My oldest friend and newest acquaintance told me about seeing a stage production of Thorton Wilder's Our Town. (It's the story of life and death in an idyllic little New England town in the early 1900's.) Oldest friend/newest acquaintance said that she was moved by it.
I got the Paul Newman version from Netflix and watched it yesterday.
I was also moved - often in tears. (Although I never once considered turning the TV off.)
The part that affected me most was in the third act when the character Emily (who between acts 2 and 3 had died in childbirth) returned to her family to relive her 12th birthday. She was saddened by the realization that living humans are incapable of appreciating the value of life - even (or especially) the little moments. Beginning then to accept her condition as a dead person who must forget and no longer care, Emily said a wistful goodbye to all the little things - to sleeping and waking and eating and all the rest (something like the Buddhist "suchness").
That is the part of Brenda's death that makes me most sad. Because almost to the very end she found some aspect of her life to value - if nothing more than sitting slumped at the kitchen table, half awake but still aware of the food channel on the little TV. And that night at the Hospice House when the male nurse who looked like a sad pirate told her she was probably dying and her eyes bright and aware darted around the room, I know that she was saying goodbye to life. Like Emily in the play, she was resigning herself to the final loss - to the moment when all stuff, all love,all everything would be gone. When there would be nothing.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Post Script #3: Finding Empathy
A person who is both my oldest friend and newest acquaintance read the paragraph in my "Life and Times..." memoir about how my father tried to observe Christmas day rituals three days after my mother died. (My father gave my sister and I gifts that he said my mother had picked out beforehand - maybe before she went into the hospital for the last time.)
The old/new acquaintance noted how sad it was and wondered if my father and I ever talked about that Christmas. An obvious comment - the kind any sensitive, empathetic person might make.
But it had never did occurred to me - not until this person pointed it out. And even then I might not have felt anything if my own wife had not died and I had not realized how bad you can feel.
Back then, consumed by my own pain and anger I never saw my father's pain (hell, I never even felt my own pain - just a sort of dead unease). The night I found him in his room drunk and crying I had no sympathy for what had taken him to that place. My only concern was that he would go off on a binge and leave me by myself (not me and my sister, just me - my self-absorption was that consuming.)
Also, until my wife died I did not understand what might have driven him to take that job in West Palm Beach. Granted he did need better employment. (He had given up a good position in Troy to return to Shelby so that my mother could die among friends and family.) But there were other closer places. Until recently I didn't understand the desperation that might drive a man to get away from everything. As my sister astutely observed (after we became friends and started talking) it was perhaps odd that he even took us with him. There were various relatives who would have taken us in.
And until I experienced the loneliness of an empty house, I assumed that all my father and my stepmother had was an arrangement. I thought he only wanted her because he needed someone to help raise my 13-year old sister and she only wanted him because he offered a way out of her brother-in-law's house (even if it meant moving to Florida to live with three strangers). And true enough I never saw any expressions of deep affection, or heard any significant conversation. But as suggested above, I was perhaps not the best observer, lacking the requisite sympathy and empathy. In their 23 years they shared the same bedroom, at least until she got sick. They went to church, took vacations, did things together, and when he started making some real money, enjoyed modest wealth. She provided good food, a nice house, and a gentle woman's presence and companionship - he provided adventure and excitement - in other words his own grandiose self.
So that is maybe something good coming from all this - that I can see things I didn't see before.
Note: In the above I do not mean to suggest that my step-mother's brother-in-law was a bad man or that he did not treat her well. It was simply that she was a guest in another family's house and my father gave her an opportunity to have her own family. Also, to flesh out that story, she and my father had known one another when they were young. I don't know what he thought about her back then - she had been pretty - but she remembered seeing him riding into town on a white horse - literally a man on a white horse.
The old/new acquaintance noted how sad it was and wondered if my father and I ever talked about that Christmas. An obvious comment - the kind any sensitive, empathetic person might make.
But it had never did occurred to me - not until this person pointed it out. And even then I might not have felt anything if my own wife had not died and I had not realized how bad you can feel.
Back then, consumed by my own pain and anger I never saw my father's pain (hell, I never even felt my own pain - just a sort of dead unease). The night I found him in his room drunk and crying I had no sympathy for what had taken him to that place. My only concern was that he would go off on a binge and leave me by myself (not me and my sister, just me - my self-absorption was that consuming.)
Also, until my wife died I did not understand what might have driven him to take that job in West Palm Beach. Granted he did need better employment. (He had given up a good position in Troy to return to Shelby so that my mother could die among friends and family.) But there were other closer places. Until recently I didn't understand the desperation that might drive a man to get away from everything. As my sister astutely observed (after we became friends and started talking) it was perhaps odd that he even took us with him. There were various relatives who would have taken us in.
And until I experienced the loneliness of an empty house, I assumed that all my father and my stepmother had was an arrangement. I thought he only wanted her because he needed someone to help raise my 13-year old sister and she only wanted him because he offered a way out of her brother-in-law's house (even if it meant moving to Florida to live with three strangers). And true enough I never saw any expressions of deep affection, or heard any significant conversation. But as suggested above, I was perhaps not the best observer, lacking the requisite sympathy and empathy. In their 23 years they shared the same bedroom, at least until she got sick. They went to church, took vacations, did things together, and when he started making some real money, enjoyed modest wealth. She provided good food, a nice house, and a gentle woman's presence and companionship - he provided adventure and excitement - in other words his own grandiose self.
So that is maybe something good coming from all this - that I can see things I didn't see before.
Note: In the above I do not mean to suggest that my step-mother's brother-in-law was a bad man or that he did not treat her well. It was simply that she was a guest in another family's house and my father gave her an opportunity to have her own family. Also, to flesh out that story, she and my father had known one another when they were young. I don't know what he thought about her back then - she had been pretty - but she remembered seeing him riding into town on a white horse - literally a man on a white horse.
Post Script #2: Missing Me
When it was my turn to talk at the Hospice Grief session (to answer the question that I had picked out of the hat) I said that one of the things I missed most about my love one was "me". Of course, despite my barely suppressed tears, there was a certain self-conscious cleverness in my answer - leading me to say to my self, "That's pretty good - you are a blowhard- yeah well it is still true - I wish you would shut the fu*k up."
Yet..
Yet...
What I meant was that when Brenda died, a substantial portion of me died with her. If she was indeed my better half then I am now half a person. But it is not just that. As a female friend noted we tend to be defined by those we are with - by those we love. We are one person with this person, somebody else with that person. As the friend noted, this is probably not a good thing. We should be who we are, regardless of who we are with. What it means for me is that I am now without definition.
And there is still more to it.
Whatever I was, I was closer to it with Brenda than I ever was with anybody else. With her I was unselfconscious. For good or ill (and sometimes it was for ill) when I was with her I was simply myself. I did not have to think about myself. I could simply be - happy, sad, angry, anxious - even a silly fool. I was natural.
That's what I meant when I said that I missed me. I am no longer me - but a contrivance struggling to become me, forever looking back at himself looking back at himself looking back at himself. It is possible that when I peel back all the layers of this particular onion all I will discover is emptiness and a bad smell. It is also possible that a better me will result - or if not a better me, then at least somebody I can live with.
Yet..
Yet...
What I meant was that when Brenda died, a substantial portion of me died with her. If she was indeed my better half then I am now half a person. But it is not just that. As a female friend noted we tend to be defined by those we are with - by those we love. We are one person with this person, somebody else with that person. As the friend noted, this is probably not a good thing. We should be who we are, regardless of who we are with. What it means for me is that I am now without definition.
And there is still more to it.
Whatever I was, I was closer to it with Brenda than I ever was with anybody else. With her I was unselfconscious. For good or ill (and sometimes it was for ill) when I was with her I was simply myself. I did not have to think about myself. I could simply be - happy, sad, angry, anxious - even a silly fool. I was natural.
That's what I meant when I said that I missed me. I am no longer me - but a contrivance struggling to become me, forever looking back at himself looking back at himself looking back at himself. It is possible that when I peel back all the layers of this particular onion all I will discover is emptiness and a bad smell. It is also possible that a better me will result - or if not a better me, then at least somebody I can live with.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Post Script #1: Guilt
I already knew about the regular sort of guilt - the legitimate feelings experienced because of things done or not done, said or not said. I tell myself that we forgave regular guilt on the last night.
However, recently I've began to experience the guilt of simply being alive. I've heard people talk about this (one member of the League of Lost Husbands mentioned it) but I never really understood.
Now when watching TV shows that she liked I sometimes feel a twinge of guilt. Same thing when I fix food that she might have liked (although by the time I started fixing the food she didn't like much). It is not a constant thing and I know that this guilt (unlike the regular guilt for which forgiveness was supposedly offered) is not legitimate; but still.
I suppose it is like surviving a battle where you watch your companion fall and then feel guilty because it was her and not you.
