The Question
It was a warm May afternoon, sunny, but not too hot. It was just a great day to drive.
I drove three hours on the Pennsylvania turnpike hardly paying attention to the road. It seems as though I was on autopilot having done this so many times in the past twenty eight years. How many family gatherings had I driven to? There was Mother’s Day, the summer holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas and even, sometimes, her birthday.
She was lying in her hospital bed, and was glad at the surprise of seeing me. I was after all The Son, The Prince, if you will, and the sun always shone on me even when it should not have. I got that special smile from her that was only reserved for me. She was a tall, lanky woman, with hazel eyes, and a pretty face. Always fastidious about her appearance, even now I could see that she was fussing about the marks on her face.
“So how is everything going Mom?”
“Well, I have gotten transfusions and platelets, but nothing seems to be working too well.”
“So what is going on?”
“Well Johnny, I really don’t know. The doctors say this, and say that, and I am not quite sure where I am. Maybe Dee can help.”
Dee was my sister, the nurse. We were separated by four years, and the absolute yin and yang of children. She the “A” student and cheerleader, and I, the sometime “C” student, and wanna be juvenile delinquent. She wanted to please Dad, and I wanted to tease Dad. Maybe tease was a poor choice of words. Perhaps drive him to distraction was closer to the truth.
Mom and I talked a little more then she said, “Johnny am I dying?”
The room spun as I contemplated this question. It seemed like the knockout punch of Ali, and the hammer of Thor had been slammed into my consciousness. Geez, how do you answer a question like that from one of the two people who had brought you into being? I struggled for a moment as I tried to answer well “Mom I am not sure but you are very sick.” I felt as though someone had shot me. I never thought in my wildest dreams that either of my parents would ask me a question like that. Why not Dee; why me I wondered? I knew the answer to that as well as my own name. Although I was always the ne’re to do well, I was the stronger of the two.
When we took Mom home several weeks later for the last time, word reached us that one of our cousins had died. Mom started to weep as she cried out “I will be the next”.
The next two weeks, I plied the turnpike, driving up on days off or the weekend as I tried for some balance in my life. One Saturday night I got a call from Dee telling me that they were taking Mom to the hospital. When I got there Sunday morning she was hooked to an IV giving her some respite from the pain. I talked to the doctor who said in a very direct manner, “Your mother is dying from this and that.” Oh so clinical and cold as though she were a car who could no longer run. At times like these no one wanted to know this, and face the inevitable although we all know it will be our turn someday.
I talked to Mom for a while, and she told me that I should go as there wasn’t any need for me to stay. I have thought of that day many times in the last eighteen years, and I want to think that she could no more bear to see me watch her go as I could bear to see her go.
The trip back to home that night was the longest three hours of my life. The next morning I got the call that she had passed. I came home from work, and passing a grocery store, I stopped, and bought an eight inch cake. Now my mother was the ultimate sugar junkie, and nothing, absolutely nothing couldn’t be fixed with some of her homemade fudge or her cakes. I raised a fork, and laughingly said, “Here is to you Mom.”
Several days later we laid her to well-deserved rest. She was the glue that held us together in good and bad times. Later that week, I was upstairs in the bedroom that led to the attic, I heard my name called. “Johnny.” So, eerie as I was the only one on the second floor at that time. Later I asked my wife if she had called me, and she hadn’t.
It was my Mom’s voice.
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