All the Dancing Birds (29 page)

The oddest thing is that I know within the moment of each loss exactly what it is I’m losing. I’m aware of it at the beginning stage of this mesmerizing and confounding disease; I expect I may very well be aware right to the very end.

I’ve read about my illness. My brain will turn gummy and tangled with sticky cobwebs. I’ll lose my language, but apparently I won’t lose the feelings that prompt whatever utterances should reasonably occur. How sad for those of us who have to go down this path.

Our memories are stolen.

I won’t talk aloud about these things. It’s simply too cruel for a mother to burden her children with her gathering frailties. It’s certainly not the Southern way. I come from a proud father and mother who suffered their own delicacies with silent mouths and hopeful hearts.

I can be no less.

Instead, I’ll write my thoughts to you. Letters. Little poems. A mother’s thoughts. They’ll be something I hope you’ll treasure. I’ll struggle over them, just as I’m agonizing over this first letter. I’m tempted to tear it up (of course), and find another, better way to occupy your memories of me. But I’m a writer. A poet. It’s what I do and it’s what I’m losing. Words. I’m losing my words.

But until all my words are gone‌—‌until I’m gone‌—‌I’ll continue to struggle in telling you all the things still left to say.

So here goes, my dear loves. Try not to fight over who gets to keep the letters. Perhaps I shouldn’t say that, but I know you well enough to know that you will. Just make copies, for heaven’s sake, and be done with it.

Oh, and don’t worry about me now that I’m gone‌—‌but if you need me for anything‌—‌I’ll be with your father, singing and dancing and living on in his arms.

All my love,

Mother

Bryan looks up with tears in his eyes. He places the letter upside down next to the stack of unread letters. “You read the next one.”
Oh, my dear, dear Bryan. Sometimes the stoics break and split most deeply.

Allison reaches for the next paper, a poem. She reads it, her voice hesitant and quavering through to the end, her head nodding to gain the subtle rhythm in the piece. When she’s done, she places it upside down on top of the first letter. In unspoken assent, Bryan and Allison take turns reading, turning each letter over one by one at the end of each reading.

On they go throughout the afternoon, laughing, pensive, sometimes tearful. Occasionally they launch into grand commentary, remembering long-forgotten events, before moving on to the next piece. They lose time, even as the day’s shadows lengthen and stretch across the room.

At some point, they scavenge the kitchen boxes and find a bottle of cooking wine, a bent corkscrew and a couple of paper cups.
I smile that it’s a lousy red, but a red, nevertheless.

When at last they come to the final paper, dated nearly two years before my death, the end of the day, as well as the end of my letters, has crept into their eyes. Bryan and Allison look at the last entry.

“Do you want to do it, or do you want me to go ahead?” Bryan asks, his throat thick with wine and memories.

“You do it,” Allison says, pushing the letter toward him. “You hold together better than I do.”

Bryan takes the letter in his hands and lets his eyes settle on the words. “Okay, hold your breath. Here goes.” He reaches over and takes Allison’s hand and together they walk the landscape of my final letter.

My children,

It now takes all I have to find only a few words. They’re all nearly gone. This shall be my last to you, my loves. It’s taken well over (oh I don’t know how long) just to write this. Years? A lifetime? I don’t know. But today, or yesterday, I thought of your MeeMaw again and how she would gather me under her arm and how we would together read her favorite poetry. Always that ancient, John Milton, as you might guess.

So, my last thought to you shall be no less a gesture. Please feel my arms around you now, both of you, one to each side of me, as if I were reading this to you myself.

One last thing‌—‌and I hope you don’t mind‌—‌instead of simply copying one of MeeMaw’s favorite pieces (which, of course, would be something Milton, or maybe Eudora Welty, or even something dark from Poe), I’ve worked on a sonnet of my own for quite a while now. That’s what I’d like to give you as my last gift. The words have not come easily or well. I’m afraid, I’ve even made quite a mess of it in some spots. But I hope these last words give you comfort, or pause, or even admonition as they fill your ears and fall into your hearts.

So here, my dears, is my sonnet to you:

On My Memory

My arms are empty of words I would hold.

They’ve spilled from my grasp and now all my life’s

Thoughts are gone and my heart cries unconsoled.

Such wintry agony, a thousand knives

Of half-gathered memories, dying fresh

Within wisps of thought on a broken night.

As murmurs of love fall soft from my breath,

You fade, my dear roses, paled by night’s light.

Yet don’t think of me, my clattering words.

No! Hold to the thought that somewhere in time

Love will return us, not set us apart

Like small buds plucked, a new bouquet. While I’m here

Emptying thoughts to spare room for your tears,

Come sit with me now and read of my years.

‌—‌Lillie Claire Glidden

(your mother)

And there it is, my dear children. An imperfect sonnet, but I think I counted the syllables right‌—‌I’m not certain. Don’t tell anyone, but I may have even made up a word or two to fit the scheme. It would seem I’m too far gone to be any better than that.

Still, my last words come from a mother’s guttural love, from some visceral place that not even I understand.

My words, my poem, even my love‌—‌all are imperfect. Still, I hope you’ll hold these thoughts close to your hearts. Also, my dears, hold tightly to each other. I need for you to do this, so that for what one of you might forget, the other might recall.

Please. If nothing else, now in this moment‌—‌simply take each other’s hand, much like when you were children filled with innocence and wonder.

Yes, go ahead. Do it now.

Take each other by the hand. Then remember me‌—‌all that you are able. Yes, remember.

And remember.