(Of course this battle is not over yet and in the end will claim us all. I suppose there is some solace in that.)
However, recently I've began to experience the guilt of simply being alive. I've heard people talk about this (one member of the League of Lost Husbands mentioned it) but I never really understood.
Now when watching TV shows that she liked I sometimes feel a twinge of guilt. Same thing when I fix food that she might have liked (although by the time I started fixing the food she didn't like much). It is not a constant thing and I know that this guilt (unlike the regular guilt for which forgiveness was supposedly offered) is not legitimate; but still.
I suppose it is like surviving a battle where you watch your companion fall and then feel guilty because it was her and not you.
(Of course this battle is not over yet and in the end will claim us all. I suppose there is some solace in that.)
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Scattering Ashes
We scattered Brenda's ashes at the site of the old Hatteras lighthouse. I stood in the center of the circle of stones, scooping up handfulls of the dry powder which was blown by the cold wind into the morning sun. Yancie did one handful. Some of that powder whirled back to brush her face.
My sister's ashes were scattered here in the winter of 2000. She and Brenda always liked one another so we imagined that Mickey would welcome Brenda to this place.
Randy, Yancie's husband was there as was Henry, my sister's husband. Henry's wife Grace stayed with Allie and Evan and helped Allie write a story about how the wind tossed her hat into the ocean when she and I were walking by the ocean.
(Henry believes in the possibility of reincarnation which might explain the eight feral cats who greeted us last night in the motel parking lot on our way back from dinner. One of the cats was likely possessed by Brenda and another one by Mickey.)
The Last Night
This is the one I have dreaded to write.
She woke up about 1:00 AM, uncomfortable, not able to breathe. I called the night shift nurse. He asked her if she hurt. I think she said, "No." He gave her a dose of morphine, maybe mixed with Haldol.
We sat beside her bed, him on one side holding one hand, me on the other side, holding her other hand. She asked him if she was dying. Without hesitating, his craggy pirate's face calm but infinitely sad, he said maybe. She stared at him, transfixed. She was still afraid. But something was different. She wondered if she would see a light. He said some people do. Then he smiled and nodding at the large TV in front of her bed, noted that the last thing some people see is whatever is on television at the time.
Her blue eyes, now brighter than I had ever seen them and more alert, darted around the room, seeming to take it all in, as if she was saying to herself, this is where I will die. This is my last view of the world. My sister (who died not far from the motel room on the Outer Banks where I sit writing this) had the same look in her blue eyes not long before she lost consciousness for the last time.
After a while the nurse left us alone. I am not exactly sure what we said. I told her that it was OK to for her to die now but that if she wanted to stay a while I would prefer that. She leaned up from the bed, kissed me on the forehead and said that she loved me. I kissed her on the forehead and said that I loved her. She told me repeatedly to look after Yancie. I said that I would. I think she also said something about Yancie looking after me.
She woke up about 1:00 AM, uncomfortable, not able to breathe. I called the night shift nurse. He asked her if she hurt. I think she said, "No." He gave her a dose of morphine, maybe mixed with Haldol.
We sat beside her bed, him on one side holding one hand, me on the other side, holding her other hand. She asked him if she was dying. Without hesitating, his craggy pirate's face calm but infinitely sad, he said maybe. She stared at him, transfixed. She was still afraid. But something was different. She wondered if she would see a light. He said some people do. Then he smiled and nodding at the large TV in front of her bed, noted that the last thing some people see is whatever is on television at the time.
Her blue eyes, now brighter than I had ever seen them and more alert, darted around the room, seeming to take it all in, as if she was saying to herself, this is where I will die. This is my last view of the world. My sister (who died not far from the motel room on the Outer Banks where I sit writing this) had the same look in her blue eyes not long before she lost consciousness for the last time.
After a while the nurse left us alone. I am not exactly sure what we said. I told her that it was OK to for her to die now but that if she wanted to stay a while I would prefer that. She leaned up from the bed, kissed me on the forehead and said that she loved me. I kissed her on the forehead and said that I loved her. She told me repeatedly to look after Yancie. I said that I would. I think she also said something about Yancie looking after me.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Brenda Getting Ready
I took Winnie to the vet to be boarded while we go tomorrow to the Outer Banks to scatter Brenda's ashes. Winnie hated it and howled and thrashed in the old wire screen cat carrier we have had for 45 years.
Brenda, who was like a cat in many ways, also hated getting ready - especially in recent months when most of her trips were to doctor's offices and medical testing facilities. She felt too bad to thrash, but she did moan - at least when getting ready.
(Once in the car she always settled down and was brave - even on the last trip to the Hospice House.)
Of course the trip tomorrow is no problem. Her spirit, if you believe in that sort of thing, is already there. The rest of it (the material that we carry in a plastic bag in a wooden box) is just a placeholder for that which is beyond place.
Brenda, who was like a cat in many ways, also hated getting ready - especially in recent months when most of her trips were to doctor's offices and medical testing facilities. She felt too bad to thrash, but she did moan - at least when getting ready.
(Once in the car she always settled down and was brave - even on the last trip to the Hospice House.)
Of course the trip tomorrow is no problem. Her spirit, if you believe in that sort of thing, is already there. The rest of it (the material that we carry in a plastic bag in a wooden box) is just a placeholder for that which is beyond place.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Stuff
People live on in their stuff (at least for those who knew the people, know the stuff - the very essence of existential meaning).
I see Brenda's everyday bath towel (somewhat tattered - she always gave me the best ones) hanging over a shower curtain rod in the little bath room, and a vase of artificial daisies gathering dust on the top of a commode tank in the big bath room, and cat statues symmetrically placed on a shelf that I mounted on the kitchen wall just over the dinette table (these and two living cats watch me eat my odd bachelor meals).
And papers, especially papers.
I am going through the papers that Brenda accumulated on a desk, computer stand and two-drawer file at one end of Yancie's old bedroom. (It was Brenda's office - although nothing to compare with her last office at the Department of Transportation where she covered two desks and three or four tables with piles of neatly organized papers.)
There are a lot of old receipts, some clipped and marked in her neat handwriting "paid by me". I throw them away. There are also piles of papers from various charities. She favored animal causes and had a soft spot for cops, firemen, and soldiers. I throw these and other offerings away, even the unopened envelopes with trinkets designed to work on her guilt. She knew what they were doing, but still could not bring herself to discard the note cards, and coins, and necklaces made in China by Dakota Indian children. I throw them away.
Fighting back occasional waves of tears I only keep the best stuff which I will put into boxes that will probably go into Yancie's attic and acquire the status of sacred objects.
It feels like I am getting rid of Brenda again, like making her get into the car to go to the Hospice House to die. But perhaps I am just winnowing her away, parsing her for the ages.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Christmas Eve
Weird night, not sad or weepy - not so far anyway, just weird.
Maybe as weird as the Christmas Eve I spent alone in 1960 when my parents and sister went to Florida and I stayed at home because I had to work. I think I went out with Brenda Willis. This Brenda, like the Brenda I would marry nine months later was beautiful. She too had a throaty sexy voice. (If my Brenda was Kim Novak, this one was Marilyn Monroe.) We went to a movie and then came back to her house. We sat in the living room with the tree while the rest of the family did something Christmas related in another part of the house, coming out once I think to acknowledge me. Brenda Willis and I had dated several years earlier. I hoped to get her to my empty house. But she was more complicated and vulnerable than I remembered and I felt guilty.
When I started dating Brenda Moser I told her with great sincerity that she had lovely brown eyes. Turns out that Brenda Moser had blue eyes. It was Brenda Willis who had brown eyes. My Brenda always thought that was funny.
Tonight, 49 years later, I also went to a movie - Avatar, the 3-D version. It was pretty good although the last half was predictable. There were several other solitary people in the audience, all of us sitting removed from everybody else. A mother and her grown daughter sat in front of me. Neither looked like science fiction types, more like women who would want to see something based on Jane Austen. They first sat side-by-side then the daughter moved one seat over, slumping down, maybe to get comfortable, maybe to sleep.
After the movie I stopped at the Waffle House in Belmont to get something to eat. The chunk of humming bird cake that Yancie, Allie and I baked this afternoon was pretty much gone. I sat next to a worn woman who wished people Merry Christmas and a man who talked about getting lumps of coal for Christmas. A little drunk maybe, he had the twangy accent and manner of the rednecks in Deliverance (the ones who were going to make Ned Beatty squeal like a pig). My waitress was a sweet girl whose baby was being tended by a tired looking young man sitting in a booth. (She told this to the worn woman.) I sat on the last stool at the counter. Two more tired women sat in the booth beside me. I quickly ate my bacon, egg and cheese biscuit. I was afraid the drunk would try to engage me in conversation and that I might do something reckless.
