The Assemblagist

Yes­ter­day was tough. I spent my adult­hood think­ing peo­ple were silly for antic­i­pat­ing bad days. “Get in con­trol of your emo­tions,” I’d say. “If you can think ahead then think pos­i­tive.” Then came the days pre­ced­ing April 13^th, 2010 — the day that would have been my Mom’s birth­day AND my brother John’s.

The Museum of the Mind

We’d spent the last ten to fif­teen years hav­ing nice birth­day cel­e­bra­tions in the back yard for Mom — bal­loons, flow­ers, nice spring hats and lemon­ade cakes. Each April 13^th was treated as if it were her last. No one knew we’d have her with us for 92 years. Last year’s birth­day cel­e­bra­tion took place at Brit­thaven Nurs­ing Home. Mom was two weeks from death. We brought her minia­ture cup­cakes but she didn’t see them. She lay in her bed beg­ging for some­thing to drink and after each sip from her straw, she’d begin gasp­ing again, “Water, give me water” in panic tones. It shat­tered all of us in the room.

I made Jane take the boys home and asked Rob to just leave me there and told him I’d call him later that evening. The dying process began in earnest and lasted until April 30^th.

Yes­ter­day was tough.

I ended my day at the dog park with Roxie the Muttpuppy who is now grown to full MuttPo­ten­tial. She’s a sweet dog, Mom would have enjoyed her happy-​dog per­sona. Three dogs were already there, a silly pup named Lily and her house­mate Sammy. Roxie knows them both. The own­ers are a very sweet cou­ple who’ve been com­ing to the park as long as I have. The other dog, Zeus, a mixed-​breed part pit­bull, charged the gate as Roxie came in, the two dogs had seri­ous growl­words and then all went peace­fully for about fif­teen min­utes. Then another dog came in. A mixed part-​lab named Bo. Nice dog. Every dog got along well and the run­ning and idiot-​play con­tin­ued for half an hour.

Amer­ica Is Greater Than the Sound of Guns

As the dogs played, we own­ers dis­cussed life in gen­eral and spring­time flow­ers. Bo’s owner was new to me so we shared names and began the South­ern Who Are You? dance. Her name is Susan and she’s around my age. As we com­mented on weather, I made a ubiq­ui­tous weather-​related state­ment “my daugh­ter was here from Pitts­burgh at Easter and she went home to snow.” After a back-​and-​forth, Susan said she’d just moved here from Pitts­burgh. We danced around in a geo­graph­i­cal dis­cus­sion about west­ern PA and how Mars was enough north to get a bit more cold weather than Pitts­burgh proper. It was a stilted con­ver­sa­tion since Susan is clearly a south­ern novice and not used to the South­ern Ques­tions Asked to All Unrec­og­nized Peo­ple In the Imme­di­ate Vicinity.

After the other dogs and their own­ers left us alone, Susan and I chat­ted a bit more. I told her it was a bit­ter­sweet day as it was my Mom’s birth­day and Mom died last April at age 92.

A basic out­line of events… and yes, we do get that per­sonal in NC after just a three minute rela­tion­ship so get ready if you come down here, we want to KNOW you.

Susan said, “I moved down here to take care of my mother. She’s in Britthaven.”

Wow.

We talked about staff, facil­i­ties, nurs­ing homes, Brit­thaven v other homes, and she revealed her mother was not con­scious of her sur­round­ings. I said my Mom knew what was going on but bless­edly lasted only a few months in the nurs­ing home. I said, “I hope your mother’s jour­ney is a swift one,” and Susan under­stood what I meant.

She said, “My brother is here and we share respon­si­bil­i­ties so I’m not there all the time.”

I looked at her and said, “There’s some rea­son we met today. Pitts­burgh, Brit­thaven… it’s too delib­er­ate to be coincidence.”

She agreed. “I won­der when we’ll fig­ure out why… ” she said.

And we leashed our dogs and each went to our sep­a­rate cars and drove off home.

###
For Ruth Heinold

c