All the Dancing Birds (28 page)

I still have thoughts, but there are no words to accompany them. Now and then, I grunt in response to something around me, a light left on when I’d prefer the room to be dim, an abrupt moving of me during the changing of my linens or soiled clothes, the prick of a needle into my fragile skin, the countless interruption of hands moving over me, turning me, fixing something amiss with my bed. Or with me. I am aware (always) of my woman, my Jewell, who rubs away the beginnings of any sore on my skin and applies ointment to keep my lips from cracking. She hums over me with sounds like the thrumming of a thousand bird’s wings.

For her, I feel love.

It seems the time has come for me to tumble and fall toward whatever landing I shall find. It is evening and the shadows fall with me.

The day is ripe for falling things.

My children come to hover over my bed, their hands folded like steeples over little finger chapels. I’m aware of their tears, the sound of their whispering voices, the soft clearing of their throats, and the occasional flutter of their nervous laughter. Allison has brought candles and she busies herself around the room with the lighting and wick care. My woman tiptoes in every now and then; she adjusts my covers if they’ve slipped; she rests her cool hand on the inside of my wrist; she feels the heat of my forehead. Her eyes are moist.

It appears I’m dying.

This dying would be painful but for the medication. I sleep. I wake. No one notices the difference. My body takes signals from my brain, but my beautiful, gummed-up, sticky brain has well forgotten its way.

My organs are now doors, closing softly, one by one.

I lie on my right side; one hand is under my cheek, the other lies across my narrow thigh. My fingers are splayed open like a fan‌—‌the only indication of the agony of falling, sinking, being crushed by the great weight that is this dying.

I grieve the loss of my body, although no one could possibly guess the depth of my sorrow because I’m so very still and silent.

My breath is ragged now, shallow, occasional; it seems there’s not much left of it. I want to push myself upward, high upon my elbows, to rise above the life draining from my limbs, my failing organs. I wonder if the next time I open my eyes, I might see a different place. A field of beauty perhaps, filled with wild California poppies and green, green Carolina grass. I wish for something‌—‌anything‌—‌to hold onto, some lovely thing that will carry me through this moment.

I hadn’t expected to die today, but I suppose I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.

I feel Bryan now, my precious Bryan, rubbing my feet. His hands are strong, his fingers too quick as they knead into my fragile skin and brittle bones, but I can’t tell him to stop. All words are gone. Despite the strength of his hands, I find comfort in his touch. He is sad for my state and I’m long past rising to fix him with ice cream and a mother’s perfectly placed words.

My Allison, my lovely prancing pony, sits beside me. Her hand is on my shoulder, but only barely so. She was always afraid to touch me after I turned ill. I could never fault her for that. A mother with a failing mind is certainly a fearful thing.

Allison speaks. “Should we say prayers or something now? What should we do?”

Bryan answers. “I don’t know. Whatever.”

“I don’t know any prayers,” Allison says.

“I don’t know any either.”

“Well, we should do
something
.”
Always my kinetic Allison, she would need movement of some kind to soothe this raw and searing moment.

“What would Mom want?”

“I don’t know. A churchy song? She always liked music.”

“Then go ahead and sing something.” Bryan returns to kneading my tender feet.

“What? What should I sing?” Allison asks.

“Who cares? It’s not like you’re taking requests in a piano bar. Just sing something nice. Maybe something Mom would like.”

After a moment, I hear Allison take a breath. She leans into my ear, her hand still on my shoulder. She begins to sing.
Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz.

“Allison! What the hell kind of song is that?”

“Well, you said a churchy song. It’s the only song I know that says Lord in it.”

“Oh, God.” I imagine Bryan rolling his eyes, considering the logic of the song. “Well, fine then. Janis Joplin it is.” His fingers resume rubbing my feet. Again, I want to tell him to stop, but there are simply no words left. Not one. Sometimes, there’s nothing left for a dying mother to do but offer up her tender feet to somehow fix her sorrowful son.

