How mom died, part 1 - Skin like crepe paper

It wasn’t completely crazy or anything that mom was holed up in her house and couldn’t leave. I mean, this was the hardest snowfall of the winter.

It was mid-February and everything was covered in ice and a thick blanket of snow. The first fall was powdery on the ground and I was easily able to sweep it off of my walkway and sidewalk with a push broom. It kept coming down and covering my work, but I felt driven and pushed it back over and over.

The ice came next and covered every leaf and branch and was a second, glossy skin. I ran out and took photos with my friends Desiree and Mandy. There was this hang time where I was standing on the ice for a split moment before it broke down the middle, gave way and I sank six or eight inches into the soft cold below.

I’d spoken to mom on the phone. She told me she couldn’t get out and couldn’t imagine how I could, either. She said she had food, but it didn’t seem like she really did. She’s eaten toast and an egg. Just not enough.

It seems so far away now. It’s mid-spring, the best time of the year. I’m sorry that Mom missed it.

I decided I’d go over and chisel out her car, clean off her walk and maybe get her some food. I’ve wanted, for a long time, to be able to ditch my car permanently. Mom said to me of this, “What are you going to do, take a baby on the bus??” The idea was just to foreign to her. Outside of her experience and, like a lot of unfamiliar things, repugnant.

I felt this day, of the worst weather of the year was a good opportunity to prove my point and I dressed Uly, then six-months-old, in his snowsuit, which was made to be a pale blue bear costume. I put him, some baby food and a bag of Becky’s milk into the stroller, along with clean diapers and a change of clothes and we headed up the street to catch the bus.

This wasn’t the first time we’d taken the bus. It was just the first time we went to my Mom’s place. The other time, Sandy, Becky’s mom, watched Uly for us and I had loaded the stroller, Uly (of course) and my bicycle in Mary Ellen’s car. She dropped us off in Northside and I loaded first the bike on the front of the bus and then the baby and stroller inside and we rode an hour north on Winton to Sandy’s place. It was the last of several of Becky’s childhood homes. There, I delivered Uly to Sandy, hopped on my bike and bussed it back downtown to CityBeat. That was quite an ordeal, so the icy trip to Mom’s wasn’t too bad in comparison.

This time, Tracy gave us a lift downtown and dropped us off at a bus stop. The ride wasn’t long, and Uly’s bright smile made it fun. I remember a woman with a bit of a twang in her voice said something about how I could understand what women went through. I responded, a little defensively, that I take care of my son every day and that I know what it’s like for myself.

“I knew that wasn’t going to sound right,” she said.

We talked a bit more and she, like almost everyone, was enamored with Uly. I want to think that there was something about this woman, who seemed kind, but lonely, that foreshadowed what was coming, but it’s like in that Lou Reed poem, Romeo had Juliet – something flickered for a minute, then it vanished and was gone. The bus let us out at Overlook and Glenway. I covered the carriage with my hoodie to block the wind. I pushed him in the street – the sidewalks were too bumpy and hazardous from the ice - for a block or so until we came to Mom’s and the snow grounded out the wheels and we halted with a jerk.

Mom looked small when I came in the door with Uly. She was in her chair, in front of the television, angled 45 degrees towards the couch, just like she always was. The house’s air was thick with the stifling smell of her dogs, Halley and Gus. I don’t recall it offhand, but I’m sure Halley cried and howled as she always did when company came to Mom’s. I shooed them away and sat down, unwrapping Ul and changing his diaper.

Mom asked how we got there and was surprised, but unfazed by the answer. She was still and almost fetal, like someone who has a bad flu. I remember the skin on her hands looked semi-transparent and was crinkled like crepe paper. It looked just like Great Grandma’s hands, but she was in her 80’s when they looked that way. Why was Mom so pale and her skin this way? I dismissed the questions in favor of asking her about what she’d been eating. The answer was, not much, but she felt okay, just kind of constipated. She didn’t know why. I insisted that she needed to eat and, after talking with her about what I might get her at the grocery, we settled on me getting her a sandwich at Burger King, though she wasn’t too sure about how I’d get there.

I’d already started her car and had it running in the driveway with the heat on full blast. It wasn’t something she’d done when I was growing up. We always started the car cold and there were many uncomfortable drives where we could see our breath and the seats were freezing for the first 15 minutes or so. I went outside and swept her driveway and steps. The bag of salt I’d brought would do the rest. I felt pretty good about remembering to bring all this gear to get all this done. Going out into the world with a baby requires set up, a lot like camping.

I don’t think we talked about anything in particular. Maybe I lectured her on how she needed to exercise and the adult tricycle I found on Craigslist would be great for her. That’s it – yeah, she pursed her lips and listened silently and told me that yes, she would consider it, but I could tell that she really wouldn’t. Her bad knees, injured in that car accident in ’98 and from a fall ten years before that, in addition to her weight, limited her ability to walk. A tricycle was unbecoming and she wouldn’t do water aerobics because she refused to wear a bathing suit. She wouldn’t use the treadmill and elliptical that was in her basement, because it was in the basement and she wouldn’t move it upstairs because, “Stephen, I have to get rid of stuff! I’ve got too much in this front room as it is!”

Where do you go with a conversation like that? It aggravated her more when I pointed out that we had better figure out where we were going to put her dogs when the day came that she couldn’t care for them anymore. I was right and I was trying to make a point: You can’t defer your health. I was trying to argue this to myself, too. I’m often just as hardheaded.

I don’t know how I ended up leaving. I’m sure I said I love you and I’ll see you soon. I meant it and she did, too. Maybe Becky picked me up or maybe I borrowed Mom’s car. There’s a fog in my memory that I can’t get past to reach these particulars. I suppose they’re not important, but I keep reaching for them, for more, as if it would mean that I could spot something, even if I can change nothing, and then I could say, “Okay, there it is. There’s the reason she died.”

- Steve