From Comfortable Distances (15 page)

“
I never promised you a rose
garden
,” her mother sang, and Tess rubbed the fingers of her free hand
against the grass, feeling the ground beneath her. Under the lingering moon,
and persisting sun, Tess began to sing along, letting go of trying to make
sense of the feelings washing through her. The rising sun glowed vibrant as it
began to dominate in the sky. Tess felt her heart wrenching open, as if it too
was making room for warmth and light. She didn’t want her mother to die—that’s
what filtered through her, and yet she knew that her mother viewed the concepts
of birth and death as an ongoing process in the chain of living. That was what it
was to be a Buddhist: to believe that when one form of life ended, another
began.

They went inside when the bugs began
to be a nuisance, her mother wanting to rest for a bit, so that Tess helped her
up the stairs, then her mother insisting that Tess must be tired, that rest
would do her some good after the long drive, telling her to close her eyes, if
only for 15 minutes, that work would wait. She patted the bed beside her,
setting down a pillow for Tess, so that Tess lied down on the bed beside her
mother, like sisters, for the first time in she couldn’t remember how many
decades. She assured her mother that she would rest for a few minutes and the
next thing she knew, she must have fallen asleep. 

The second fall came
hours later. Tess heard it and in the who, what, why, when of waking, and then
she was up and out of bed before she realized that she was in her mother's
bedroom. She rushed down the stairs, into the kitchen, where her mother lay in
quiet agony on the tiled floor. She had been reaching for a bowl to make Tess
pancakes. Silver dollars, Tess’s favorite. The emergency surgery—her mother had
fractured her hip and dislocated her pelvis—took hours, and even with pain
killers, the doctor told Tess that her mother would be uncomfortable for weeks,
if not months to come, not to mention that she would need blood transfusions as
a precaution for her Leukemia, although she was in remission. He believed that
her mother needed round-the-clock care to get her through the fracture and
suggested that they transfer her to an assisted living facility affiliated with
the hospital the next morning. Tess proposed bringing a nurse into her home to
stay with her mother, or even taking her back to Brooklyn to stay with Tess,
but the doctor felt that she would be better off in a facility. “Just to be
sure she’s monitored and that she heals properly; we can’t risk any
complications,” he had said, assuring Tess that it was temporary, just until
her mother could walk on her own again.  With Tess’s ultimate consent, they were
able to get her a room in the home. When Tess returned to her mother’s empty
home that night, after packing up a suitcase of what she supposed her mother
would need for the move in the morning, she wept. She felt as if she had
committed her mother to an institution. Tess wiped at her swollen eyes at the
kitchen table and blew her nose—life was not fair. It was not fair to love
someone so much only to watch them suffer. It was not fair that such a good
woman, a woman who had devoted her life to others, was now going to be stuck in
an assisted living home, for who knew how long? How could a life so well lived,
so meaningful, turn into this? She wept off and on until her head throbbed and
jaw ached from clenching her teeth, and she moved into her mother’s bedroom as
if in a trance, falling asleep in her clothes.

Her mother carried on in
her most positive manner when she was checked into her temporary home the next
day. “How lovely the view is and what a wonderful bath tub,” she said when Tess
wheeled her around. Tess decided to stay on in Woodstock so that she could
visit with her mother each day until, she supposed, either she grew accustomed
to this new situation or her mother did. In those first few days of her
mother’s confinement, Tess sprouted black and blues all over her body—first a
knee, then an elbow, and later, her thighs and calves. Her mother’s doctor
diagnosed it as a mixture of stress and an eating deficiency. Who, Tess had
wondered in her weakest moments, would provide her with round-the-clock care
when she needed it? Selfish and small as the thought made her feel, Tess hated
the aloneness she felt once her mother was in the home. Nirodha. She read over
and over the
Four Noble Truths,
which her mother had engraved into a
wooden plaque that hung over the fireplace in the large meditation room of her
home.

Life means suffering.