Allison leans into me and starts again.
Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz. My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends. Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends. So, oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz.

Wait! I know the song. I hear the words. There is familiarity. There is something about the rhythm, the rhyme, the meter, Allison’s wavering, slightly off-tune voice. I hear the music and something within me, guttural and primitive, responds to the music.

“Look at Mom,” Allison says. “She’s smiling… and I swear, she’s singing along.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Seriously. Come see.”

Bryan leaves my feet and moves beside Allison. “Oh my God, she
is
smiling. She likes it. Sing some more.”

“Sing it, too,” Allison says.

“You’re doing fine. Keep going.”

Allison leans close to me again.
Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a night on the town. I’m counting on you, Lord, please don’t let me down. Prove that you love me and buy the next round. Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a night on the town.

“That’s all I can remember,” she says.

My children become silent. Reverent. They touch my shoulders, my hands. They peer into my face. They smile and coo as if I’m a brand new baby.

“That’s so amazing,” Allison says. “Who’d have thought that Mom liked Janis?”

“Yeah, who’d have
thought
?”

Oh, there is something to be said for a dying woman’s final look at what she is leaving, when every bit of strength is gathered, when all movement is collected and coiled into one final wild and splendid thought. Nothing but this last moment is significant and counted in a mother’s book of days. Simply, there is only glory in knowing a mother’s children are present.

This is my last breath, my final look, and in spite of the void inside my head that has stolen from me everything I ever knew‌—‌every memory that defined the woman who once was Lillie Claire Glidden‌—‌I know I am ready.

I now can see what a baby-blue star does the moment just before winking on into its new existence. She looks squarely into the faces of her beautiful children. She sees their hands folded into little churches, she sees tears of astonishment ringing their eyes, and she hears the last of a silly Janis Joplin song floating from their mouths. She looks at her babies.

And she smiles. Then, in a papery whisper, she sings.
Oh Lord, won’t you… Oh Lord, won’t… Oh Lord… .

The soft light of candles flickers across the room; my children have never before been more beautiful, more wondrous. Their eyes shine, their lips smile over me. They smell of candle wax and prayerful hands. They are luminescent!

Just before my eyelids flutter closed and my lips fall slack and motionless, just before my heart becomes still and damp inside my chest, I see the arms of my children fold around one another. They lean and touch their heads together, a quiet, simple gesture, but one that gives me peace. And peace.

And peace.

Epilogue

Y
OU LAUGH. You laugh because your refrigerator door is standing wide open like some silly mouth and you remember how it all started with your wallet hiding in the crisper under the lettuce. You remember everything now, every day of every year of it. You especially remember that day‌—‌that first day you knew for certain something was wrong. You didn’t know a sticky tangle of something was secretly growing in a small fold of your brain, but you knew something was amiss. That first bees’ nest in your brain must have nestled itself around the judgment cell, because from that day forward, you were nothing but a lamentable cylinder of tears and sticky notes, of fallen-down dreams and misplaced thoughts. You’re at peace now. Everything lost has been restored. Still, you look at your empty refrigerator with its door propped open and its crisper drawer pulled out and your mouth says the same thing it said seven years ago. Hah! you say. Of course, no one hears you. You’re very dead now. You look around your house‌—‌your sadly empty house. You leave no footprints, but you are very much here. You turn your head to look beyond the refrigerator door.

What remains are walls, stiff with silence. The light is stunted by closed draperies, yet still a strong early afternoon sun finds a way to creep along the edges of the empty carpet. Most of the furniture is gone; their footprints in the carpet give the only clue of where things once stood. A chair here. There, the sofa, square tables at each end. A coffee table, and over there, a floor lamp with a heavy round base. In front of the window with a view to the patio (empty now of birds that used to dance and peep every day) are indentations from the medical recliner, returned to the equipment store, most likely. The cupboards are mostly cleared of their contents; only a few odd boxes still stand open in the kitchen. The house has been only lightly vacuumed and, here and there, I see a missed paw print from John Milton, whose lanky body now lolls over the furniture in Bryan’s apartment.

