Two threads about death in two weeks. October is clearly going to be a banner year for the Rhymer clan. Forgive me if this is tiresome; I just need to vent.
My mother’s been ill for a while now. Ten years ago her hand started bothering her, but she would never agree to go to the doctor; she insisted that wearing a glove all the time was enough to keep it warm, and, really, that was all that she needed. Around '99 we – that is, my siblings and father and I – managed to get her to go to the doctor, and she was diagnosed polymyositis, which I shan’t bother telling you about since the link will do a much better job. Anyway, the poly was bad news, but not the worse possible; it relapses and remits, true, but you can live a good long time with it given the appropriate therapy.
But the polymyositis was only the beginning. In the last few years she’s been diagnosed with congestive heart failure, and with lung fibroids, breast cancer, and I’m sure half a dozen other things I’m forgetting. She’s a walking pharmacy. I told Anaamika in email that her blood must be, by this point, either dangerously toxic or miraculously healing. I’ve spent so much time at the Methodist Hospital downtown that not only do I not have to ask for directions anymore, but I’m the one giving them out.
Recently she was admitted to the hospital again, for what has to be the fourth time this year. She had been feeling weaker and more pained with every day, and after a lot of x-rays and MRIs she was diagnosed with another cancer, this time in her hip. It was an open question whether this was breast cancer that had spread or a completely different neoplasm, but that hardly mattered. The doctors planned an intensive round of radiation therapy, because she was afraid of having a surgical hip replacement, but while in the hospital she developed pneumonia. She died yesterday morning.
In a way her death may be the death of the Rhymer clan too. I know I’ve boasted about my closeness to my siblings before, but these last few months have been hard on our relationship. In the last two weeks, I’ve gotten into two screaming arguments with the sister I was closest too growing up. As it stands we’re barely talking, because during these arguments we’ve said things we’ve both felt for a long time but kept our tongues about. I don’t know-- no, that’s untrue – I wouldn’t be friends with this sister if we weren’t related. I’m sick of dealing with her narrow-mindedness, her racism, her controlling nature, and fuck it I don’t see the point anymore. What’s the goddamn point?
There. That’s the maudlin part.
I don’t know what I feel. I really don’t. You see, for some time now I’ve felt that we were torturing Mother more than we were helping her, that all the effort we put into keeping her with us was basically born of selfish motives. I’d resigned myself to her death being both inevitable and proximate. When I got the news yesterday I started to tear up, so before I went over to my dad’s I sat in my car with the key out of the ignition, thinking that I should cry now, get the worst, more explosive grief out of me before I got on the freeway. But no tears would come. I wasn’t trying to hold them back; I was hoping to weep. But I couldn’t. I’m not a good weeper. I’ve put so much effort into controlling myself the past few years that I fear I have cut off a part of my psychology from myself. I want to cry, but I just don’t know how, and it’s killing me. I’m sure my sisters think I’m this apathetic, insensitive, bloodless asshole who doesn’t care about anything but himself, but I have no idea how to cry.
Okay, I guess that was maudlin too.
Anyway
I’m going to try to not be maudlin for a moment. I’m going to talk about my childhood and how my mother influenced it. It’s something I plan to talk about at the funeral.
When my siblings and I were growing up, Mother always made sure to keep at least one set of encyclopedias around. Actually she kept two sets around. Sometimes three. Because of her, I don’t remember ever not having encyclope dias. I think Mom was always a little shocked that some people didn’t keep encyclopedias around. too. It’s weird. It’s like not having furniture in the house and eating breakfast on the kitchen floor. Yes, maybe some people do live like that, but they are ‘flicted and they need some advice from my Mama.
Anyway, I didn’t just read those encyclopedias, I devoured them – though, for the record, it was my brothers and sisters who tore them up. I devoured them, and I loved to regurgi tate what I’d read for Mother’s edification. The most purely joyful, unambiguously happy times in my childhood were the moments I spent telling Mother what I’d just learned about the battles of World War II or the paintings of George Seurrat. When I was overwhelmed with being a fat, unpopular little misfit, I could tell Mother about what I’d read that day, and when I did, I felt her love like a physi cal thing, like sudden shaft of sunlight warming my skin on a wintry day.
There. That’s a good thing to talk about. I’m gonna sign off.
I think Shirley’s advice to wait before severing ties with the sisters is very wise. I have heard the recommendation to try to avoid making any drastic life changes in the first year after such a major loss, because while emotions are running high in the early stages it is easy to do something that you might not normally do. My thoughts are with you.