up until the end. It was hard and wonderful and problematic and delightful and charming and painful and abstruse and even obstruse and knotty and not easy and sometimes easy and mostly joyful and sometimes grave and terrifying but also heartwarming and heartbreaking and uplifting and depressing and most days easier than a ninety-mile donkey ride through the hills while pregnant but some days not, and never carefree but often exultant and blissful and always unpredictable and quite a ride!
But then, in the midst of all of that, it was quite sudden.
It all went white – blank, anew!
Her son’s voice began to fade away – like it was no longer coming from right in front of her, but more like from across the room, then from the next room, the next apartment, the next building, then as if it were from way down on the ground, then from some planet in the distance; she could still hear it from the next world… Her son and the aide and her other children – she could hear them all though they sounded so, so distant. Other voices were now less distant: those of her husband, her own mother, her own siblings, her father, her dear cousin she had missed so much, her friends, Billy, people she barely had known but remembered and those with whom she had cross words over the years or to whom she had stopped speaking and they were so happy to see one another again and greeted one another delightedly with joyful laughter, mirth and tears, arms up in the air, playful and jubilant! Once again, finding herself in the dimension of souls, there is only love: everyone loves everyone and every configuration is possible! The feeling of not having heard their voices in so long dissipated and she was back in the realm of total oneness and really it had not been so long, after all.
Still, she was confused and hazy and also home and clear, yet not. She was released, but from what? And she was free. But she was not yet sure what she was free of – and if she even wanted to be free? Reentry is not something easily understood whilst going through it.
She looked around at the iridescent whiteness – was it clouds or fog or a blank canvas like being in a painting that hadn’t happened yet or perhaps was just about to be realized? Or begun? Perhaps there was already paint on the canvas, but she was now on the inside of it, looking out, so she couldn’t tell if that were the case.
Then appeared the blue angel – the one from the Nativity set from Naples, Italy via the Five & Dime – but colossal and alive, still down on one knee with wings of shimmering gold… It was mesmerized by her as the subject of its adoration, exuding nothing but love divine. The resplendent light of its presence shook her to her very core, as the appearance of an angel will so often do. “Fear Not!” cried the blue angel – always an angel’s first words and with good reason! The other angel from the same creche appeared, equally mammoth, standing by – the one in the pink dress and golden wings in that same standing position with its hands over its heart and that face of such endearing compassion, hope, and wonder – it was real and its glowing adoration was solely for the light that radiated from his mother.
The angels looked upon the scene lovingly, but this time, that benevolent gaze of compassion was not directed toward a figurine of a baby in straw lying in a manger. There was no creche. The angels’ kindly gazes were meant just for his mother, as they brought her further and further into what she could best comprehend as a swirl of clouds, iridescent, eternal and infinite – she was now in a place that was not his to see, at least not for a good while.
She could hear his quiet tears from here, but he could no longer hear hers.
# # #
This story is dedicated to the memory of my Beloved Mother.
