Two years ago, the People of LWON pondered the idea of gratitude, that is, the awareness of grace. We hope you don’t mind if we ask you to click so we can remind ourselves of it.
And everyone, please, have a sunny and warm Thanksgiving.
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Art credit: Terri Kahrs
Exactly 10 years ago today, I got one of those calls we all dread. My mom had cancer, a stage-4 brain tumor, the kind that seems to pop up out of nowhere fully formed and beyond repair. I was standing in my kitchen when I heard the news, and I remember dropping the phone as I slid down the wall to the floor, unwilling to process what it meant. She lived just over two months after her diagnosis, and I spent most of that time helping to care for her. Not surprisingly, the holiday season, already crushingly stressful, has ever since been a melancholy time for me.
A few years after my mom’s death, I wrote an essay about her, called Her True Calling: My Mother’s Last Gift, that ran in the Washington Post Style section. I was amazed at the reception—it reached so many more people than I expected, and hundreds of them let me know how much it meant to them. I was moved by and grateful for all of their comments.
So, in honor of my mother, and in a bit of shock at the fact that a decade has passed without her, I’ve decided to run a slightly modified version of the original essay here on LWON. I hope it touches a new audience and reveals once again how special this woman was to me.
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Her True Calling
My mother stopped trying to find herself when the tumor in her brain spilled from one hemisphere into the other, pushing the midline to one side like an unexpected bend in an arrow-straight road.
“They’re on the move,” she told me over the phone from the hospital the night she was diagnosed. “They’re marching through.” I suppose that in her drug-induced haze she meant the tumor cells were like soldiers advancing, leaving rubble in their path. It was the night before Thanksgiving, and after that she forgot where she was going.
For years she’d sought something she couldn’t explain. “I need to fill my cup,” she’d say. She tried it all: acting, singing, politics, religion, painting, buying houses and selling them soon after — a “hobby” that almost ended her second marriage. She was going to save the local theater, fight animal cruelty, help dying children get wishes granted. As a nurse she traipsed endless avenues — obstetrics, children’s cancer, ER, addiction, Hospice — and to each she brought a special compassion and gentle hand. And each time she switched directions she thought she’d find that thing she was supposed to do, the person she was supposed to be.
I can picture her pondering her next move, sitting in her favorite sunny room upstairs with the sink-down chair wide enough for curled knees and two cats, the dream catchers and Santa Fe talismans on the walls. Her shelves are heavy with books (on laughter, on forgetting) and trinkets — Dorothy’s ruby slipper in miniature, a dish of sand raked into soothing swirls, urns of ashes of past cats and our old Weimaraner Gretel. And she has pictures of me here and there, one from our mother-daughter trip to Mexico years back — a shot of two giddy brown-eyed brunettes sipping sour drinks through curly straws, our mouths in tight O’s — and of me posing with her in mind while on writing assignments around the world for National Geographic. She’d tell anyone who’d listen about me and my adventures, as proud a mother as I’ve ever known.
“Jenny, my love, my love,” she sang into the phone one afternoon. “I think I’ve finally figured out what I need to do.”
I braced myself, recalling recent talk about crystal energy therapy and angels with names like Bob and Sandra who were watching over her. (She later laughed at such a silly idea—everyday angels?—as if it hasn’t been hers.)
But she surprised me with something reasonable. She was going to be a hospital chaplain, she said, and she’d already spoken to a woman at the Clinic who could mentor her.
It was something I could imagine her doing well, and I wanted to be supportive. But this conversation was painfully familiar and I couldn’t give in so easily. I’d grown weary of the constant flip-flopping from dream to dream, a once-endearing trait that had begun to make me sad, especially as I’d seen similar torments in myself: indecision, dissatisfaction, the fear that what was out there was better than what was inside me. I snipped at her: What happened to starting a foundation? Running for mayor? Revamping the animal shelter?
She was never put off by my tone, never let the negativity in. Her new career choice made more sense, she said. Politics gets too ugly — all that testosterone. This is more spiritual and would fill that hole in her life.
But as always came the obstacles. The application asked for essays on who she was and what she believed. That meant focusing, having and sticking to a perspective on life and death. (I later saw the yellow pad with her lovely compact script — it always looked like writing that was practiced, as when a woman is changing her name and wants to see if it’s pretty on the page. She filled less than two sheets, a lot of words crossed off, the whole thing trailing off mid-thought. She soon abandoned the paperwork.)
And she’d need to go back to school. Did she really need all those classes to help people? she asked. “Honey, I’m not sure if I know how to study anymore!” Still, she signed up for the first course, bought books and pens, notebooks with red covers and clean, smooth pages. I don’t know that she ever attended a session.
And then, they told her she had to declare herself something. “I have to pick a religion,” she moaned.
I had to laugh. “What did you expect?” I asked. “It’s a religious position.”
She sighed, audibly. “I guess I was hoping I could just be whatever each patient needed me to be.”
