Dear Mom,
Hope you are doing well.
I had an upsetting visit with you today.
I sat in one of the chairs in your room, the chair without armrests, waiting for you to wake up. Light spilled in from the hall and brightened the linoleum tiles near the doorway and lightened the darkness in your room. Outside the window behind me, late afternoon had turned the December sky to a smudged sort of grey. Occasionally, out in the hall, staff walked by your room purposefully. None of the staff looked in nor seemed to acknowledge my presence there with you. That’s ok.
The door to your room, wide enough to accommodate your wheel chair, was opened all the way. As with the other residents’ doors, it remains that way nearly all the time when I visit. Fragments of conversations from other rooms drifted in through the doorway. Some of your neighbors don’t hear so well, I guess.
Midway between me and the light that seeped in from the hall, the bed, with its rails up, cradled you, your head elevated slightly. You slept quietly. Were you dreaming then? There in the semi darkness it seemed to me that you weren’t. Occasionally, one of your toes would move under the sheets. My gaze drifted from your feet directly in front of me to the head of your bed off to my right. You were lying lie quite still, arms at your side, your mouth slightly open, breathing softly. As I watched your quiet, gentle, sleeping face in the dimness of the room, a crucifix on the wall above the head of your bed caught my attention. Was that a new addition or was that there last time I visited or had it, in fact, even been there the whole time, the years that you’ve been a resident at The Manor? It occurs to me that I can’t really remember for sure.
The bed adjuster and call button, combined into a single hand-held unit with its long, thick cable waited next to you on the bed, always there, keeping you company.
There was, of course, the medical equipment, unused at that moment but always at the ready, waiting its turn up near the head of the bed in the corner of the room. For you, I suppose it is out of sight and out of mind. Just as well.
On the other side of the bed from me, between you and the light of the hallway, a sheer curtain hung from its metal track on the ceiling, drawn back fully open, as it usually is when I visit.
Your table, on wheels which fit under the bed so the top can extend over you, stood between the head of your bed and the pulled-back curtain hanging from the ceiling. Cindy and the staff tell me that you still almost always take your meals in the dining room with the other residents. That’s good. Instead of your meals, the table instead serves as the appointed location for the television remote control. The remote control for the television is kept away from the control for the bed, with its call button. The staff tells me that it would be far too easy to mistake the call button on the bed control for one of the buttons on the TV remote. I guess they’re busy and do not want to be called more than absolutely necessary.
To my left, across the room from you, the television monitor, attached high on the wall, looked down on the bed where you slept. It was focused on you, it seemed to ignore me. A dresser stood beneath the television monitor. Atop the dresser were arrayed pictures of various family members and friends. Reminders of us, I guess. They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but maybe absence just makes you forget.
A bathroom door, also wide enough to accommodate your wheelchair, stretched between the dresser and a double-door closet. The closet attached itself to the wall near where I sat. One side served as a coat closet, the other side as shelved pantry type storage. But I’m sure you know all that.
Two other chairs, in addition to the one holding me, two chairs with armrests, sat, one in each corner of the room, opposite from me at the ends of the wall. The wall with the door out to the hallway filled with light. Three chairs. About as far apart as possible. Conveniently, one chair each for Cindy and Tom and one for me.
I’m sure you’ve noticed that, as the oldest of your three children, it has fallen on my shoulders to act as the referee between Cindy and Tom. I’m the one who keeps the playing field level. I’m the one who ensures that neither of those two roughs up the other too much or suffers too much at the hands of the other. I’m the one who smooths things over when emotions get too far out of hand.
Yes, even at our age, we’re still children, aren’t we, and the fact that the two chairs remained empty removed a certain amount of tension from my visit. It’s just as well that Tom and Cindy weren’t there.
A bouquet of flowers looked up at me from my lap. Not a bouquet, really, just flowers from the grocery store, wrapped in their sheet of clear plastic. The grocery store was still open when I arrived in town, the florists had all closed for the day. I hope you saw them when you woke. I hope the staff let you know they were from me.
When I arrived at The Manor, I went, as usual, to the main desk. I know they don’t have a formal check in there but a stop by the desk gives me the opportunity to ask how you have been doing. This gives me a picture of your status that hasn’t been filtered through Cindy, who sees you on most days. Cindy has her own motives for what she tells me, as I’m sure you must know.
