The note written by my mother swam to the surface of the detritus of my life as I was searching for a pair of shoes. I found the shoes in a box at the top of a closet; next to the shoe box was a smaller box, decorated with a gray and white latticework design peel and stick shelf paper that I had purchased many years ago. In the box were two small burlap bags that had contained Basmati rice, a candle in a beer stein, a memento from my 50th high school reunion, and an onion skin sheet of paper with my mother’s handwriting on it.
Sometime in 2002, I had a traumatic medical emergency, one that put my life at risk. I was saved from death by my boss, who put her hand on my chest and forbade me to leave work; I had planned to go home to lie on the floor and drink cold water to soothe my burning stomach. My doctor told me later, that my ulcer had perforated the lining of my stomach and my duodenum had burst. That rare occurrence would have caused my death within about 72 hours had I not been carted from the advertising department on a gurney and brought to the hospital for emergency surgery. As I lay in that St. Louis Missouri hospital, I spoke to my sister Jaci, who told me that my mother was boarding a bus in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to travel to St. Louis to care for her 55-year-old son.
“Tell mom not to come,” I begged of my sister. “I’m too old for her to have to care for.”
“Do you think that you can stop her?” Jaci responded. Nope, I thought, and my mother, who had already lost two sons, spent six weeks with me as I recovered. A retired nurse, she also wrote the note that I found:
“1. Want to see Dietician. 2. What shall I take for Pain. 3. When are my staples coming out.”
That note was for my follow-up with my doctor, and I sat with that note for a long time, realizing that I had no other pieces of paper that had my mother’s handwriting on it.
I have written many columns memorializing my mother’s triumphant life and graceful descent into death; my sister and I held each other as our mother lay dying. I remember my sister twisting in pain as she cried out that she thought that she would have had more time with her.
My sister and I are stitched together by the loving threads woven by our mother and as I pondered the fact that I had no other note written by her — not even the ones I forged to avoid having her sign a bad report card — I thought of my sister, who carried the greatest weight of our loss. As I sat with a friend at the bar of our favorite cidery, my phone rang. I apologized to my friend and moved into the hallway to answer the call from Jaci.
“I just saw something wonderful, and I wanted to share it with someone who would appreciate it!” Jaci was driving from one place to another and then, “I saw it! It was running alongside the road!”
I had been bemoaning the lack of written notes from my mom, and my sister called me to tell me:
“It was a little red fox!”
Thanks, Mom.
cjon3acd@att.net