She never became a chaplain. She also gave up on a mayoral run, on building a university, on singing lessons. Her search for purpose reached out like a sunburst in all directions, and each pursuit gave her a glimpse at happiness before fizzling out. Nothing was enough to warm her through, to keep her cup filled.
And then she got very, very sick, and the search hit a wall.
It was nearly two months after her diagnosis, and my mother was a brittle shell. I was there in Minnesota’s winter gloom, having said no to one of those assignments that months before would have made her gush. I wanted, needed, to take care of her as she always had patients or pets or me when I was hurting. My stepdad and I had decided it was most humane to give nature control—researching her disease had given us purpose for a time—so no chemo, no radiation. Mom was getting steroids, insulin, morphine now and then. More important were the most basic of things: blankets layered to keep her warm, chocolate pudding to make her eyebrows lift (our signal for yes), soft music of flutes and wolf howls. A lot of loving hugs.
One night when she could no longer walk, and could barely speak, we spent the evening sitting together in the quiet of her room. The China-red walls were covered in family photos my stepfather had hung — of my husband and me, my brother and his wife, their boy, the grandchild my mother wanted for years and now would never know. And it got to me — all of it. The horror of her decline, the humiliation she’d endured. The body and mind that had been stolen from her. After years of being a nurse to others, she could no longer put a spoon to her mouth or a brush to her hair. And she would fade away some night soon still unsure of who she was.
My stepfather lifted her, a rag doll, onto the portable toilet set up near her bed. Her pajamas were stained down the front with cottage cheese. Blankets trailed from her shoulders, towels lay on the floor from the last cleanup. Pride gone. Muscles gone. Her hair was thin and upended from sleeping and smelled of scalp; that lovely smooth skin had finally lost its youth. And her eyes were heartbreakingly sad; in recent days they’d hardly connected with us, with anything we could see.
I was sitting holding her skeletal hand when I finally broke. Crying aloud, letting it all out — feelings hidden from her for all those painful weeks. Suddenly a child who had seen too much, I wanted to crawl away and escape the scene, the smell of disinfectant, the trill of that damn flute music that will always, always sing of death to me. I cried knowing there was so much left in life for her to try — why hadn’t I, who quietly shared her vacillating nature, helped her to find what she craved?
And yet my mother, exposed and ready to die, suddenly looked right at me for the first time in weeks, through her stringy hair and straight into my eyes, and held and patted my hand. And she said, her voice gravelly but familiar for one beautiful moment, “It’s okay, Jenny. Sweet girl. Don’t be sad for me. It’s really okay.”
And just then it was clear to me, as perhaps it was to her: She was already playing the part that suited her perfectly — with no audition, no essay, no special declaration but love. Above all, even when intent on the journey to find herself, she had always made time to be a wonderful mother to me, never failing to wipe away my tears and ease my pain. It was the one role she could see through to the end.
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Photos: Mom doing her Santa Fe thing, in healthier times; Mom and me, toward the end.
I didn’t know how much I cared about pie until I realized I wouldn’t be having one this week. We’re going snow camping and although I know that it’s possible to make a pumpkin pie with a campfire, a little creativity and the right ingredients, at this point I just want to focus on making sure we have enough warm layers and hot chocolate to get us through the nights.
But I’ve found myself reading recipes for pie, looking at pictures of pie, dreaming about pie. Pumpkin, pecan, apple, key lime—it all sounds good to me. I’m going to try to squeeze in a viewing of one of my favorite pie-related movies, Waitress, while I’m packing. And, of course, I’ve searched around to find the science and lore behind the finest Thanksgiving pies. Continue reading
I grew up in rural and small-town midwest. Some people were richer than we were, some poorer. And being normal, hierarchizing humans, we always knew who was rich and who was poor. But regardless everybody went to the same grocery stores, schools, churches, dime stores, movie theaters, summer concerts. In other words, nobody was so poor or so rich that they didn’t belong to the same community. We didn’t have equal amounts of money but nobody’s nose was rubbed in it.
I was about 25 when I first went to Washington, DC, a big city divided into neighborhoods with their own stores, churches, schools, etc. I wanted to see the seat of our government, the shining white Capitol building and all the marble government buildings. To get there, I drove through the city’s blocks of boarded-up houses and scary-looking neighborhoods, and then abruptly, a few streets along, there was the grand federal shininess. I hadn’t seen such poorness so close to such richness before. I hadn’t seen neighborhood changes that were so sudden before, so extreme. No way those neighborhoods had anything in common. It felt deeply troublesome. I didn’t like it one bit.