Also, when I visit, especially if my arrival happens earlier in the afternoon, a stop at the desk allows me to find you without searching the facility looking for you. You might be at lunch or at some activity or maybe out in the garden. I don’t know but it seems you just tolerate the crafts and other activities that the place has for you to do with the other residents. I’m guessing that in reality you would rather not participate. When the weather permits it, though, you look so peaceful, so serene when you’re sitting in the garden there at The Manor. Or maybe you’re just sleeping. It seems as though you’ve been sleeping a lot lately.
Anyway, at the desk, today, the charge nurse answered my questions tersely, as usual. After she fielded my questions she paused for a moment. She then told me that you have your good days and your not so good days. That seemed vague to me so I pressed her for more details. She hedged a bit and then said that you have your good days and your not so good days.
This matches what Cindy has mentioned increasingly over the past few months. That you have your good days and your not so good days.
We can talk about that next time I am out to visit. I promise it won’t be so long between visits this time.
Last week Cindy called me as she usually does each week. On the call last week, Cindy let it slip out that you sometimes might forget that you have three children, that when people ask you about your kids, you will only remember Cindy and usually Tom but oftentimes you have forgotten me lately. You know how she can be. She sighed and paused after telling me this, her way of emphasizing the point. Cindy’s recriminations don’t come to the surface very often but they are there. They usually simmer just out of sight. Generally she reins them in so as not to drive me to Tom’s side. Sometimes they break through. This was one of those times. Some days she is able to deal with it better than others.
It seems that Cindy has her good days and her not so good days, too.
As I sat there in your room and that conversation replayed itself in my head, the flowers I brought you looked up at me from my lap and quietly suggested that the time spent waiting for you to wake up could be used in finding something to put them in.
A scan around the room, though, revealed no vase.
A quick glance over each of my shoulders at the windowsill behind me turned up no vase, either.
A more thorough search was called for. I was sure there must be one somewhere in the room.
Perhaps on the floor by the dresser. From my chair none was visible to me on the floor on either side of the dresser. Nor was one on top of the dresser, covered, as it was, with those of pictures to remind you of your loved ones.
No vase on your wheeled dinner table holding the television remote.
No empty vase on any other flat surface, either. Space is used carefully in your room and each square inch is evidently occupied by something more essential than an empty flower vase.
Nor, for that matter, sat any vase with flowers past their prime already in it, ready to be replaced. No vase and no flowers, new or old, at all, in fact, anywhere that I could see in your room.
I looked around again just to be sure.
None.
This called for a visit to the charge nurse at the main desk.
Holding the flowers in my right hand, I put my left hand on the edge of the seat of the chair and quietly pushed myself up to stand. The cellophane around the flowers crinkled but you did not stir. A few tiptoe steps took me around your bed and few more out into the brightly lit hallway.
At the front desk, the charge nurse appeared to be busy writing. Was this really work she was doing or was she working out a crossword puzzle? I couldn’t tell. I stepped up to the desk and peered over the chest-high counter top. She was writing notes on a resident.
“May I help you, Mr. Bradford?” she asked without looking up. When did she sneak in the glance that told her it was me?
I waited until she finished writing and looked up at me. She raised her eyebrows as if to ask the question again.
I lifted the flowers high enough for her to see over the counter top and tilted my head towards them. I said I was looking for a vase.
“Oh, you didn’t need to walk all the way up here, Mr. Bradford,” she replied with false solicitude. “There is one in the closet in your mother’s room, in the left side of the closet, on the bottom.”
I sure hope they treat you better than they treat me.
I thanked her with a slight nod of my head as I turned away.
Back in your room, I heard you breathe ever so slightly as you continued your dreamless sleep.
I set the flowers on the seat of the chair by the window and cautiously opened the left door of the closet. I crouched down and there was the vase, on its side, atop a large shoe box.
Something about the box, perhaps its large size or its neon orange color, intrigued me. I stood the vase on the floor and glanced at the end of the box. Men’s size thirteen and a half basketball shoes. Certainly not something Tom or I gave you.
I wondered. Was this something else the staff knew about you that I didn’t? My imagination rushed through a number of wild scenarios, you playing basketball or dating Big Foot.
I tilted the end of the box upward to inspect it. The sight of the shoe brand and the size and the thought of you hyped up enough to dunk a basketball brought a wry smile to my face. As I tilted the box, the contents shifted slightly. The box felt almost full of something that slid around inside.