Coming home, stopped at the traffic light at 273 and 27, I saw two people on the side of the road. One, a woman or a small man appearing to be puking. A bigger man gently rubbed the sick person's back.
Maybe as weird as the Christmas Eve I spent alone in 1960 when my parents and sister went to Florida and I stayed at home because I had to work. I think I went out with Brenda Willis. This Brenda, like the Brenda I would marry nine months later was beautiful. She too had a throaty sexy voice. (If my Brenda was Kim Novak, this one was Marilyn Monroe.) We went to a movie and then came back to her house. We sat in the living room with the tree while the rest of the family did something Christmas related in another part of the house, coming out once I think to acknowledge me. Brenda Willis and I had dated several years earlier. I hoped to get her to my empty house. But she was more complicated and vulnerable than I remembered and I felt guilty.
When I started dating Brenda Moser I told her with great sincerity that she had lovely brown eyes. Turns out that Brenda Moser had blue eyes. It was Brenda Willis who had brown eyes. My Brenda always thought that was funny.
Tonight, 49 years later, I also went to a movie - Avatar, the 3-D version. It was pretty good although the last half was predictable. There were several other solitary people in the audience, all of us sitting removed from everybody else. A mother and her grown daughter sat in front of me. Neither looked like science fiction types, more like women who would want to see something based on Jane Austen. They first sat side-by-side then the daughter moved one seat over, slumping down, maybe to get comfortable, maybe to sleep.
After the movie I stopped at the Waffle House in Belmont to get something to eat. The chunk of humming bird cake that Yancie, Allie and I baked this afternoon was pretty much gone. I sat next to a worn woman who wished people Merry Christmas and a man who talked about getting lumps of coal for Christmas. A little drunk maybe, he had the twangy accent and manner of the rednecks in Deliverance (the ones who were going to make Ned Beatty squeal like a pig). My waitress was a sweet girl whose baby was being tended by a tired looking young man sitting in a booth. (She told this to the worn woman.) I sat on the last stool at the counter. Two more tired women sat in the booth beside me. I quickly ate my bacon, egg and cheese biscuit. I was afraid the drunk would try to engage me in conversation and that I might do something reckless.
Coming home, stopped at the traffic light at 273 and 27, I saw two people on the side of the road. One, a woman or a small man appearing to be puking. A bigger man gently rubbed the sick person's back.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Day 13 - Shelby
Randomly...
After stopping by the Register of Deeds office in Gastonia to buy certified copies of Brenda's death certificate I went to Shelby.
I dropped by the hospital to see Brenda's old friend Vernon. He's got a bad infection. Going back briefly into caregiver mode I moved flowers so he could see them and asked somebody to raise his bed so that he could eat the food they brought just before I left.
Returning downtown I parked on the square across from the Methodist church where I would attend a funeral in a few hours and walked to the Shelby Cafe for lunch. Everything reminds me of Brenda now so as I sat in the new part (where the old Shelby Newsstand used to be, where I used to buy science fiction novels) and remembered other times when we were in this place. Both of us liked the pre-gentrified version best. Her favorite food, before she became a vegetarian was hamburger steak smothered in onions,
I went for a walk to kill some time before the funeral.
I walked past the place where I first saw Brenda. It was probably 1952; she would have been 12 and I would have been 13. It was in front of the old Junior High school on Saturday afternoon. Brenda and her cousin Carol had probably been to a movie and were walking home to Brenda's house on Blanton Street (where she and I would live 10 years later). I was with Pete Panther. He and I used to hang out at Carol's house. Maybe we were waiting for her, knowing that she was going to a movie. I had never met Brenda. Years later neither she nor Carol remembered the encounter. But I do. If the word had been in my vocabulary I would probably said that she was exquisite. Not voluptuous and blond like my dream girls. Simply lovely. She was vulnerable and shy and sweet too. I did have enough sense to realize that even if I didn't know how to say it.
(Where I first met Brenda 57 years ago.)
I walked through the cemetery, a pretty place which was on my Shelby walking circuit even in less morbid times. Although Brenda will never be there I asked her out loud when passing her parents or friends if she had stopped here for a visit. I concocted a theory in which spirits or at least the remaining points-of-view are at the instant of death free to visit anywhere and anytime.
After walking for an hour I went back downtown to the church. Charles, with whom I traded Hardy Boy books 60 years ago, was having a funeral for his wife Cynthia. They too had been married 48 years and she too had suffered from emphysema. I have only been in Central Methodist a few times since my teens. It is still a lovely place. As the well-dressed members of Shelby's upper class filled the place I remembered sitting in a pew beside my father hoping that Tiny Peck, a popular pretty girl with substantial breasts, would be in that day. I learned years later that my father had been ogling a woman (maybe two) in the choir - and perhaps being ogled back.
Although the Christian parts of the service made no sense (according to this theology Cynthia will have everlasting life and Brenda will not), the personal parts, remembering Cynthia's love of her family and of music were touching.
When the service was over, people were directed downstairs to a reception. I passed through a maze of rooms remembered now in dreams of dark, complex places. I quickly got to Charles and told him what I had come to say - that I knew what he was feeling. He seemed to appreciate that. Then following the instructions of the man standing there I banged open a sticky door to the outside and made my way back into the light.
After going by the funeral home to conduct some final business I returned to Mount Holly.
After stopping by the Register of Deeds office in Gastonia to buy certified copies of Brenda's death certificate I went to Shelby.
I dropped by the hospital to see Brenda's old friend Vernon. He's got a bad infection. Going back briefly into caregiver mode I moved flowers so he could see them and asked somebody to raise his bed so that he could eat the food they brought just before I left.
Returning downtown I parked on the square across from the Methodist church where I would attend a funeral in a few hours and walked to the Shelby Cafe for lunch. Everything reminds me of Brenda now so as I sat in the new part (where the old Shelby Newsstand used to be, where I used to buy science fiction novels) and remembered other times when we were in this place. Both of us liked the pre-gentrified version best. Her favorite food, before she became a vegetarian was hamburger steak smothered in onions,
I went for a walk to kill some time before the funeral.
I walked past the place where I first saw Brenda. It was probably 1952; she would have been 12 and I would have been 13. It was in front of the old Junior High school on Saturday afternoon. Brenda and her cousin Carol had probably been to a movie and were walking home to Brenda's house on Blanton Street (where she and I would live 10 years later). I was with Pete Panther. He and I used to hang out at Carol's house. Maybe we were waiting for her, knowing that she was going to a movie. I had never met Brenda. Years later neither she nor Carol remembered the encounter. But I do. If the word had been in my vocabulary I would probably said that she was exquisite. Not voluptuous and blond like my dream girls. Simply lovely. She was vulnerable and shy and sweet too. I did have enough sense to realize that even if I didn't know how to say it.
(Where I first met Brenda 57 years ago.)
I walked through the cemetery, a pretty place which was on my Shelby walking circuit even in less morbid times. Although Brenda will never be there I asked her out loud when passing her parents or friends if she had stopped here for a visit. I concocted a theory in which spirits or at least the remaining points-of-view are at the instant of death free to visit anywhere and anytime.
After walking for an hour I went back downtown to the church. Charles, with whom I traded Hardy Boy books 60 years ago, was having a funeral for his wife Cynthia. They too had been married 48 years and she too had suffered from emphysema. I have only been in Central Methodist a few times since my teens. It is still a lovely place. As the well-dressed members of Shelby's upper class filled the place I remembered sitting in a pew beside my father hoping that Tiny Peck, a popular pretty girl with substantial breasts, would be in that day. I learned years later that my father had been ogling a woman (maybe two) in the choir - and perhaps being ogled back.
Although the Christian parts of the service made no sense (according to this theology Cynthia will have everlasting life and Brenda will not), the personal parts, remembering Cynthia's love of her family and of music were touching.
When the service was over, people were directed downstairs to a reception. I passed through a maze of rooms remembered now in dreams of dark, complex places. I quickly got to Charles and told him what I had come to say - that I knew what he was feeling. He seemed to appreciate that. Then following the instructions of the man standing there I banged open a sticky door to the outside and made my way back into the light.
After going by the funeral home to conduct some final business I returned to Mount Holly.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Day 11 - Guns and IKEA
(4:00 AM - woke up early again)
Yesterday a friend came over and we took his heirloom Colt .32 revolver to a shooting range to try it out. Grammy was the last one to shoot it when she let go a round in the closet to see if the little pistol still worked. He said that she hit a can of green beans.
I got there early and waited in the gun store/shooting range parking lot. My friend drove up a few minutes later in his Prius. It was probably the first time that such a vehicle had ever visited this place.
My friend had never fired a pistol and I had not fired in 45 years, having lost my taste for it in the Army.
