Missing Pat

Before she died, I was just beginning to understand the likelihood that my second longest friendship with a woman as dear to me as a sister might be, is never going to be the same. We are not going to be running to Dallas to shop, she is not going to preside over any more late night suppers of red beans and rice, she is not going to scold me for not answering my phone or tease me with stories of my domestic incompetence. We're not going to spend long hours dissecting and re-dissecting what went wrong with old friendships or why marriages failed. I'm not going to nag her about her pickiness over food and disdain for chain restaurants. She isn't going to complain about my fear of interstate driving or rail about my stubborness. There'll be no more endless conversations about life, love, suicide, children, regrets, running out of time or the perils of getting old. She's the only friend I have who knows - and has kept - every one of my secrets. I have treasured her wisdom, loyalty, honesty and fierce independence for better than 40 years and I can't imagine life without her in it. But on this, her 4^th or 5^th day in ICU after an unexpected cardiac arrest that came after she'd already been hospitalized a week, I didn't seem to be able to find much light in the darkness. I began to be terribly afraid that I might not see her again and the thought was too paralyzing to consider. You get sick, you go to the hospital and you get fixed, I told myself, that's how it works. Any other outcome was unthinkable.

So I kept in touch with her daughters several times a day and each morning and evening I let myself in to tend her cat. I filled her food and water bowls and then laid on the couch for a half hour or so while she nudged and heat butted and stretched out on top of me, purring like a leaf blower. The house was cluttered with things left undone, eerily quiet and elegant but I refused to allow myself to think it was anything but temporary.

After another day or two, the doctors put in a permanent pacemaker and were cautiously optimistic that her heart was stabilized and her kidneys responding to treatment. They began discussing moving her to a rehab floor but plans stalled after her first night following the implant and she remained in ICU. Stable, the girls told me repeatedly, but very weak, in pain, and sometimes out of it. This didn't come on overnight, I told myself and them, and recovery isn't going to happen overnight. There was no choice except to keep on waiting and watching. To some degree or another, we all put our lives on hold and hoped for the best. After the first two weeks, the cat and I became joined at the hip and the girls sucked it up and carried on, each dividing their time between their own families and the hospital. All of us carried reality in our back pockets but none of us would take it out and look at it.

On an unseasonably warm November night, I got a call from her youngest telling me that her mother had asked for me. I think a part of me knew it was to say goodbye and I threw on my clothes and drove as fast as I dared in the darkness to the hospital. Whatever I was feeling was buried far too deep to face. I found myself holding onto my denial as if it were a lifeline. She'd developed an infection in her blood and a Cpap was breathing for her – the mask covered her face from chin to hairline. It was loud and looked uncomfortable as it forced air into her lungs and took out CO2. She couldn't talk, could barely move or even open her eyes. When I took her hand and squeezed, I saw a trace of recognition cross her face, just a shadow really, so brief I almost missed it. Her daughters were all there, holding on as best they could, grief stricken and trying to be brave for her and each other. I sat by the bed and held her hand as nurses and the respiratory therapist came and went. More IV's, more drugs, a quick visit from one of her doctors. Outside her 7th floor window, the lights of the city were bright and busy, traffic was thick with everyone on their way to somewhere else. Here there was only the ghastly sound of the Cpap, the flickering lights of the machines, the occasional musical-like alarms of the monitors keeping track of her heart rate and blood pressure and oxygen intake. The fluid in her lungs was slowly but surely drowning her. Her entire body, so heartbreakingly thin it was almost transparent, was a mass of bruises and dressings and discolorations. I fought off the thought that she'd never make it through the night but it came back, persistent and stronger, gnawing and scratching with renewed energy in every breath. I couldn't make any of it real. The girls has turned down the dialysis and signed a DNR order. There was nothing more to be done.

She died at 2:3o that morning. Her youngest texted me and though I saw the words, they were a jumble. I felt disconnected and abandoned and couldn't make sense of it. Morning came and I went to feed the cat and turn off the porch lights. The silence of the house was desperate - her signature was on everything, I realized - every painting, piece of crystal, stick of furniture and photograph was a reflection of her taste, every color was her choice. The idea that she would never return to the house she so loved was unbearable. I hugged and held and stroked the cat until she purred herself to sleep right on my chest. Here where we had spent so many days and evenings and random hours, I thought the tears might come but I left dry eyed. What I know in my mind hasn't quite reached my heart. This was a woman who rose above personal tragedy on a regular basis. For decades, she counseled, sheltered, mothered, scolded, reassured, praised, argued with and stood by me. She saw me through an alcoholic husband and an unfaithful one, gave me work, found the house I now live in, rescued me when my car died at 2 in the morning. She offered me a place in her family yet respected the distance between us and trespassed only when she thought it was absolutely necessary. She despaired of my stubbornness and didn't always understand my loyalty, believed in me more than I ever believed in myself, and never once gave up on me though she did like to remind me that she'd told me so on more than one occasion. Even then, she did it with a hug and a smile. When it came to honesty and integrity, she practiced what she preached and wished more folks would do the same, even when it was painful. She did not suffer fools gladly or otherwise but was rarely mean spirited about it. She loved her daughters with a hard and indestructible passion and missed her husband every single day but loss didn't stop her. She understood and accepted that life doesn't stop for death. She made room for everyone she cared about to be themselves, make their own choices whether she agreed or not, and ease the consequences of a bad decision whenever she could. She was a remarkable woman, a true and always reliable friend, a loving mother, a decent and fine businesswoman. She cared deeply about her family, her friends, her cats and her community.