And in my own Baltimore, now: the other day, I drove from the enormous and impressive Johns Hopkins Hospital up Greenmount Avenue, through the boarded-up, corner-liquor-store neighborhoods you see on the television riot news and the cable movies about Baltimore; I locked the car doors. Somewhere around 34th Street, the neighborhood started looking like working-people, rowhouse Baltimore — a change but gradual. Then turn left on 39th Street, in the space of maybe two blocks, I was suddenly amongst the plutocrats: the lawns were suddenly bigger and greener and the houses turned to five-bedroom brick Georgians. This still feels deeply troublesome and I still don’t like it one bit. Continue reading
November 16-20, 2015
Guest Ramin Skibba predicts a rise of Persian science that will parallel sanctions relief.
Helen takes a tour of a DC wastewater plant that has a new biosolids processing system.
Craig sees “The Martian” and traces its story through a continuum of intellectual striving that was alive in the Paleolithic development of the Clovis point.
Jane Hu rocks our cozy little assumption that we’re safe from earthquakes if we don’t live in California. Do not be lulled by infrequency.
I stumble across psychological first aid, a crucial addition to our current crisis management plans.
Image: Shutterstock
In April 2001, my cousin and I hitchhiked to Quebec City to register our dissent. Tens of thousands were gathered to protest the Free Trade Areas of the Americas Summit and we wanted to play our part for global social justice. Like many politically active young people before and since, I experienced what can happen when police are given the anonymity of a riot control uniform. I returned home reeking of tear gas and traumatized. It was exam time, but I was a wreck, jumpy and disillusioned. The world was suddenly a very, very scary place — and my experience was just a microcosm of those in the wake of atrocities and natural disasters.
“In the hours after a disaster, at least 25% of the population may be stunned and dazed, apathetic and wandering…especially if the impact has been sudden and totally devastating.” – Beverley Raphael, from When Disaster Strikes
Despite the best efforts of peacemakers everywhere, violent conflict is in no hurry to leave us. Battles and attacks last mere hours – sometimes minutes – but their effects can stay with us for a lifetime. Ranked close behind in trauma are natural disasters that, thanks to climate change, are almost certain to continue their rise in frequency.
Doctors Without Borders can be on hand to provide medical assistance to refugees, and the Red Cross can handle the logistics of food aid, but the essence of horror is the person overwhelmed by forces far larger than their ability to cope. The broken mind must be tended to – not just later in years of counseling, but right then and there, using psychological first aid. Continue reading
Driving through my hometown in Kentucky, I admire the old-growth oaks, the spires and stained glass of Victorian era homes, and the tall brick chimneys. Then I think about how they would crumble in an earthquake. Ever since moving to the west coast, I size up the earthquake safety of every place I go: I note every building’s exits; I avoid waiting on or under overpasses; I plan which way I’d run if a big tree falls. But growing up in the Ohio Valley, I never, ever thought about earthquakes.
I probably should have, though. Kentucky falls within both the New Madrid seismic zone (NMSZ) and the Wabash Valley seismic zone (WVSZ), fault systems that have a history of producing catastrophic earthquakes. The NMSZ, for instance, was responsible for a series of earthquakes in 1811-1812 so large that it disrupted the flow of the Mississippi river, creating a meander that cut off the southwestern edge of Kentucky from the rest of the state. Yet the region remains blissfully unaware of and unprepared for the next “big one,” which the USGS says has a 7-10% chance of happening in the next 50 years. A 2009 report funded by FEMA estimated that a quake that size could result in 86,000 casualties and over $300 billion in damage. The chances of a smaller but still-significant quake (a 6.0) are even higher – USGS says there’s a 25-40% chance of that in the next 50 years.
Given this risk, it seems mindboggling to me that my hometown is not more prepared. But it seems like this is a very human problem: we have a hard time responding to slow-moving threats. Despite the years-long drought, rich Californians still have water coming out of their pipes, so why not water the polo fields? And who cares about climate change when you’ll be dead by the time the last glacier melts? The tale many evolutionary psychologists tell is that we are made for immediate gratification. Planning for an earthquake – something that may or may not happen, and that may or may not be deadly – gets deprioritized in favor of more pressing issues, like deadlines and dinner. Continue reading
Two nights ago I sat in a theater watching the film “The Martian.” I loved seeing a viable spacecraft making gravitational slingshots around planets while a stranded, potato-growing astronaut claimed himself the first colonist on Mars.
What’s there not to love?
Meanwhile, in my coat pocket I carried an object from an entirely different age of colonization.
I had just spent three days with flint knapper Greg Nunn in Utah. I had commissioned Nunn to make a replica of a Clovis-era spear point, a megafauna hunting tool from the American Paleolithic. I had put the rocket-shaped artifact — the length of my hand from wrist to fingertip — in my pocket and forgot it was there until I walked out of the theater. Reaching in, I found the sharp-edged stone and pulled it out.
Like everything I had just watched, the Clovis point was the height of technology for its time. It was a tool being carried into an unknown land 13,000 years ago. As thin as a letter envelope and long enough to glide into the heart or lungs of a mammoth or Pleistocene bison, the Clovis point was a tool of colonization. It was a landing module on Mars. Continue reading
