It's All Relative (32 page)

When I was finished, I showed Gary my letter and told him that we needed to pose for a photo with our dogs—all of us wearing red sweaters—in front of the fireplace. He didn't laugh.

“You can't send this out, Wade. Everyone will get offended. People will hate your guts,” he said. “Just ignore it. Sane people know half the stuff in those letters is just bullshit anyway.”

So, against my better judgment, I stashed my letter, trying to put the incident behind me.

And then one Saturday evening just after Christmas, I ran into my good friend who'd sent the letter that sent me into orbit.

I was standing in line at Williams-Sonoma, waiting to return a very nice whisk I'd received as a Christmas present from my mother. Since I couldn't wear a whisk, I was returning it for cash so I could buy the Kenneth Cole belt I had asked for instead.

Whisk, belt
 … 
whisk, belt
. I was still baffled at the grave difficulty my mother had obviously encountered in trying to decode my gift list.

Which had been typed.

“I got your letter,” I said to my friend when I saw her come into the store, her kids in tow. I was chuckling softly, rolling my eyes in that “Why the hell would you, of all people, do something like that?” sort of way. I thought she, of all people, would understand, would provide a funny, satisfying explanation.

“We're just so crunched for time lately,” she said very seriously, glancing down at her children. “Family, obligations, work.”

Then she said it.

“And, well, ummm … I don't know if you would understand.”

I wanted to cram my whisk down her throat.

In fact, I wanted to use it to beat her face repeatedly, instead of the egg whites for which it was intended.

And what exactly wouldn't I understand? I wanted to ask. I mean, I know every meaningless detail of your life.

Let's see: You just hired a new au pair who looks like Uma Thurman. You just redecorated your kitchen using a French Provençal theme. Your kids are taking Spanish. Your husband was just promoted to head of marketing for Hardee's. You told me all of this in your letter, remember? This is so difficult? It's too much for me to comprehend?

I stood there with my whisk, smugly self-satisfied knowing that I had never sent out a holiday letter about my family's banal existence like she just had, sharing endless but meaningless details about their lives.

Why couldn't she just write about her family in a book, like I did?

Who had she become?

And then her daughter, a baby Britney, and her son, a mini Joe Montana, started to cry, started to point at each other and say, “Oopsy, Mommy, oopsy! We're wet!”

My friend looked down and screamed, “You're not wet! You are
not
wet!”

“We're not, Mommy?” baby Britney asked, her little pink pants turning a soggy red.

I wanted to laugh.

More specifically, I wanted to tell her kids, “You're okay. It's all okay. I peed a little bit on myself last week when I drank three bottles of water and couldn't make it home in time from the gym.”

I wanted to tell my friend, “And btw, I know you despise your mother-in-law's ‘Christmas morning hash'—despite what you said in your letter—because you told me last year when you were drunk.”

Instead I said nothing.

My friend said it all.

She stormed out of Williams-Sonoma, her perfect French Provençal house of cards having tumbled down. She had left this fun little bed-wetting tidbit out of her holiday letter, of course, in order to present only the glossy perfection of her life.

But she couldn't hide from the one big fact that unites us all: We're human. We all occasionally wet ourselves. No one is really better than anyone else. We're just all trying to make it through the year as best we can. We screw up sometimes. We succeed sometimes. We laugh. We cry. We go on.

Those are the things we should really share with each other this holiday season, right, if we dare send a letter? We should share the truth. We should share the insanity.

And so I listened to this inner voice.

I turned and followed my former friend out of the store, proudly keeping my mother's whisk.

T
his is my mother's dream: She is standing at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. A leper approaches her, and she takes him in her arms. A bucket appears by her side, and she begins to wash the leper's feet. He sobs. And then she kisses the wall and sees Jesus.

My mother tells me this dream a few days before Christmas as she is hooked up to an IV, getting a mother lode of chemo. She is wearing an ash-blonde wig, cut in an updated pageboy that—and I hate to admit this—looks better than her real hair ever did.

