Transcendence

I dreaded today.

I didn’t even know how much I dreaded it until I was plunging full-tilt downhill into it. It was the first of Paul’s mom’s two moving days, the day I was to pick her up and whisk her off to a motel for the night while the rest of the family finished up the packing, and then on the morrow deliver her to the new digs- after the movers have left.

The times are so strange just now nothing is really quite normal. I think things are going along ok and then all of a sudden everything just seems too hard. I think I may be losing it, going over the edge- and this after coming back so joyful from New Hampshire.

This morning Karen came out to work on her mailing list. Seems quite straightforward, right? – Well we more or less took one look at each other and fell into each other’s arms in tears.

Later, it was time to go on to the real duty of the day. I dropped Karen at the subway and drove on … And realized that this is my last trip from Brooklyn to Maspeth, a trip I’ve been making for 35 years. How many times did I drive away from that Maspeth house flashing my lights goodbye? How many times have they re-built the BQE since then? How much life has passed? My dread wasn’t just about how hard it would be to take care of this demanding, crippled woman for a day. It was about facing my own loss again, and new losses, in this time of so much loss.

It went on. She walked around her apartment crying and saying “Well, goodbye house. I hated you for a long time but you became home.”

The walk downstairs was, as expected, a major effort. But just as we drove off she said, “Well, at least they didn’t have to carry me out.”

We stopped at the cemetery on the way, to say goodbye to our husbands and to look at the empty skyline across the river.

Uneventful drive, no big deal. Checking in to the motel, watching the TV for a few minutes mesmerized again by the news. The same news: rubble, chaos. Declarations of vengeance. We both fell asleep in front of the news.

Then, dinner time. Struggling to figure out how to drive to the diner down the hill. The long hike up the handicapped ramp. 

Mom just Does It. And overhead the sky is that color: opalescent behind the black trees. Where, suddenly did such beauty come from?

Seated. Drinks come. We toast each other: “Here’s to the new life.” As the time passes, somehow we get more and more mellow. It is quiet here, the food is good. We reminisce, share a little laughter and a few tears, complain about our failing memory. By the end we are sitting close to each other, eating pudding out of one bowl.

“Isn’t it nice that we can be here like this, have a little quiet before tomorrow?”

And then, back in the room, she brings out two little chocolate candies nestled in a box of irridescent cellophane. “These are just so we can have a little celebration on my way into the new life,” she says.