The origin of suffering
is attachment.

The cessation of
suffering is attainable.

The path to the cessation
of suffering.

“Mom,” Tess said, as her
mother’s eyes began to gradually open.

Her mother had tossed and
turned in and out of sleep in the narrow bed, for almost an hour. The sour
smell of urine coming from her mother’s bedpan had nauseated her but she had
held off on calling in the nurse so as to let her mother rest. She didn’t know
how anyone could heal in a room with walls the color of phlegm, and cold,
industrial-tiled floors—a mishmash of white and grey flecks.

“It’s nice to see you,”
her mother said.

Her mother was not as
sharp the first few days, but the doctor assured Tess it was a result of the
painkillers from her fall. To Tess, it was as if in a matter of a few days, her
mother had submerged underwater.

“How are you feeling,
Mom?”

Her mother sat up in bed
and glanced around.

“There’s sunlight,” she
said, her eyes on the window.

“Yes,” Tess said. It’s a
lovely spring day,” she said.

Her mother’s eyes moved
from the window to Tess, sitting in a chair beside the bed.

“Come here,” her mother
said and Tess was out of her chair and leaning close to her mother. Her mother
patted her hand on the bed. “Sit,” she said.

She took Tess in for a
few moments before she reached out and touched her hair, her face. Tess felt
the tears in her eyes begin to fall. Her mother’s touch had always been so
healing to her. Tess closed her eyes, letting her mother’s fingertips trace her
face.

“Contesta,” she said,
wiping the tears from Tess’s cheeks.

Her mother believed that
crying was healthy, a way to cleanse the soul.

“I’m here, Mom. I’m here,”
she said. It had always been the two of them. Regardless of how many people had
been involved in their lives, it had always been Tess and her mom.

Her mother reached her
arm around Tess, pulling her upper body down so that Tess was resting beside
her from her waist down.

“Don’t waste your days on
this earth, Contesta. Make all of the days count, even the ones that may be
difficult for you. Make them all count. And make peace with time. It’s not an
obstacle. It’s the keeper for all that you have done and all that you have yet
to do.”

Tess sat up to face her
mother. Her mother’s hand traveled down her shoulder until it landed on Tess’s
hand.

“What is it that you want
in your life?” her mother asked.

She shook her head. “I
don’t know,” Tess said.

Her mother smiled her
beautiful, gentle smile at Tess. It was the expression Tess wanted to have with
her always.

“When I used to ask you
that as a teenager, you used to say that you wanted to move away from
Woodstock, that you wanted to be a business woman. Was that what you wanted?”
her mother said.

Tess shrugged. “Back
then, yes. I suppose.”

“What you think you want
is not always what you want,” her mother said.

 “I want you to be okay,”
she said.

Her mother laughed.  “I’m
exactly as the universe believes I need to be.” 

“Do you think I’ve made
mistakes?” Tess said.

 “My dear child.
Mistakes? What does any of that matter? There are no mistakes in living. Just
living.”

Her mother’s eyes were on
the window again. A sense of urgency rushed through Tess.

“What did you mean when
you said that what you think you want is not always what you want?” Tess asked.

Her mother closed her
eyes. Tess wasn’t sure if the painkillers were making her drift back into her
fog or if the conversation had worn her out.

“Mother,” Tess said.

“To be open to
possibilities,” her mother said. “To not always take the route you think is the
one you should be traveling on. Your life can be so many things, Tess,” she
said. “If you are open, it can be so many things,” and with that, she was resting.

