Good Intentions
After he died, nothing was ever the same. I suppose this is not a shock to anyone who has ever lost someone, but it was to me. An hour after holding my dad’s hand while watching him take his last breath, mania set in. We were in the drive-thru line at McDonald’s because all fat girls feed their emotions. Besides, we hadn’t eaten for around 18 hours, since the time it was decided that keeping my dad in the condition he was in was for our own sake, not his.
Naturally, the mood in the cab of the truck was somber. The air was oppressive with the palpable grief we both wore as heavy winter parkas, even though it was August. Two days away from my birthday, in fact. It figures; people in my life have a tendency to die around my birthday. So far, it has been one grandfather, two cousins (one on either side of the family) one from a drunken drowning and one from suicide, a 4th grade teacher, and my dog. I count the dog because I had had him since the divorce and he was a person to me.
We were waiting to order in one of those merging, two speakers-into-one-lane things that fast food joints seem to think makes things faster. Personally, I believe they just clog up the works, but whatever. “Knock knock,” I said suddenly, really to keep from crying. I truly just wanted to park, crawl in the bed of the truck and sleep. I thought my mom might hit me with her purse, but instead she smiled the automatic, tight-lipped smile of a battle veteran. “Who’s there?” she responded, with a side-eye, distracted look. The Mickey D’s coffee was on her mind. “To” I said, now grinning with the anticipation of the punchline. “To who” she said, as we inched our way forward, almost bumper to bumper now with the merging truck, bigger than mine, with giant 4-wheel drive tires. “It’s to whom!” I eagerly spit out the punchline, cracking myself up as I did so, knowing that only a fellow English teacher might think this was remotely amusing. We looked at each other and dissolved into hysterical laughter, appropriate only at a comedy show after the two drink minimum.
In falling over sideways at my own witticism, my foot slipped off the brake and I narrowly avoided contact with the giant truck merging in front of me. Quickly, I looked up chagrined at my mistake and just dazed from not only the last 48 hours, but the last 42 day hospital vigil. A giant, maybe Samoan woman with an angry scowl stared back at me, sending a stream of expletives out the open truck window. Somehow all of the rage I had been saving for god or the universe funneled itself from my heart to my head and out of my throat. “Get back in your fucking truck and mind your own goddam business or I will shove a Big Mac into that fat, flapping piehole of yours!” It was out of my mouth before I could stop. A nano-second of panic waved through me as I caught a second look at who (or whom?) I was cursing at. I had never actually been in a physical altercation. But after locking eyes for that instant, she put that diesel pusher in gear and drove sideways, jerking the wheel in a hard left over the landscaping and out of the driveway.
Virginia and I looked at each other, both in disbelief at what had just occurred. The ensuing aftermath of hysterical laughter and flood of released adrenaline kept us preoccupied for the rest of the 60 mile journey home. Looking back, this was the last actual fond memory I had of my mother.
It was a slow progression, the death of our relationship. I intended to be a good support system for her. She used that word once, in a bitter argument via a google doc. True English teachers that we were, and in keeping with our family dynamic, we avoided verbal confrontation at costs. When things had gotten so bad they could no longer be ignored, the google doc seemed like the best option. “You need to sit down face-to-face,” my husband said multiple times. He is a fixer, and the frustration of not being able to fix my mother’s and my jagged coexistence weighed on him. I nodded, tuning him out.
Truth was, I had intended to be a good support for her. The desire and attempt were there. But somewhere between the recurring haze of 5:00 happy hour, incessant attempts to bring a hobby into her life, and trying to be a wife, mother, coach, and teacher, the intent did not manifest itself into reality. I could not, no matter how hard I tried, make her happy. I, eventually, gave up and accepted that, as large as my ego was, I was not and never would be, enough. And she was right. I quit visiting. I rationalized that I saw her enough; after all, we taught at the same school.
Nevertheless, it came as a shock when she retired, moved to Montana, and married a man off the internet, all in the span of one summer. When he called to tell me the news of her accident, it was the first time I had actually spoken to him in person. Because she was comatose, I couldn’t in good conscience yell at her for going skiing. I know that tons of older people are active, and that women in our family live long, robust lives, or are supposed to. But for fuck’s sake, she had been warned to not do activities like this years ago. And here I was, staring at the profile of my last remaining parent, listening to the beeping of various machines. It was as if we had come full circle and I was so goddamn angry at her for putting us in this position. But worse, I was angry at myself, the google doc and all of the nothingness of the last 5 years. As I watched her breathing grow more and more shallow, I bowed my head, and said a prayer cursing god at the nothingness that was to be forever.
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