The kid in charge grinned but did not seem to think we were crazier than anybody else. He cursorily examined my friend's pistol and after checking with his manager declared that it was probably safe to shoot. However it turned out that they had no .32 short ammo. Saying what the hell I rented one of the store's 9mm Baretta pistols bought a paper target and box of the cheapest bullets and went to lane six. The kid must have thought I knew what I was doing because he offered no directions or warnings, didn't even verify that I knew how to eject the clip and stuff it with the short ugly rounds. He just gave us some forms to sign indicating that we declined instructions.
As it turns out some skills persist. My only problem was with the noise. I had never fired before in an indoor range and after being nearly deafened went back out to get the ear and eye protection that the kid had originally offered.
My friend fired a few times then went to the waiting area. The noise was too much. Looking back once at the sound proof safety glass partition I saw him gesturing toward me with a huge stainless steel revolver. He seemed excited. I burned through the remaining rounds, shooting some with two hands, some with one, moving the target in and out, most of the time hitting what I was aiming at.
When I went out to return the pistol and pay, the waiting area was thronged with holiday shooters - men, women, children - serious and excited. The sign said that children under eight had to be accompanied on the range by an adult. Every hand seemed to hold a weapon. It would have driven an Army range officer crazy.
After that my friend and I grabbed some lunch and then went for a walk, talking about poetry and books.
********************
Last night I went out to eat with my daughter and her brood. After that we went to the new IKEA. Brenda had always wanted to go but never made it. The idea of being rolled around in a wheelchair was just too undignified. Under my breath I told her that she wasn't missing anything. The pots and pans and angular furniture were like absurd sculptures - monuments to nothing I could connect with.
Yesterday a friend came over and we took his heirloom Colt .32 revolver to a shooting range to try it out. Grammy was the last one to shoot it when she let go a round in the closet to see if the little pistol still worked. He said that she hit a can of green beans.
I got there early and waited in the gun store/shooting range parking lot. My friend drove up a few minutes later in his Prius. It was probably the first time that such a vehicle had ever visited this place.
My friend had never fired a pistol and I had not fired in 45 years, having lost my taste for it in the Army.
The kid in charge grinned but did not seem to think we were crazier than anybody else. He cursorily examined my friend's pistol and after checking with his manager declared that it was probably safe to shoot. However it turned out that they had no .32 short ammo. Saying what the hell I rented one of the store's 9mm Baretta pistols bought a paper target and box of the cheapest bullets and went to lane six. The kid must have thought I knew what I was doing because he offered no directions or warnings, didn't even verify that I knew how to eject the clip and stuff it with the short ugly rounds. He just gave us some forms to sign indicating that we declined instructions.
As it turns out some skills persist. My only problem was with the noise. I had never fired before in an indoor range and after being nearly deafened went back out to get the ear and eye protection that the kid had originally offered.
My friend fired a few times then went to the waiting area. The noise was too much. Looking back once at the sound proof safety glass partition I saw him gesturing toward me with a huge stainless steel revolver. He seemed excited. I burned through the remaining rounds, shooting some with two hands, some with one, moving the target in and out, most of the time hitting what I was aiming at.
When I went out to return the pistol and pay, the waiting area was thronged with holiday shooters - men, women, children - serious and excited. The sign said that children under eight had to be accompanied on the range by an adult. Every hand seemed to hold a weapon. It would have driven an Army range officer crazy.
After that my friend and I grabbed some lunch and then went for a walk, talking about poetry and books.
********************
Last night I went out to eat with my daughter and her brood. After that we went to the new IKEA. Brenda had always wanted to go but never made it. The idea of being rolled around in a wheelchair was just too undignified. Under my breath I told her that she wasn't missing anything. The pots and pans and angular furniture were like absurd sculptures - monuments to nothing I could connect with.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
The Howling Blind Cat
(I thought I would do this post last, that it might be the most painful, but it is not. There is at least one more that will be even harder to do.)
I call him Leroy; Brenda called him Long Legs. That's how he is known at the vet and at Belmont Rite Aid where I periodically pick up eye medicine for Long Legs Weathers. It's always good for a laugh with the nice ladies who work behind the pharmacy counter.
He lost all of his sight maybe a year ago. But he still stayed outside with Catherine (whom I called Loonie - see video at the bottom of the post). However when the Black Cat ran Loonie off Leroy suddenly seemed more vulnerable and we brought him in the house. He stayed in the big bathroom at night and wandered the house during the day.
I consented because it seemed the only thing to do but I still resented it. I resented much about the cats. It was an ongoing issue between us. There are six cats now; at one time back in Shelby we had 14. Brenda fed them in the kitchen at night from large platters. She arranged the food neatly around the edges to minimize inter-food fights. (Two piles of food per cat. I still follow that rule, even exceed it for those that always eat a lot.)
In Leroy's case, I could tolerate the litter box under the cabinet and not having access to the big bathroom at night. The worst thing was the howling. Occasionally he did (and still does) ear-splitting bellows. We never could get inside his head well enough to exactly figure it out. The vet thinks it has something to do with arthritis. We thought it was loneliness and frustration. And sometimes I know that he picked up on discord in the house, adding his voice to the fray.
Even the howling didn't bother me that much until Brenda's condition got so bad that she moaned every morning after getting up starved for oxygen, waiting for her "puffers" to take affect. Her moaning often coincided with Leroy's howling as he lumbered down the hall from the bathroom. Both of them going tended to drive me crazy - not metaphorically but literally crazy, leading me to say vile things, even one morning threatening to get in the car and leave Brenda there to die with her cats. (That was the hard thing I dreaded to write.) Yancie then other people after hearing of the situation offered to take Leory, but Brenda would not agree to it. She cried that she was sorry sorry sorry but that she could not bear it and that it would only be for a little while anyway.
As Steve said (after he told me that this was making me insane) Leroy was a placeholder. I know that Leroy was a placeholder for my own frustrations and resentments. As I write this I realize what I always knew - that Brenda also saw Leroy as a placeholder - symbolizing her own illness and vulnerability - that to take him away would be to take her away.
But my madness went away in the weeks after Hospice came. There was no magical moment of revelation. But I think we forgave each other for being crazy.
Now Leroy and the other cats are no longer placeholders for anything. They are still "people" - but cat people.
(Or is Leroy now a placeholder for me - is his howling my howling?)
Here's the video that Brenda had me make to celebrate the relationship between Catherine and Long Legs. She edited the words.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Metaphors In The Drizzle
Steve and I went out for a brunch-like meal Sunday morning then walked in the drizzle at Freedom Park. Getting to the Pancake House was comedic. Nothing was the same, all the familiar landmarks consumed in one of Charlotte's recent paroxysms of gentrification. The old Charlottetown Mall is gone. The little houses in the Cherry neighborhood that once furnished servants for Myers Park have been replaced by cheap looking apartments.
But the Pancake House was nice and the conversation was good.
Either there or later walking in the drizzle at Freedom Park we talked about Steve's notion of how Brenda, the cats and I formed a system. It was/is like a gravitational system where each member contributes his or her attraction to the whole. Remove one body and the rest fly around in confusion as the new arrangement tries to sort itself out. This is especially bad when the sun, the center is removed. This doesn't have anything to do with love. It is much deeper than that.
(Yancie travels a complex orbit between the old system consisting of the cats and me and the new system of her own family - sensitive to disruptions and perturbations in both.)
My metaphor is more biological. Brenda and I were together so long we became connected at the level of emotional DNA. At the end, our spiritual genetics were interwtined. I could finish her sentences, she mine. So when the connection between us was severed I naturally began to hemorrhage psychic stuff. For a while I thought I would bleed out.
Another friend, also a writer and a poet, offered these words...
"Now we are of that age when those who watched us grow are all gone and those we chose to love and move through time with are falling away, one by one, like leaves reluctant to seek unfamiliar ground."
But the Pancake House was nice and the conversation was good.
Either there or later walking in the drizzle at Freedom Park we talked about Steve's notion of how Brenda, the cats and I formed a system. It was/is like a gravitational system where each member contributes his or her attraction to the whole. Remove one body and the rest fly around in confusion as the new arrangement tries to sort itself out. This is especially bad when the sun, the center is removed. This doesn't have anything to do with love. It is much deeper than that.
(Yancie travels a complex orbit between the old system consisting of the cats and me and the new system of her own family - sensitive to disruptions and perturbations in both.)
My metaphor is more biological. Brenda and I were together so long we became connected at the level of emotional DNA. At the end, our spiritual genetics were interwtined. I could finish her sentences, she mine. So when the connection between us was severed I naturally began to hemorrhage psychic stuff. For a while I thought I would bleed out.
Another friend, also a writer and a poet, offered these words...
"Now we are of that age when those who watched us grow are all gone and those we chose to love and move through time with are falling away, one by one, like leaves reluctant to seek unfamiliar ground."