“Although this is the first time I've shared it with you, I've had this dream my whole life, Wade,” she tells me with extreme conviction. “Ever since I was a young nurse. I feel I must go, before … you know …”

And then her voice cracks.

I don't know what to say. I do not want to upset her. My mother, you see, has lung cancer, and I have come home to play the part of a caring, gentle, nurturing son. It is a role that does not come easily much of the time, I am sorry to say.

I want this to be a perfect Christmas—one free of drama, scenes—considering, let's just be honest, it may be our last together. But that is a lot to ask our family.

I stare at one of the stained-glass windows the oncology ward has used to brighten this sterile white space. It is of a dove with an olive branch flying over a rainbow. The window is ringed with twinkling holiday lights, and a little side table holds a twinkling tree, both cords simply left to hang, joining the hundreds of other cords snaking to monitors and machines.

I think of Gary, who would have a conniption trying to hide all these cords. “You should never see a cord at the holidays! A tree should look magically lit, as if it were just sitting in a snow-covered forest. A home should look like a gingerbread cottage!”

I see no magic today.

My mother looks up at her IV drip and then back at me: “Will you help me get to Jerusalem, Wade? Before my cancer kills me?”

I stare at her, open-mouthed.

And then I turn my attention to the holiday decor the hospital has hung to try and divert patients and visitors from the harsh reality of what they are confronting. I stare at the trees and the lights and all of the cardboard cutouts of Santa and Rudolph and presents, while mothers, fathers, grandparents, and children of all shapes, sizes, colors, ages sit expressionless, IV drips attached to their arms.

Happy holidays!

There once was a time when there was no cancer, when these folks were just like me, and time was an endless commodity to be spent thoughtlessly, like pennies.

I smile at an elderly woman, her daughter clutching her hand. Both can barely muster the energy to nod.

I wonder if my mother and I will be here on Mother's Day, or the Fourth of July or Valentine's or Easter, if I will once again look to cardboard bottle rockets and American flags and hearts and Cupid and bunnies and colored eggs to keep me from doing the one thing I want to do: cry.

If I look at my mother right now, I
will
start crying, and possibly
never stop. I do not want my mother to sense my fear, my terror, my pain, though I'm sure it is written all over my face.

It is strange to speak so calmly of this thing that will kill my mother. And there is no doubt: It will kill her. She has the worst kind: small-cell lung cancer. Approximate time to live: one to two years.

We all think cancer will never touch us, any of us, and yet it always does. It always seeps into those we love when we aren't looking. And yet we talk about it in measured meters, as if the cancer were a cold-blooded murderer we already know is going to get away scot-free.

All we are asking for is a little time before he strikes.

Time that my mother needs, it seems, to go to Jerusalem.

I gather myself internally and say the only thing that pops into my mind.

“We're gentiles, mother. And it's Christmas. Aren't you mixing religious metaphors at a very sensitive time of the year? Can't we just go to Naples, Florida, if you're seeking a little adventure?”

She laughs, but she has that determined look in her eyes, the one that I have known my entire life. She is a force of nature, my mother, when she wants to be.

“Tell me what you know about the Kotel,” my mother says to me.

I stare at her. I feel like a kid who didn't study for a test when a teacher busts him in front of the whole class. I don't know what a Kotel is, although I'm inclined to say it's some sort of Jewish Mexican dip that you mix with Velveeta.

“The Kotel is the Wailing Wall, Wade.”

And then, like lightning, it hits me: The only thing I know about the Wailing Wall is that I once truly believed it was called the “Whaling Mall,” a sort of outlet shopping center for maritime enthusiasts with stores that sold ship's wheels and captain's hats and Moby-Dick paraphernalia.

That's how Jewish I am. I didn't even know anyone Jewish growing up, except Joan Rivers. I mean, I was raised in the Ozarks.