She loved and was much loved in return.

Although the memory of my last visit with her is likely to stay with me for the rest of my life – it was grotesque and truly awful – it was also a gift I will always treasure and for which I will be eternally grateful. Other memories will, in time, become stronger and overcome those last few hours. Hours spent working crossword puzzles on her front porch, how she taught me to needlepoint and cross stitch, working together for a theatre renovation project with a different crisis every hour and the constant risk of a piece of plaster falling on our heads. Long drives to and from Dallas for market, regular Thursday evening suppers with our husbands at a favorite restaurant. Weekly cards and letters when I moved away, her delight at snow when she visited me in New England, elegant dinners in the French Quarter, long, lazy weekends at the lake, the hours we spent in the hospital waiting room the night her first daughter was born. Not all memories are happy - I watched her children grow up but I also watched her husband die long before his time. The good and bad times slipped through our fingers and then one day, we woke up old and tired, painfully aware of our own mortality and missing the friends we were losing.

Charlie Chaplin wrote “Nothing is permanent in this wicked world, not even our troubles.”

Rest in peace, my dear and precious friend. We'll take it from here.

Spare Change

I'd been scrounging the bottom of my battered Lucky purse for loose coins and was leaning against the exterior wall of a drugstore known for its tolerance of panhandlers, when the well dressed, silver haired lady came through the automatic doors. I noticed her in my peripheral vision but thought nothing of it until she stopped directly in front of me and with one perfectly manicured hand, offered me a palmful of silver.

“Here, dear,” she said kindly, “Maybe this will help.”

Slack jawed and speechless, I was still searching for the proper response while she briskly crossed the parking lot, gracefully climbed into her black Mercedes, and drove away. I had no idea whether to be insulted or grateful or entertained or just bewildered. A quick look in the security mirror ruled out insulted - I saw what she had seen, an old woman with ragged gray hair under an ill fitting knit cap, dressed in sweatpants and an ancient tee shirt over thermals and a plaid flannel shirt, Nikes that had seen far better days, a pair of dark purple fingerless gloves my cousin had made for me and sent all the way from Florida and no teeth.

“Good Lord,” I muttered, “No wonder she thought I was homeless.”

I guessed gratitude was more appropriate with bewildered a close second but entertained won out. I bought my cigarettes and Peanut Butter Cups, wrote out a check and left the lady's change in one of those plastic “Help a Hungry Child in Malaysia” collection boxes retail stores always seem to have at checkouts.

There are still a number of women in this town who would cut their throats before going to the grocery store without make up and heels. I've never been one of them, not even when I was expected to be, and it often caused ripples in my appearance-conscious family. If you judge a book by its cover, my daddy told me, you'll often be wrong and you might miss a really good story. I'm not likely to change my refugee-looking ways at this late date but I don't suppose it would do any harm if I were to remember my teeth.

Parking Lot Games

The saving grace was that it happened in the parking lot of the grocery store so neither of us was traveling at much more then 15 mph. I had the right of way when the shiny black Jeep

ran the stop sign and crossed directly in front of me. I slammed on my brakes and the little

blue car spun sideways, missing the Jeep by no more than a whisker. My window was open and the words were out and hanging in the crisp November air before I knew it.

YOUMISERABLESTUPIDBUTTSNIFFINGMOTHERFUCKINGSONOFALOWLIFEWHOREPIECEOFSHITLOOKWHEREYOU'REGOING!!!

The driver of the Jeep, a youngish blonde woman in a red MAGA hat, gave me an oblivious, careless wave and drove on.

WHERE'DYOUGETYOURLICENSESEARSANDFUCKINGROEBARDS! I screamed and leaned on the horn hard.

