Remembering Nancy:
She Knew All This and More

I remember my mother was cold.

She and I waited for a long time, 25 minutes, 35 minutes, maybe longer, before she was finished with the Catscan, waiting to be taken back upstairs to her hospital room.

Sadly, inexorably, time moved forward on that long day.

Forward toward 8:02 PM.

Then, she left us.

She was lying on a metal table, a bed of sorts, after that Catscan in a room without colors. A clean room. A room with little to describe. Only the large GE Catscan machine was in the room. No chairs. No photos. No other people present. The technician, the physician, and I waited outside this room.

This room was in the bottom of the hospital. It was like the bottom of a well, or a mysterious, well maintained and clean cellar in an older home, a cellar used for storage like at Weymoth Place, their house.

This place was an underworld to normal, everyday life. It was separate from the busy activity of the above hospital floors.

Cold concrete. Painted walls. No rugs. Vinyl floors. An employee time clock was outside this room in a nearby hallway.

She asked for a blanket.

And we waited. Not knowing.

Her final illness and her death (unlike Dad’s) was sudden. Unexpected. Invisible. Like a mythological silent thief approaching in the night.

There was no long journey, no preparation, no big drama, no sad visits by her children to her house before this time.

We all visited her in the hospital during the last days. All not knowing.

Ordinary visits. Ordinary conversations. No final goodbyes.

The earlier ultra-sound test was negative. The Cardiologist told me in a phone call the day before that he saw no heart damage. We were relieved.

She was to be released in a few days.

We thought after her release and after some stress tests she would take medicine for blocked arteries. A manageable regime.

The severe muscle spasm and her low blood pressure was more than a puzzle, however.

And sadly, unbeknown to her physicians and to her, yet silently orchestrating her muscle spasms (what her Doctors thought might be angina), this thief in the night was present. Invisible till the end.

Inside, not visible, her aorta was splitting apart. A weak bridge. It could and would not carry her forward in this life.

It was Christmas Eve.

She had been taken in a wheelchair shortly before 6 PM from her warm room with the TV and all the small talk of that day.

Talk of difficulty in scheduling a hair appointment. Fragments of conversation about Christmas dinner. She planned to have dinner in the hospital. Patty would bring a take-out order from Boston Chicken.

An unexpected visit from Father Gordy late afternoon was a bright moment that day.

I remember she said my hair was longer and that it looked nice.

She asked about her grandchildren.

The 5:30 news was on in the background when I arrived.

Michael and I sat there talking easily with her, shared support, strong beams in her house.

Normal tests that evening, I thought.

A young and conscientious Doctor wanted more tests. He was from the Philippines, as I recall. He wore an old brown hat like the detectives in old black and white movies that play sometimes on Saturday afternoons.

The Catscan results raised questions. Her Doctor was troubled. And quickly consulted with another specialist.

I remember watching the computer screen in the room.

The wrong picture. An anomaly. This puzzle soon became an enigma.

A sign of the end (and of a new beginning, that final mystery, we would come to know and live with forever).

An ending. A broken circle. Indeed, this broken circle, the symbolic circle of our parents lives together, was soon to be joined again, re-made like an ancient and sacred clay pot. Remade in all too brief a time.

Within minutes another mild spasm. Unconsciousness followed. Mom’s head slumped over in the wheelchair outside that colorless room.

No pain, gratefully.

The sharp, fast actions of the code blue drama began. No movement. No recovery. No progress. Physicians and nurses worked frantically but without signs of life present.

A different and new journey began for here.

Eternity. Her husband’s words, “the eternal now” told her story. Eternity. An odd word to say in daily life.

I remember her eyes before she asked for that colorless blanket.

Are the eyes the windows of the soul?

What did she see?

She was looking up but she was not looking intensely at me. She was looking beyond me.

No conversations of importance occupied our time together then. A few faint words. Quiet words and gestures. Reassuring messages and gestures given to comfort her.

Long silences. We waited. I held her hand.

Her eyes were light green, then pale blue, then white, all at the same time. Gentle, searching, yet distant. She seemed afraid in small ways. Detached in larger ways. Composed. Willful and strong like her husband. Filled with quiet courage in her own way. No words spoken.

I remember dim, muted colors, not the strong colors of fire, of warmth, of creation. Instead, I remember the colors of winter, the light gray color of that cold room, the colors of a tired traveler.

She knew I was there, and I know that helped her. I wish I had held her hands more. Touch came easily to her.

Patty arrived and reality came out from the shadows. I was glad for Patty to be there. Mom was very close with her.

The silent thief then departed.

And Patty and I knew. We sat quietly afterwards on the bench in the empty hallway. I held my sister in my arms.

The needed phone calls were then made quickly.

An hour later, Mary Ann and her grandson Kevin came. Then Jack and Michelle and Michael and Bernie arrived.

It was then close to 10 PM. We had driven to her Weymouth Place home. Her three sons together and her daughter all there. The strength and goodness of the family she and John created. We sat in silence in her living room.

Deep roots, childhoods shared together.

I remembered being a child again. Remembered Sunday dinners with our grandparents at my parents home. John and Nancy were wonderful hosts. And I thought about our roots. Thought about the hard and knotted wood of Newfoundland. “Knotted wood makes it strong”, Sam, my grandfather, told me as a young boy. Many years later, I know that is true.

Sad strengths binding us together that long night.

We were like large, tangled roots of old trees. Roots exposed, worn bare, interconnected, visible above the ground and deeply rooted below the ground. We were sad yet brave. We “stood tall” inside. We were like the tall and silent trees in the woods on Lockwood Lane near the Schickling’s house where we often played after school as children.

Orphaned children, now. We were alone in our shock and grief but together, there as her family. And I know that made Mom happy wherever she was now.

Days later, I remember the hundreds of people at her funeral mass.

The morning light was luminous. The hymns. The music. The singing. The bag pipes calling her home.

Brave readings by her four children. Clear messages. Strong voices. Heartfelt love. Confused grandchildren missing their grandmother.

All her friends and neighbors were there. Her Willox and Finley cousins, her nieces, nephews, Carlos, Bob, Jack Findley, Lucy’s husband and her son, Franny Cantwell, Kevin and Motts – the pall bearers. Our extended families present. All the women she worked with at Avon, Hallmark, Seafood America, Arties were there.

Many friends present. Wonderful friends and all hurting inside.

People of all ages, occupations, paths in life present, signposts that day marking all the avenues in her world, helping her family to remember and helping us to “stand tall” for her.