My love forever,

Your mother

YOU LEAVE. You leave now to the place that is waiting for you. Your children know everything of you and you’ll forever know everything of them. Their vision of you will always be that of your final moments. Your agony. Your sad forgetfulness of their names, their faces. The hushed and failing light as you left them. But they’ve also captured an image of you and their MeeMaw and a grand Southern porch where life was filled with lemonade and poetry and their PaaPaw’s hands striking chords on a scratched-up old banjo.

You’ll visit your children now and then, especially when your daughter marries again and has a late-in-life baby son that gives her‌—‌and you‌—‌such joy. You’ll watch your son as he flourishes in his career, then falters with too much wine and sympathy for himself. You’ll try to whisper in his ear, but he’s stuck in the bottom of a glass and his ears are deaf. You’ll visit him more often than anyone.

You’ll visit Jewell now and then too. You’ll watch as she hums over a new woman. A woman older than you were, but one who loves her just as you loved her.

One day, you’ll turn to find John Milton on your lap and you’ll smile at his gray muzzle and wizened yowl. You’ll spend grand and glorious eternities with your Ma and your Pa, singing Poor Ellen Smith across the skies. You’ll join your beloved husband and welcome him to you as you never did in your living body. Yes, you’ll leave your children. But you’ll never really leave.

No, you’ll never really leave.

The leaves of memory seemed to make a mournful rustling in the dark.

‌—‌Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

About the Author

A
UBURN
M
C
C
ANTA
is an award-winning writer and poet. Raised in Portland, Oregon, she remembers thinking her mother’s garden was a place so green, petals fell from the sky and flowers grew in every pathway. McCanta’s father was an advertising director whose work transferred the family from the rose gardens of Portland to the Sonoran Desert of Phoenix, Arizona, where she now lives with her husband and two giant dogs. She serves on the Arizona Alzheimer’s Task Force.
All the Dancing Birds
is her debut novel.

Auburn McCanta serves as an Ambassador for the National Alzheimer’s Association. Until either a cure or an effective treatment is found, Auburn will donate ten percent of all book proceeds to the National Alzheimer’s Association for the care, support, research, and advocacy of Alzheimer’s patients and their families. Thank you so much for your help in this urgent need.

Acknowledgments

I
T ALL STARTED
with a brilliant neurosurgeon, Dr. Cully Cobb, who removed a brain tumor‌—‌a large and terrifying brain tumor. With drills and saws and various home improvement tool belt items, he gave me another life and a grand interest in all things concerning the brain. Thank you is not nearly sufficient.

I am in awe of the generosity of my husband, Dan, who told me over and over until I finally believed him and fully shared his enthusiasm that my story was worthy, the writing was good, and the effort would touch people in a positive and loving way. To Dan, I am most grateful.

I cannot thank enough the many people and their caregivers who allowed me to visit, who befriended me and unabashedly showed me the baffling nature of Alzheimer’s disease. They taught me about its outward behavior, as well as its inward fragments of thought that flicker like beautiful, inextinguishable lights, from its onset all the way to its end. Thank you for helping me to hold up a flag of hope on your behalf‌—‌yours is a profound and humbling message.

My deepest thanks and gratitude to those who suffered through my early drafts, who listened to me natter on endlessly about this improbable idea of mine, who then encouraged and pushed me to carry it out, to be a better writer, to be true to my words, to be unapologetic, to find my feet when I thought they were lost, who talked me off the roof, who joined me in finding the bottom of a bottle of wine, who lent me their courage when I was fresh out, who shared their wives with a blubbering writer, who restored my spirits over a glorious week in Montana, a week in Nashville and then, another week in Sacramento, who chided and cajoled and believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself, who told me to point my chin toward the future (I tried my best to place you in alphabetical order‌—‌Sorry, I’m not very good with hyphenated, complicated-name people and I placed my female friends before their husbands. I’m bad that way): Shelly Alcorn, Mark Alcorn, Susan Springer Butler, Chuck Butler, Cynthia D’Amour, Linnea Knowles, Leslie Kohler, Daniel Kuhn, Anne Ornelos de Lemos, Drew Myron, Lisa Berry-Nicholson, Kevin Nicholson, Marlene Phillips, Esther Garrett Powell, Russ Powell, Anne Roseman, Paula Silici, Kristi Smith, Dawn Teo, and, of course, the Bunco Ladies of Stetson Valley‌—‌one of these days I’m going to win!

Thank you to the generous, slow-dripping, honey-voiced woman of the Blowing Rock, North Carolina, Chamber of Commerce, who leisurely guided me through an introduction to the people and music of the Appalachians and, when our conversation was done, made me pine for a plate of grits and eggs. I wish I knew your name.

Grand and hearty thanks to The Editorial Department. Your support, guidance, editorial genius and copious handholding made this a better book than I could have ever dreamed of creating.

Thank you, Marcanti Clarke Literary Press!

Thank you to the woman who‌—‌when she found out the subject of my book‌—‌hugged me close and whispered in my ear that she had just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and she needed my book so she would know herself in the future.

Finally, thank you, Wilson‌—‌you are an impossibly dear Labradoodle and pet therapy dog who loves all the little ladies and gentlemen we visit. If you were so inclined to shed, your curly white coat would be infused in every page of this book.

Reading Group Guide

Lillie Claire Glidden appears befuddled by her early forgetfulness and develops a number of coping behaviors that serve to both hide her memory lapses and adapt to them. How does Lillie Claire purposely hide her memory difficulties, and does this mean she is clever, or that she is in denial? Why would a person try to hide being forgetful?