It was then, sleeping in
her mother's bed at night in the house in Woodstock, that Tess began to examine
the crevices of herself that she tended to stay away from when her life was in
autopilot. Tess began to realize that she had never let her mother inside, had
never shared her fears or her dreams with her mother, and maybe that was
because Tess had not yet connected with what her fears or her dreams were. It
made Tess still and quiet and desperate that there was a chance that her mother
was never going to get to know her. Tess began to realize that if you didn't
speak up, if you didn’t find a way to communicate first with yourself and then
with the people you loved, there may not always be the chance to speak up. But
what frightened Tess most of all wasn't about anyone else getting to know
her—it was the possibility of her never getting to know herself. Each night in
her mother's bed, feeling smaller than she ever remembered feeling, she cradled
herself in a ball and prayed with an intensity that she had never experienced.
She felt her prayers in every ounce of her being before she released them into
the void surrounding her, depleting her as much as the new-found space made her
feel strangely whole and complete.

The call that her mother
had passed came at dawn on her fourth day at the home. The ringing phone had
startled Tess. Snakes, she had dreamt of being suspended in a muddy river and
snakes trying to get at her, poised to bite her, lurking in every direction as
she tried to escape from them. “She passed in her sleep. Sometime in the last
hour,” the nurse had said. “It seems to be from natural causes. Please come
right away.” Tess got out of bed and when she hung up the phone, she squatted,
closing her eyes, as if seeking shelter from a brutal wind. The gravity of it
all pulled her to the earth. Shocks of nausea vibrated her being so that she
felt as if she were on the verge of vomiting and stifled back deep belly
coughs. Here it was. The day she had dreaded more than any day of her life
without her realizing it. Her mother was gone. She felt anchored to the ground
while at the same time she felt as if she were weightless, incapable of keeping
herself upright.

At the assisted living
home, there was a thick, static quality to the air that made Tess gasp when she
walked into her mother’s room. Air, it was hard for her to get air. It looked
to her as if her mother was sleeping soundly and yet to the touch, her hand was
already beginning to grow cold. She looked peaceful enough—her face calm, serene,
her body neat and compact as she lay there, the sheets tucked nicely up by her
chest. Tess clasped her cold, lifeless hand in her own and it hit her. She
brushed her mother’s hand against her face and kissed it once and again, before
she knelt down beside the bed and with her eyes closed, her mother’s hand on
her face, she prayed. For her mother to have a safe journey, for her mother to
have a joyful ever after, for her to know peace, to love and to know that she
was loved. She wished she could bring her back, that she could have her mother
for only another moment, or hour or week. The tears were free flowing and Tess
felt herself growing weaker, tired, suddenly so tired, exhaustion overcoming
her. She rested her upper body on the bed, close to her mother. It was so
peaceful there, being close to her. “I’m sorry for your loss,” the nurse who
walked into the room said, and Tess pulled herself up. “I’ll give you some
time,” and Tess nodded as she walked out. The white board on the wall across
from her bed read May 6
^th
. An early May day. A spring day full of so
much hope. The last day of her mother’s life.
Sorry for your loss
. The
words resonated deep within her.

There wasn’t anger or
sorrow so much as a feeling of incredible emptiness and then came a feeling of
coldness at being so alone in the world, of being separated from her mother in
such a complete, permanent way. Tess didn’t want to leave her. Her logical mind
told her that what she was clinging to was just her mother’s shell. That her
mother’s soul had already moved on to some new realm. Her mother’s soul may be
right there with her as she swooned beside her. She smiled; she could hear her
mother saying, “Why do you weep and cry? I’m right here with you.”

A different nurse popped
her head into the room: “A few more minutes and then we need to move her.”

Tess nodded. The life had
gone out of her mother, passed through her and away. Her mother was no longer with
her in the flesh. It didn’t seem possible to Tess. It was time for her to go.
They needed to move her mother. She bent to kiss her forehead and then her hand
and her cheek and then she nodded to the nurse who had walked back into the
room and said, “thank you,” in a meek voice and she was moving down the
hallway, out of the building, into the parking lot and she was looking for her
car, where did she park that car of hers, and she thought of Michael’s comment
that it was a funeral car and suddenly she hated the car, hated death and
everything associated with it, and then she spotted the car and plopped into
the driver’s seat and sat there, with her head pressed to the steering wheel,
locked in, trying to remember where she lived, how to get there, what was next.