“The Wailing Wall is the most significant site in the world for Jews,” my mom tells me. “It is the last remnant of their temple, and Jews from around the world gather there to pray. People write notes to God and place them between the ancient stones of the wall. I feel I need to do that before I die.”

“I'm still not following, Mom,” I say to her.

“I need to understand how the most persecuted of people, the most persecuted of religions, can still have such resounding faith. I do not question my own faith, but I have been punished enough in my life—we have both been punished enough in our lives—that we need to seek to understand why we believe.”

With that, my mom pulls out her Bible and begins to read.

“Shouldn't you be reading the Torah?” I ask sarcastically, not knowing how to respond. She gives me a sad look, so I open
my
Bible, the latest copy of
InStyle
, and stare at a photo of Debra Messing, who looks amazing.

When my mother is not looking, I glance back up at her.

We could not be two more different people, my mother and I.

And yet we could not be more the same.

We have been tested by tragedy. She has lost a son, I have lost a brother. She has lost her parents, I have lost my grandparents. She has lost a sister. I have lost an aunt.

And for a while we nearly lost each other.

Mother.

Son.

Now friends.

I stare as my mother reads her Bible. She has become flushed, hot, and has removed her wig now, leaving just intermittent patches of sad, wispy hair, like on those abused Barbies you see in antique malls. The twinkling lights around the stained-glass window bounce
off my mother's shiny head, giving her the look of a painted, pop-art saint.

She catches me staring, smiles, and whispers, “I love you, sweetie.”

How can she have such faith, I wonder. And how can I have so little right now?

What I would really like to do, if you want to hear the unabashed truth, is tear the Bible out of her hands and throw it through the stained-glass window and scream, “Screw this! Somebody get angry! Somebody tell me how this could happen! On Christmas!” Maybe then that would lend me some clarity, help me understand how God could do something so awful to all these people sitting in here, to my mom, a woman who has never done a bad thing in her life except care for the dying and sick.

As a former hospice nurse, my mother healed those who were in pain physically and spiritually.

Now she must heal herself?

I do not believe in God.

My mother closes her eyes and mouths a prayer.

And then suddenly I start crying, and I cannot stop myself, the tears just won't stop, and I am sobbing, drooling, gasping, hunched over, bawling, babbling, “I love you, Mommy, I'm so scared, Mommy,” until she is forced to get out of her chair, dragging her IV along, and come to me, to take me into her arms.

She is hugging me now, telling me it's going to be okay, even though we both know it's not.

This is supposed to be my role. I am supposed to be the caretaker now. But she is the strong one. She has always been the strong one. I am the comic relief. I am the wuss.

As my mother gently rocks me, like she did forty-three years ago when I was a baby, I realize I must do this one thing for her—after everything she has done for me, done for everyone else. I have no other choice but to fulfill her final prayer and get her to Jerusalem.

But she is not well enough to travel. I cannot get her there right now. And I don't know, to be honest, if I ever will.

I drive my mother home after her treatment and, after she naps, we turn on
Wheel of Fortune
and add the final touches to the Christmas tree.

Ever since I can remember, my father, like a true, logical engineer, has always believed in a one-color Christmas, preferring that everything—garland, ornaments, outdoor lights, candles, tree skirt—be monochromatic. We always had to choose as children: all red, all green, or all blue. My dad was partial to all blue, so every few years our house was basked in an eerie shade of Dodger blue, making our Christmas pictures look as if someone had spilled Nyquil over them, our faces glowing like Ozarkian Smurfs.

This year the tree is all red.

I have spent decades in this room decorating and lighting this tree, wrapping gifts with my mother, sipping hot chocolate, watching
Wheel of Fortune
.

Ever since I can remember, we have watched
Wheel of Fortune
, and now, here, sitting in my childhood home, in the living room next to my mother, I finally realize how much we have all aged: me, her, my father, Pat, Vanna.