Monday, December 14, 2009
Going To The Hospice House
She didn't want to go to the Hospice House. She said she would die there. But the Hospice home nurse swore that it was just for a couple of days to get her medicine regulated. I went along with it because it was a plan and I didn't want to see her slumped anymore at the kitchen table about to fall out of her chair afraid to go to bed, because she hated that room and was also afraid of dying there.
The last episode of getting Brenda ready was like all the others. I pushed and cajoled. She wanted to slow down, to not go, to stay where she was and sleep at the kitchen table in front of her little TV and Nancy Grace and the Cooking Channel. She cried for me to leave her alone that she couldn't make it. But I was committed to the plan and pushed on.
When we finally got into the car and had one more dose of morphine, it wasn't so bad. Driving across town in the rain and failing light we got silly and sang a Christmas carol - We Three Kings I Think.
By the time we got to the Hospice House, which appeared in a winter field just over the crest of a low hill, Brenda did what she always did. She joined into the adventure, talked with the people, and looked around at the chalet-like surroundings as the nurse, a dusky man of deep wisdom, ferried her down the hall to her room.
The last episode of getting Brenda ready was like all the others. I pushed and cajoled. She wanted to slow down, to not go, to stay where she was and sleep at the kitchen table in front of her little TV and Nancy Grace and the Cooking Channel. She cried for me to leave her alone that she couldn't make it. But I was committed to the plan and pushed on.
When we finally got into the car and had one more dose of morphine, it wasn't so bad. Driving across town in the rain and failing light we got silly and sang a Christmas carol - We Three Kings I Think.
By the time we got to the Hospice House, which appeared in a winter field just over the crest of a low hill, Brenda did what she always did. She joined into the adventure, talked with the people, and looked around at the chalet-like surroundings as the nurse, a dusky man of deep wisdom, ferried her down the hall to her room.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Coming Home
Saturday night, after going to out to supper with Yancie and her brood, I came back to the house to spend the night. It was the first time since Brenda died.
I don't remember my exact progression from room to room. I probably spent some time in my office/bedroom with the computer. Then after steeling myself to go to Brenda's bedroom and get a blanket I moved to the den. I turned up the fire logs and watched some of Jeremiah Johnson and then some of something else. Nothing made much sense.
After getting sleepy I left the den and went into the kitchen. I planned to return to my room to spend the night. However, Pye, the cat who used to sleep with Brenda came out from wherever she had been hiding and spoke to me and I followed her into Brenda's bedroom. Pye waited on the bed looking at me. I imagined that she was asking where Brenda was. I turned on Brenda's TV and lay down on the bed and Pye let me rub her. But when I lost it, she became indifferent and hopped off the bed and went back to her hiding place.
(Pye and I used to fight about Brenda. Pye wanted to sit on her, getting more insistent as Brenda got sicker. Knowing the cat would wake Brenda up and set off a new round of moaning and panicky breathing I would run her off. But if Brenda was awake, she would tell me to leave Pye alone - that I was making things worse.)
After Pye left, I got up, took one of Dr. Beatty's sleeping pills, and went to my room. I turned on the Beattles' CD took off my clothes and crawled in bed. That worked. I slept almost eight hours.
The next day I had brunch with Steve then braved the drizzle to walk with him in Freedom park. The drizzle was nice. That night I went out to dinner with Yancie, her brood and her inlaws. When I got home there were a few emails waiting from friends.
But the house was just as empty, just as freakish.
Gathering Up the Stuff
Yesterday Yancie and Allie came over to help me gather up the most visible reminders, closet clothes, cosmetics, mostly things that could be seen. She took them home in nice new plastic bins and will probably keep them forever. We debated about the best thing to do - to leave the things out or to move them. Both choices were painful but I did not think I could stand to see everything, especially in the state they were - as scattered detritus of the last weeks of illness.
Both of us cried a lot. But Allie helped, placing items in bags and boxes, some designated as valuable and some as trash. Naturally she had to told what most things were.
I don't remember where we put the half-smoked cigarette we found behind some creams and cosmetics. But we did keep the little Altoids tin of emergency cigarettes that Brenda held on to even after she stopped smoking back in July.
There is still a lot of stuff left. Except for going through necessary papers and disposing of some of the cardboard boxes I won't touch the remainder for a while if ever. She is everywhere. This morning when I was putting up dishes, I placed her plate in the cabinet. I always ate on the blue plate and she ate on the white plate. The white plate came from her mother and she was sentimental about it.
Both of us cried a lot. But Allie helped, placing items in bags and boxes, some designated as valuable and some as trash. Naturally she had to told what most things were.
I don't remember where we put the half-smoked cigarette we found behind some creams and cosmetics. But we did keep the little Altoids tin of emergency cigarettes that Brenda held on to even after she stopped smoking back in July.
There is still a lot of stuff left. Except for going through necessary papers and disposing of some of the cardboard boxes I won't touch the remainder for a while if ever. She is everywhere. This morning when I was putting up dishes, I placed her plate in the cabinet. I always ate on the blue plate and she ate on the white plate. The white plate came from her mother and she was sentimental about it.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Visitation
The visitation last night was nice. It was held at Cecil Burton's funeral home in Shelby. It is in a classy old mansion that once belonged to the Thompson family. My mother and father were working in the Thompson lumber company and casket shop in 1939 when I was born. Cecil keeps six chickens out back, a tasteful distance from the mansion. They belong to his daughter. He eats the eggs. Sometimes the chickens run loose and have been known to come up to the elegant French doors during a viewing or reception.
Most of Brenda's former cooworkers were there, some old classmates and friends and two blood relatives - one of her cousins who happened to be in town and one of mine. (Neither of our families were/are big on staying in touch. My cousin Don and I swore to surprise one another and visit. I hope we do. I had forgotten what a smart dignified guy he is.)
Yancie and Allie (who looked very pretty in a black dress with a big pin) stayed in place greeting people who came by while I worked the crowd, shaking hands, clutching elbows, patting backs, maybe hugging some of my old female friends a little too long. Looking at myself from outside myself I couldn't decide whether I was appalled or amused. Randy who is a programmer spent a lot of time with Yudi and Larry two of my old friends who are also programmers.
Pictures of Brenda were on display showing her at various times of her life. There was the one black and white I especially like of her standing beside her family's Pontiac. Her hair was short and blond and her arms were shapely and bare. She leaned against the car, one foot thrust slightly forward in a model's pose which I know was natural and not calculated. Every guy of a certain age who stopped at that display looked at Brenda, said she was beautiful, then tried to guess the age of the Pontiac.
Maybe the saddest thing was one of Brenda's oldest and best friends who came despite an injury and illness. His partner and I had to half carry him to a chair where he sat crying and sleeping while I performed.
Most of Brenda's former cooworkers were there, some old classmates and friends and two blood relatives - one of her cousins who happened to be in town and one of mine. (Neither of our families were/are big on staying in touch. My cousin Don and I swore to surprise one another and visit. I hope we do. I had forgotten what a smart dignified guy he is.)
Yancie and Allie (who looked very pretty in a black dress with a big pin) stayed in place greeting people who came by while I worked the crowd, shaking hands, clutching elbows, patting backs, maybe hugging some of my old female friends a little too long. Looking at myself from outside myself I couldn't decide whether I was appalled or amused. Randy who is a programmer spent a lot of time with Yudi and Larry two of my old friends who are also programmers.
Pictures of Brenda were on display showing her at various times of her life. There was the one black and white I especially like of her standing beside her family's Pontiac. Her hair was short and blond and her arms were shapely and bare. She leaned against the car, one foot thrust slightly forward in a model's pose which I know was natural and not calculated. Every guy of a certain age who stopped at that display looked at Brenda, said she was beautiful, then tried to guess the age of the Pontiac.
Maybe the saddest thing was one of Brenda's oldest and best friends who came despite an injury and illness. His partner and I had to half carry him to a chair where he sat crying and sleeping while I performed.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Bitter and Sweet - The Sweet
Right now I want to remember and write about the sweet stuff.
She was always physically beautiful. Although you get used to that when you see somebody every day, I was still struck by it. In Shelby High school she colored her hair platinum blond and wore black. Susan Thomas, the little girl with big horn rim glasses who married my friend Doanne said Brenda looked like the actress Kim Novak. Which was funny because I was supposed to look like James Dean. Kim and James.
I think a lot of men had secret crushes on her. After a while I didn't mind because she was too dignified to invite advances.
She was naturally graceful and without thinking would stand with one foot arched and turned forward in a model's pose. Although always too shy to dance, either in public or in private that I knew of, she loved Dancing With The Stars. She tried to get me to watch it with her, pointing out the sexy girls as enticement. I couldn't stand the show but would usually join her in front of the bedroom TV for each season's final episodes.