The master bedroom, the only room yet to be packed and gutted of its contents, is softly lit. If it were a conversation, the room could be described as gentle and pleasant, almost warm and affable. Certainly it belies the prayer candles and tears that occupied every corner of the room just four weeks earlier.

Bryan stands at my dresser, packing nightgowns, underthings, a small green velvet-lined jewelry box containing a set of matching wedding rings nestled inside a felt envelope, several pairs of well-worn socks, a few sweaters, Ma’s Bible with its fragile onion-skinned pages and notes along the margins. The items seem so few. So precious. Bryan’s hands have the tenderness of a son, yet they still contain the thick clumsiness of a boy.

Allison picks through my clothes still hanging in the closet. Her hands are different from her brother’s‌—‌more delicate, perhaps more apologetic. She folds each piece, letting thoughts of better, earlier times be captured within the creases before settling each garment into a large box boldly marked,
For Charity
. She recognizes the blouses and slacks purchased for that failed trip to Hawaii. Her eyes are watery, choking her throat.
Don’t cry, Allison. Mom’s right here. Everything’s okay, my sweet pony.

When she’s done with the hanging items, Allison turns her attention to the upper shelves. Among the purses and boxes of shoes, she finds a handmade cedar box.

I nearly clap for joy when she pulls the box down and finds it spilling over with neatly folded papers and letters.

“Bryan. Oh my God! Look what I found,” she says.

“What? I don’t have time‌—‌”

“No! It’s Mother. She wrote us letters. And poems, too.”

Allison takes the box from the closet and spills the papers across the bed. “Look,” she says. “Mom wrote all these things for… for
us
.”

“I need to get back to the office this afternoon.”

“Can’t you be nice just once? It’s Mom, in this box‌—‌”

“Oh, all right, all right… I’ll look.” Bryan pulls a letter from the pile. He opens it carefully, as if to damage the paper might cause great harm somewhere in the universe. He opens one, flattens it and then opens another and another.

He scans the words, a lawyer’s habit. “Maybe we
should
read them,” he says. “Look. A lot of them have dates. Let’s put them in order and start with the undated pieces first, then read the dated letters in order.”

“Don’t you think we should just read whatever? Like serendipity?”

“You wouldn’t know serendipity if it bit you in the ass.”

“What if she can hear us? What if her spirit or her ghost is here and she’s listening to you spouting your mouth off?”
How precious that Allison would think to include me in this moment.

“Well, then she’s listening to your spouting too.”

Yes. Yes! I’m listening. Spout, my children… spout!

“All right,” Allison shrugs. “Your idea is good, let’s read them in order.”

When the papers are collated, Bryan picks up the top letter. “Do you want to read, or do you want me to start?”

“You read. I’m too nervous.”

Bryan looks down at the letter and begins to read it to himself.

“Out loud, please?”

“Oh, God. All right.” Bryan looks at his watch.

Without chairs in the room, they settle onto the bed. Allison fluffs a pillow and settles back on it, eyes closed, hands behind her head. Knowing his time plan has been altered for the day, Bryan sighs with resignation and begins to read.

My dearest Bryan and Allison,

I don’t quite know what to say to you. Given this illness (so new and surprising to me), I don’t know what to say to myself, for that matter. Apparently, I’m sick. It appears I won’t get better. What should have been my time to grow beautiful wrinkles; to let the skin on my hands turn to crepe paper and gray hairs spread across my head like fairy silk; what should have been my time to gather you around the table over coffee or wine to offer a mother’s wisdom on those days you needed it; what should have been my time to pass on stories of my generation‌—‌well, it’s all now moot.

Instead, we’re looking at a quickening of my mental death. A hurried step into memories lost and confusion found.

I know I’ve nothing to apologize for. Some people simply get sick. Still, I’m so sorry. I’m so very, very sorry. I’m sorry especially for what I’m surely going to put you through. But you’re strong. Please, for my sake, stay strong.