The near miss had me shaking so hard I had no time for punctuation. The Chevy pickup who had been behind the Jeep gave me a thumbs up and a sympathetic smile then gestured for me to drive ahead. Instead, I wrenched the steering wheel to the left and took off after the Jeep, not even considering what I intended to do if I caught it. That red MAGA hat burned in my vision and it suddenly seemed as if everything that was wrong with the world was driving that goddamned Jeep. I sped up and caught her at the parking lot exit, took note of the Anti Abortion and NRA and Trump 2020 stickers plastered on the vehicle's back end and whipped out my cell phone and snapped a picture. She noticed and immediately plowed into and through oncoming traffic. There was an explosion of blaring horns and screeching brakes but somehow no collisions.

I caught my breath enough to shake my fist and yell some final insult about her mother and alligators eating their young, then came to my senses and pulled into a parking space to regroup, calm down and console myself with a vision of the dumb bitch in a six car pile up where only she was hurt. Maybe her Jeep would catch on fire, I thought hopefully, maybe it would explode and send her and her red hat to kingdom come. Even when calm and rational thought returned much later, I couldn't bring myself to take any of it back. I don't often wish people dead these days, at least not like I used to, but some folks are just too deserving.

A Memory of Crows

I remember hearing crows.

It was a clear, crisp October afternoon along a recently blacktopped backwoods road in Maine. The smell of fresh gravel and tar was faint but still in the air. The sun was just beginning to go down and I was pedaling a little harder and a little faster to be sure I got home in time for supper. Traffic was scarce on the rural two lane road and I wasn't paying much attention to it. I wouldn't have noticed the small, two tone beige station wagon at all if it hadn't been rattling and belching smoke from the exhaust as it passed me. Some sort of old Volkswagon, I remember thinking and was trying to remember the theme from the Midas Muffler tv ads as it disappeared over the next hill. Then I was distracted by a scarecrow in a corn field - it reminded me of the Wizard of Oz - and I pulled over and stopped to get a better look. It was a near perfect late fall day and just past the scarecrow I could see a herd of dairy cows and a couple of shaggy draft horses peacefully grazing. On the far side of the right hand ditch, a chorus line of crows perched on the telephone wires, cawing raucously and righteously and flapping their wings as they lifted off then alighted again in a flurry of feathers. They jockeyed for position and status but never lost their symmetry. I thought of Edgar Allen Poe's raven and half expected one of them to call out to me, a salutation perhaps, or maybe a warning, who could tell.

 

I got back on my bike and coasted down the incline to gather as much speed as I could for the next hill and then pedaled fiercely. It wasn't as hard as I'd thought it would be and the crest of the hill came easily. Before I knew it I was coasting downhill again and it was then I saw the old Volkswagon parked on the shoulder of the road. The driver's door was open and there was a man behind the wheel, a beer-bellied man in a checked shirt with pale skin and straggly red hair on his head and chest. His trousers were around his ankles and he was watching me. I wasn't old enough to exactly know what I was seeing but I knew I was alone and that it was wrong and probably dangerous. A sickness of fear crawled into my gut and I doubled down, pedaling for all I was worth and flying past the small car like the wind. I pedaled harder, ignoring the sharp stab of a stitch in my side and the acid taste in my mouth. I could hardly breathe for the pain in my chest but I kept going. Fear, I discovered, could motivate you beyond your limits. I was expecting to hear that ratchety old muffler behind me at any second and I turned down the first country lane I came to and rammed my bike and myself head over heels into the ditch. The startled crows on the telephone wires cawed in protest. I crouched down in the muddy water, camouflaged by weeds and the depth of the ditch, and waited for what seemed like forever but nothing followed or tracked me down. I heard no cars, no motors, and most importantly, no rattle trap mufflers. I waited some more, cold and wet, listening to the crows and very afraid.

Eventually I convinced myself that the danger was past and I crawled out of the ditch. I could see a long way in both directions and there was not a car in sight. I dragged my bike out of the weeds, wiped off the mud, and set for home, listening for every small sound and watching over my shoulder the entire way. It took a long time and I had to stop twice to throw up but I got home. I rinsed off the bike in the lake and managed to sneak past my mother and change my clothes before supper. If I'd been caught, I was going to say I'd been going too fast and run off the road and into a ditch. Skinned my knees and the palms of my hands, tore my jeans and tee shirt but no harm done.

I'd turned ten that past summer, not an age when I knew how to tell my daddy about a nasty, dead fish bellied, half naked , redheaded pervert on the side of the road. More, I had an unpleasant suspicion that if I told my mother, it would somehow end up being my own fault.

I'd had a bad scare, I reasoned, but nothing had actually happened, so I never told a soul and did my best to put it out of my mind. I stayed around the cabin more than usual from then on and told my daddy I was getting too old to be riding a bike everywhere. He didn't question me and the crows who had seen it all kept silent.