We always liked going out for coffee. Some of our best times were nights at the Dairy Queen in Shelby drinking coffee with Frank and Margaret, Milton and Rhonda, Griff, Randy, and the other adults plus Yancie and all the kids. We never did find a comparable place after moving to Mount Holly. It wasn't the same.
But in the past year, we did start going to the little coffee shop in Belmont, especially after visiting Walmart, Bi Lo, or Pet Smart. In pretty weather we would sit outside and look across the street to the park and at the people strolling by. (We'd comment about the intent skinny old man who was always out running, whenever we came.) The last time we went was after one of the doctor visits, maybe after Coggins told her it probably was cancer. She was too sick to get out so I went inside and brought the coffee to the car.
Our last outings were to Einstein Bagels on S. Blvd in Charlotte. We went after the funny middle-eastern surgeon excised one of the tumors for a biopsy and a week later after the PET scan. She always liked poppy seed bagels with veggie spread. In her opinion the best came from the bagel place in Shelby near the court house. (She liked going to Shelby. Often we'd see somebody we knew. She never really felt at home in Mount Holly. Shelby was in her DNA.) She couldn't get out of the car but we managed to park close to the building (a converted service station) and could see the people come and go. We laughed at the busy yuppie boy in the Range Rover beside us.
She was always physically beautiful. Although you get used to that when you see somebody every day, I was still struck by it. In Shelby High school she colored her hair platinum blond and wore black. Susan Thomas, the little girl with big horn rim glasses who married my friend Doanne said Brenda looked like the actress Kim Novak. Which was funny because I was supposed to look like James Dean. Kim and James.
I think a lot of men had secret crushes on her. After a while I didn't mind because she was too dignified to invite advances.
She was naturally graceful and without thinking would stand with one foot arched and turned forward in a model's pose. Although always too shy to dance, either in public or in private that I knew of, she loved Dancing With The Stars. She tried to get me to watch it with her, pointing out the sexy girls as enticement. I couldn't stand the show but would usually join her in front of the bedroom TV for each season's final episodes.
We always liked going out for coffee. Some of our best times were nights at the Dairy Queen in Shelby drinking coffee with Frank and Margaret, Milton and Rhonda, Griff, Randy, and the other adults plus Yancie and all the kids. We never did find a comparable place after moving to Mount Holly. It wasn't the same.
But in the past year, we did start going to the little coffee shop in Belmont, especially after visiting Walmart, Bi Lo, or Pet Smart. In pretty weather we would sit outside and look across the street to the park and at the people strolling by. (We'd comment about the intent skinny old man who was always out running, whenever we came.) The last time we went was after one of the doctor visits, maybe after Coggins told her it probably was cancer. She was too sick to get out so I went inside and brought the coffee to the car.
Our last outings were to Einstein Bagels on S. Blvd in Charlotte. We went after the funny middle-eastern surgeon excised one of the tumors for a biopsy and a week later after the PET scan. She always liked poppy seed bagels with veggie spread. In her opinion the best came from the bagel place in Shelby near the court house. (She liked going to Shelby. Often we'd see somebody we knew. She never really felt at home in Mount Holly. Shelby was in her DNA.) She couldn't get out of the car but we managed to park close to the building (a converted service station) and could see the people come and go. We laughed at the busy yuppie boy in the Range Rover beside us.
3:00 AM Tai Chi
Brenda died two days ago. I've been staying at my daughter and son-in-law's house, soothed and distracted by the sweetness and madness of my grandchildren. But I still can't sleep through the night despite the sleeping pills Dr. Beatty prescribed. So at 3:00 AM last night and the night before, I did tai chi in front of the big TV. Surprisingly my balance was OK and my moves were fairly smooth. I managed to coordinate breathing and movement.
Nothing magical happened; there was no detectable surge of chi.
However I didn't harden my outward moves into strikes when my breath left my body. I kept my hands soft.
Nothing magical happened; there was no detectable surge of chi.
However I didn't harden my outward moves into strikes when my breath left my body. I kept my hands soft.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Brenda's Obituary
MOUNT HOLLY - On Dec. 9, 2009, Brenda Moser Weathers joined her mother Isabel Lackey Moser, her father Curtis Polk Moser, and other welcoming spirits, both those with two legs and four.
She is survived by her husband of 48 years, Tom Weathers, her daughter Yancie Weathers-Costner, son-in-law Randy Costner, granddaughter Allie Michal Costner, grandson Evan Costner, and the six fur babies.
Her life was her family, friends, and pets. She loved the cooking channel and worked crossword puzzles in ink. She retired from the North Carolina Department of Transportation, in 2004 after 44 years. She was awarded one of North Carolina's highest awards, The Order of the Long Leaf Pine for her extraordinary service. Although of no particular religious affiliation, she was proud of her Jewish heritage and was wearing her Star of David at the end.
She was a woman of unusual beauty, quiet grace, and great dignity.
She wanted to be remembered by this poem…
Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there.
I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow;
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sunlight on ripened grain;
I am the gentle autumn's rain.
When you awaked in the morning's hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft star that shines at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry, I am not there.
She will be missed.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
PET Scan
Brenda has had an x ray, two CT scans and a PET scan. Wonders of science. The PET scan actually involves positrons - antimatter electrons. Tumors are said to light up like a Christmas tree.
Getting ready for all these scans was bad - Brenda hates getting ready for anything. But getting ready for the PET scan was the worst. Maybe she dreaded it more. Maybe her condition was that much worse. But it was important because it would tell the doctors if the cancer had spread into the bones and would help guide palliative radiation. So I adopted my usual drill sergeant role nagging this poor sick moaning woman through the various stages of cleaning up, putting on clothes and drinking two 11 oz bottles of water before leaving at 11:30 AM.
Yancie was able to go with us for the first CT scan but couldn't today because she had to stay home with her two kids. Allie who is seven could have come but not Evan, who is 21 months.
Throughout, Brenda had ongoing "panic attacks" (they are really episodes of oxygen starvation - I'll write about that in another post). At Coggins suggestion I gave her two .25 mg Zanax tablets. Up until the very last when I manged to get her dressed I wasn't sure we would do it. At one point she was sitting on the commode trying to put on clothes and at the same time drink a bottle of water for the prep. But at 11:30 I rolled her in the wheel chair to the front door then had her hold onto something while I got the wheel chair to the sidewalk then helped her down the steps and rolled her to the car. In the car we discovered that the new regulator for the portable O2 tank wasn't working properly and I had to switch back to the old regulator.
We got there a little late but nobody seemed to care. The Morehead Imaging Center is a nice new place. The male PET technician was very pleasant and capable. He injected the substance that lights up the tumors in response to the radiation then left Brenda in a little room with a TV to wait 1 1/2 hours while the imaging substance percolated through her system. Still under the influence of the two Zanax (and swaddled in heated blankets) she slept the entire time. I used the guest computers in the resource center to email Yancie then came back in with some free coffee and watched a gruesome episode of Criminal Minds.
She spent 20 minutes in the PET scan machine, advancing a foot or so every three minutes. It was longer and tighter and more scary than I had anticipated but the two Zanax continued to work. It also helped that I could stay beside her and hold her hands (which were extended behind her over her head). She asked me to tell her a story and I tried to recount the highlights of my new novel. It sounded pretty stupid.
After the PET scan we went across the building for a CT head scan. The young female tech seemed capable but not as personable as the other person.
After it was all over she waited in the lobby in her wheelchair while I got the car then we went again to Einstein's to sit in the car and eat a late lunch. This wasn't as pleasant as the visit after the biopsy. She felt worse and we didn't stay long.
Getting ready for all these scans was bad - Brenda hates getting ready for anything. But getting ready for the PET scan was the worst. Maybe she dreaded it more. Maybe her condition was that much worse. But it was important because it would tell the doctors if the cancer had spread into the bones and would help guide palliative radiation. So I adopted my usual drill sergeant role nagging this poor sick moaning woman through the various stages of cleaning up, putting on clothes and drinking two 11 oz bottles of water before leaving at 11:30 AM.
Yancie was able to go with us for the first CT scan but couldn't today because she had to stay home with her two kids. Allie who is seven could have come but not Evan, who is 21 months.
Throughout, Brenda had ongoing "panic attacks" (they are really episodes of oxygen starvation - I'll write about that in another post). At Coggins suggestion I gave her two .25 mg Zanax tablets. Up until the very last when I manged to get her dressed I wasn't sure we would do it. At one point she was sitting on the commode trying to put on clothes and at the same time drink a bottle of water for the prep. But at 11:30 I rolled her in the wheel chair to the front door then had her hold onto something while I got the wheel chair to the sidewalk then helped her down the steps and rolled her to the car. In the car we discovered that the new regulator for the portable O2 tank wasn't working properly and I had to switch back to the old regulator.