I shook it slightly back and forth.
Setting it on the floor before me, I lifted its lid. Envelopes neatly filled the box. The scores of envelopes were all in order, oldest postmark first, newest at the back. Thumbing through them, starting from the front, I recognized my own name and address written in my own hand on the upper left corner of each. The return addresses on the first bunch of envelopes was from our previous house. Two years ago, though, you might remember, Helen and I had decided to down size. Empty nesters, we moved from our old four bedroom colonial to the townhouse where we now live. After that first slew of envelopes, our new address took the place of our old address.
The box held letters, only letters, no Mother’s Day cards nor birthday cards nor cards of any sort, except one postcard I sent you from Paris, where Helen and the kids and I went as a family to celebrate Stephen’s graduation. Many of the postmark dates brought back memories of much that had happened during the past several years. For some of the dates I could remember exactly what I had written.
Then I noticed.
None of the envelopes were opened.
I started from the front of the stack and thumbed through them in bunches.
My smile evaporated.
I thumbed through them again, from the beginning, this time one by one.
None were opened.
None were read.
Not one.
I turned my head, glanced briefly at you, still asleep, and then stared out the window.
The cold, dark, grey November sky stared right back at me.
You continued your quiet breathing in bed behind me.
Again I looked at the open box before me. The nearly full box became blurry and I had to wipe my eyes.
A squeaky sound of rubber soled footsteps in the hallway jolted me. I carefully straightened out the envelopes and patted them down so that none were sticking up.
A quick glance toward the open door brought relief. Nobody was watching.
I placed the lid back on the shoe box and gently pressed down each corner, then slid the box back into its place in the bottom of the closet, the big sticker with the brand and the model of the shoes and the big bold thirteen point five on it facing outwards.
I grabbed the vase, stood, quietly picked up the flowers from the seat of the chair and took them into the bathroom.
I must confess, Mom, that cold November gloom followed me home after my visit.
At the airport after the short flight home overcast skies made the evening seem even darker, later than it really was. The visit with you had left me feeling hurt, embarrassed, tired, befuddled. The somber skies only added to my own sullenness.
Helen picked me up at the airport and on the ride home she asked me about you and about my visit.
“It was fine. Mom was fine” I told her. I just didn’t want to talk about it. Fortunately, I thought, we would be home in under fifteen minutes with light Sunday evening traffic.
Helen waited for me to say more. You know how she is. She was not going to let me off that easy, with just an “it was fine.”
“It was fine. Mom was fine,” I repeated. Helen frowned disapprovingly as she does, and pulled away from the curbside into traffic. I told her that you have your good days and your not so good days, but I cringed inside as I said it. That’s such a stupid thing people say. And then there was a traffic accident at the exit from the airport. How irritating. I mean, who gets in an accident on a Sunday night?
Once we crawled past the stoppage, Helen resumed her interrogation.
After a bit of silence, I related the events, the basic facts: my arrival at the airport, the cab ride, the flowers at the grocery store, my front desk briefing, waiting for you to wake up. I left out the part about the shoebox. Then I lied. I told Helen you woke up just before I left. Yes, you remembered me (sort of) and yes, we had a good visit, although you were tired, so I left you to rest after a short while. The cab ride back to the airport and the flight home were both fine. My carefully edited and half fabricated story came out in a rushed monotone.
Helen looked at me skeptically and asked if I was okay. I half nodded and said I was fine. I wasn’t sure what to tell her. That shoebox loomed in my mind. “It hurts,” was all I could say. I’m sure she had no idea what I was talking about. Still, she was sympathetic. You know how she is.
I didn’t hear much of what Helen said the rest of the way home. The ride seemed to take forever. Occasionally, Helen would pause and I would fill in the silence with an answer or an agreement, anything to let the conversation just end.
Mercifully, we finally made it into our garage. I thanked Helen, climbed out of the car and led the way into our townhouse.
Helen followed and closed the door from the garage. She turned, stepped toward me, hugged me, and gave me a pat on the back.
I turned away and walked down the hall.
The study welcomed me with a cold silence. I dropped into the chair at my desk and thought about the day that trailed behind me and the rest of the dark night ahead of me. An urge to do absolutely nothing came over me.
Instead, I pulled out some paper and a pen and I wrote this letter to you.
Love from you son,
D.
✍ ✍ ✍