We got there a little late but nobody seemed to care. The Morehead Imaging Center is a nice new place. The male PET technician was very pleasant and capable. He injected the substance that lights up the tumors in response to the radiation then left Brenda in a little room with a TV to wait 1 1/2 hours while the imaging substance percolated through her system. Still under the influence of the two Zanax (and swaddled in heated blankets) she slept the entire time. I used the guest computers in the resource center to email Yancie then came back in with some free coffee and watched a gruesome episode of Criminal Minds.
She spent 20 minutes in the PET scan machine, advancing a foot or so every three minutes. It was longer and tighter and more scary than I had anticipated but the two Zanax continued to work. It also helped that I could stay beside her and hold her hands (which were extended behind her over her head). She asked me to tell her a story and I tried to recount the highlights of my new novel. It sounded pretty stupid.
After the PET scan we went across the building for a CT head scan. The young female tech seemed capable but not as personable as the other person.
After it was all over she waited in the lobby in her wheelchair while I got the car then we went again to Einstein's to sit in the car and eat a late lunch. This wasn't as pleasant as the visit after the biopsy. She felt worse and we didn't stay long.
Cancer Diagnosis Chronology
The first growth appeared on her inner thigh - late last summer (09) I think. It was cone shaped like a large wen. I told her she needed to go to the doctor but she didn't want to. This is a game we often play. I'll say "You ought..." or "You should...." She will say "Yes, but..." and ignore me. I feel that I have tried. She feels, I don't know. Often these injunctions have to do with going to doctors.
Later two more growths appeared - one each on her chest and stomach. They all got bigger. Finally the growth on her thigh started to itch and get uncomfortable. And another one started on her back.
Around the first of Nov 09 I made an appointment with Dr Beatty - the family doc. Ostensibly this for him to look at my knee (which has been causing problems) but really it was to ask about Brenda. I made an appointment for her to see him on Nov 10th.
He did an office xray and told us he saw a mass in her chest. He said he thought the growths and the mass were related. Brenda asked if it could be cancer. He said yes.
Here is what happened next...
CT scan of trunk Nov 13. Showed expanded lymph nodes, masses in chest. Likely to be lung cancer.
Tuesday Nov 17th saw Dr. Coggins, pulmonary doctor. He confirmed possible lung cancer. Mentioned masses, lymph nodes. Said he thought the growths were metastatic tumors.
Wednesday Nov 18th Dr. Stephanidis, a pleasantly quirky fellow of middle eastern descent removed the abdomen tumor for a biopsy. He took it off in his office with me sitting to one side. The tissue was sort of pale and seemed to have roots. There wasn't a lot bleeding. When I said that it didn't seem as involved as the removal of one of my skin cancers he said something like "You expected more excitement." Brenda didn't experience any pain. Although she is hell to get someplace once there she is a trooper. After it was over we went by Einstein bagels where we sat in the car and ate lunch.
Tues or Wed (Nov 24 or 25th) Dr. Coggins called with the results of the biopsy. Confirmed that it was cancer. I don't remember if it was this call or the next that he offered "weeks rather than months" prognosis. But I think it was this call. I also think this is when he told us that he wanted to bring in Hospice.
(Throughout all this there was a gradual taking away of hope as the diagnosis became less and less problematic and more and more confirmed. Initially there was some possibility that it was a very bad infection. Yancie wondered if it could be caused by exposure to cat litter boxes. Brenda said she didn't know what to think, how to feel. The only time we cried was after we were both on the phone talking to Coggins and he told us the prognosis. I remember we in her bedroom and the sun was shining through the double window and she came around from the other side of the bed and we hugged and cried which we never do.)
PET scan and CT scan of head on Thursday 27 - day after Thanksgiving. It was awful getting ready. I'll write more about this, Hospice, and other things in subsequent posts.
Saturday Nov 28 Hospice showed up.
Later two more growths appeared - one each on her chest and stomach. They all got bigger. Finally the growth on her thigh started to itch and get uncomfortable. And another one started on her back.
Around the first of Nov 09 I made an appointment with Dr Beatty - the family doc. Ostensibly this for him to look at my knee (which has been causing problems) but really it was to ask about Brenda. I made an appointment for her to see him on Nov 10th.
He did an office xray and told us he saw a mass in her chest. He said he thought the growths and the mass were related. Brenda asked if it could be cancer. He said yes.
Here is what happened next...
CT scan of trunk Nov 13. Showed expanded lymph nodes, masses in chest. Likely to be lung cancer.
Tuesday Nov 17th saw Dr. Coggins, pulmonary doctor. He confirmed possible lung cancer. Mentioned masses, lymph nodes. Said he thought the growths were metastatic tumors.
Wednesday Nov 18th Dr. Stephanidis, a pleasantly quirky fellow of middle eastern descent removed the abdomen tumor for a biopsy. He took it off in his office with me sitting to one side. The tissue was sort of pale and seemed to have roots. There wasn't a lot bleeding. When I said that it didn't seem as involved as the removal of one of my skin cancers he said something like "You expected more excitement." Brenda didn't experience any pain. Although she is hell to get someplace once there she is a trooper. After it was over we went by Einstein bagels where we sat in the car and ate lunch.
Tues or Wed (Nov 24 or 25th) Dr. Coggins called with the results of the biopsy. Confirmed that it was cancer. I don't remember if it was this call or the next that he offered "weeks rather than months" prognosis. But I think it was this call. I also think this is when he told us that he wanted to bring in Hospice.
(Throughout all this there was a gradual taking away of hope as the diagnosis became less and less problematic and more and more confirmed. Initially there was some possibility that it was a very bad infection. Yancie wondered if it could be caused by exposure to cat litter boxes. Brenda said she didn't know what to think, how to feel. The only time we cried was after we were both on the phone talking to Coggins and he told us the prognosis. I remember we in her bedroom and the sun was shining through the double window and she came around from the other side of the bed and we hugged and cried which we never do.)
PET scan and CT scan of head on Thursday 27 - day after Thanksgiving. It was awful getting ready. I'll write more about this, Hospice, and other things in subsequent posts.
Saturday Nov 28 Hospice showed up.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Little Oxygen Tanks
She went on oxygen in 2002 - concentrators for the house and office and portable tanks for the car and getting out.
We first used the little tanks that you fill yourself from an outside liquid oxygen supply that the O2 people - Lincare - periodically topped off. But that didn't work because the fittings would freeze up. (I remember going out in the rain in the dark in the winter filling up a tank before she went to work and being shrouded in steam cominng from poorly connected fittings.) We switched to the small tanks that you carry around.
She has always hated the portable tanks because they are so heavy. In the beginning, half the time, she wouldn't even bother to carry one. Seeing other people in Wal Mart with their various styles of tanks - apparently not having any trouble, she wondered how they managed to get the good stuff.
We have gone through a variety of shoulder bags and back packs trying to find the ideal carrier. I always told her she tried to carry too much other stuff but she shrugged that off. All the bags had a tendency to slide down and cut her arm with the strap when she leaned over - for instance trying to get something from a shelf.
Over the years, we gradually increased the O2 setting - on the house concentrator and on the regulator on the little tanks. We started out at 2 and are now at 5. At 5 (4 actually because our old regulator doesn't work at at 5 and she can't breath in strong enough to trigger puffs in the new regulator) a tank lasts about an hour. So when we go out (which we haven't done lately) she carrys one tank and I carry two spares in the good shoulder bag that I got for her from some semi-fancy luggage shop (Sharon Luggage - I remember now).
We first used the little tanks that you fill yourself from an outside liquid oxygen supply that the O2 people - Lincare - periodically topped off. But that didn't work because the fittings would freeze up. (I remember going out in the rain in the dark in the winter filling up a tank before she went to work and being shrouded in steam cominng from poorly connected fittings.) We switched to the small tanks that you carry around.
She has always hated the portable tanks because they are so heavy. In the beginning, half the time, she wouldn't even bother to carry one. Seeing other people in Wal Mart with their various styles of tanks - apparently not having any trouble, she wondered how they managed to get the good stuff.
We have gone through a variety of shoulder bags and back packs trying to find the ideal carrier. I always told her she tried to carry too much other stuff but she shrugged that off. All the bags had a tendency to slide down and cut her arm with the strap when she leaned over - for instance trying to get something from a shelf.
Over the years, we gradually increased the O2 setting - on the house concentrator and on the regulator on the little tanks. We started out at 2 and are now at 5. At 5 (4 actually because our old regulator doesn't work at at 5 and she can't breath in strong enough to trigger puffs in the new regulator) a tank lasts about an hour. So when we go out (which we haven't done lately) she carrys one tank and I carry two spares in the good shoulder bag that I got for her from some semi-fancy luggage shop (Sharon Luggage - I remember now).
COPD Chronology
It runs together.
It really started before we moved to Mt. Holly on the last day of December, 1995. Taking the 1 1/2 mile walk from our house to the Dairy Queen I made a joke of placing my hand on Brenda's back and pushing her up the long hill on Graham. But she seemed to need the help. I think Yancie went with us sometimes, and maybe Frank, and maybe Randy too after he and Yancie got together. I carried a bo staff to ward off villains. We drank coffee at the Dairy Queen with friends and listened to Buster make BOOM! noises when he showed up. We hardly ever walked back; somebody gave us a ride. Those were pretty good times.
Emphysema was mentioned for the first time in Oct of 98 when, after a nasty bout of bronchitis, I managed to get Brenda to the emergency room at Gaston Memorial. The young doctor said matter-of-factly, "You've got touch of emphysema."
Six months later in April 99 another (or a continuation of the same) bout of bronchitis put her in Carolinas Medical for almost a week. This time the diagnosis was full-blown emphysema. But she continued to commute 38 miles back to Shelby where she worked in the office of the NC State Dept of Transportation.
Sometime in 2002 she was put on oxygen - with a concentrator at home and in her office and small portable tanks for the car.
She still smoked. After getting back from Charlotte Medical she managed to quit for a month and was able to walk to the end of the drive to get the paper. But something at work or at home bothered her so she started back. She managed to quit for good in July 08. But she never did feel better - maybe because by that time the lung cancer had already started to develop.
(I think this happened just before the April 99 episode. She was driving home from work when Big Guy, the old Toyota Land Cruiser that she loves, broke down outside of Shelby. It was on 74 going up the hill from Buffalo Creek. She called me on a cell phone. I found her sitting in the car, with the cold that was turning into bronchitis. It was bleak and dark and chilly. I managed to get Big Guy started and asked her to drive on to Gastonia so we could leave the vehicle at the Toyota dealer and not on the side of the road. She was miserable by the time we got to Mt. Holly. I suppose she would have ended up the hospital regardless but I always felt bad about making her drive.)
She has had a couple of pulmonary doctors - the first in Gastonia and the second one in Charlotte. She likes the Charlotte doctor OK but not the one in Gastonia. I thought he was all right but she thought he treated her like an old person.
She switched to the Charlotte doctor in January 04, not long after retiring from the DOT. She got the Long Leaf Pine award for her 40 plus years of service. Things went gradually down hill in the years since and on Nov 10, 08 we went to see her family doctor because of the growths that had appeared on her body. They turned out to be metastatic tumors coming from lung cancer.
It really started before we moved to Mt. Holly on the last day of December, 1995. Taking the 1 1/2 mile walk from our house to the Dairy Queen I made a joke of placing my hand on Brenda's back and pushing her up the long hill on Graham. But she seemed to need the help. I think Yancie went with us sometimes, and maybe Frank, and maybe Randy too after he and Yancie got together. I carried a bo staff to ward off villains. We drank coffee at the Dairy Queen with friends and listened to Buster make BOOM! noises when he showed up. We hardly ever walked back; somebody gave us a ride. Those were pretty good times.
Emphysema was mentioned for the first time in Oct of 98 when, after a nasty bout of bronchitis, I managed to get Brenda to the emergency room at Gaston Memorial. The young doctor said matter-of-factly, "You've got touch of emphysema."
Six months later in April 99 another (or a continuation of the same) bout of bronchitis put her in Carolinas Medical for almost a week. This time the diagnosis was full-blown emphysema. But she continued to commute 38 miles back to Shelby where she worked in the office of the NC State Dept of Transportation.
Sometime in 2002 she was put on oxygen - with a concentrator at home and in her office and small portable tanks for the car.
She still smoked. After getting back from Charlotte Medical she managed to quit for a month and was able to walk to the end of the drive to get the paper. But something at work or at home bothered her so she started back. She managed to quit for good in July 08. But she never did feel better - maybe because by that time the lung cancer had already started to develop.
(I think this happened just before the April 99 episode. She was driving home from work when Big Guy, the old Toyota Land Cruiser that she loves, broke down outside of Shelby. It was on 74 going up the hill from Buffalo Creek. She called me on a cell phone. I found her sitting in the car, with the cold that was turning into bronchitis. It was bleak and dark and chilly. I managed to get Big Guy started and asked her to drive on to Gastonia so we could leave the vehicle at the Toyota dealer and not on the side of the road. She was miserable by the time we got to Mt. Holly. I suppose she would have ended up the hospital regardless but I always felt bad about making her drive.)
She has had a couple of pulmonary doctors - the first in Gastonia and the second one in Charlotte. She likes the Charlotte doctor OK but not the one in Gastonia. I thought he was all right but she thought he treated her like an old person.
She switched to the Charlotte doctor in January 04, not long after retiring from the DOT. She got the Long Leaf Pine award for her 40 plus years of service. Things went gradually down hill in the years since and on Nov 10, 08 we went to see her family doctor because of the growths that had appeared on her body. They turned out to be metastatic tumors coming from lung cancer.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Isabel Lackey Moser
She was born August 30, 1915 and died Nov 25 1989. She was at the Shelby Convalescent (?) nursing home in Shelby, where she had been since 1987. I think that she bled to death from a perforated stomach (ulcer?). She had been given medicine for something else (arthritis?) which prevented blood clotting and then was kept on the medicine when it was no longer needed. Also a feeding tube had been left in too long. Both Brenda and I were with her when she died. She died the same way Brenda would die 20 years later, taking fewer and fewer breaths until finally she didn’t breath any more. It was late in the afternoon, about dusk (which is when Brenda died). Earlier that day she told Brenda that she loved her.
This is what I know of her family tree:
Here are the bits and pieces I know of her family lore…
WD Lackey Sr. was Cleveland County sheriff from 1914 to 1919, moving from Fallston to Shelby to take the job. At some point he was a county commissioner and the mayor of Shelby. He might have been the one who was in the Klu Klux Klan or it might have his son, Jesse. (Brenda said she found a costume when she was living with her grandmother Matilida.) Of course it could have been both of them.
Harriet Hessintine was a source of names. Isabel was almost named Hessintine but somebody (her mother or father) had the birth certificate changed. As Brenda told the story I had an image of somebody actually rushing down the street. Brenda’s first name (which she hated even more than the name “Brenda”) was Harriet. (I think “Brenda” came from the actress Brenda Marshall.)
Jesse Lawrence Lackey (who might have been a Klansman) was a car dealer. At one time (before or after he died) the dealership included Cadillac, Pontiac, Buick, and GM trucks. In the early 60’s they even had the franchise for MG’s and Austin Healey’s. His sons WD and Evans ran the business after he died. Isabel had an interest but, according to legend was cheated out of her share. Brenda said that the two brothers were in the habit of forging Isabel’s signature on legal papers.
Isabel was a sucker for smooth talking men. She was especially vulnerable after Curtis died. I think her brothers managed to get a chunk of Curtis’ veteran’s benefit. However having said that I should note the WD and Evans were kind to Brenda and helped her with her parents. WD was the one Brenda would call if her father ended up in jail or got stuck somewhere drunk. (Brenda told the story about being called to find them in the 56 Buick - Speedo - stuck in the middle of a muddy red clay field.) Perhaps the brothers felt that they were owed something for putting up with a bothersome sister and drunken brother-in-law. And of course in the car culture from which they came, cheating and being a hard-ass were just part of the game.
The only one of the Lackey ancestors that Brenda remembered was her Grandmother Matilda. Brenda lived with her for the last year or two of her grandmother’s life. I’ll write more about that in Brenda’s stories. All I’ll note here is that I was never quite sure why Brenda was there - although I suspected that her parents just wanted her out of the house. However, Brenda seems to have regarded those few years as the best time of her life. I think that when she (Brenda) moved back home in 1950 it was the beginning of The Fall (which was completed a few years later when Moser Furniture Company went bankrupt).
Either Matilda or Harriet Hessintine (the latter I think) had a difficult childhood, losing a mother early and having to look after a number of siblings. I believe that Matilda kept lodgers in the big house on Warren Street - evidently even after JL got rich. Brenda remembers a travelling sales lady who handled Luziers cosmetics. The woman gave Brenda facials and little sample bottles of cosmetics (Brenda always liked perfume bottles). Brenda also told stories about her grandmother making fancy pastries for the town’s rich people.
Matilda note (2/8/10) - Looking at this picture I remembered Brenda telling me that once Matilda locked herself in a bathroom and threatened to shoot herself. This was because of an affair by Jesse Lawrence. I think Brenda told me the story in response to my comment that her grandmother - based on pictures I had seen and on what Brenda had told me about living in her house, was very stable.
These are the bits and pieces that Brenda told me about Isabel’s early life…
Isabel seems to have been emotionally fragile and spoiled, especially by her father. (Did her brothers resent her or love her?)
The family, although living in town (Shelby, in the big house on Warren Street) kept a cow for milk. Isabel would feed the cow jelly biscuits, perhaps visiting the cow when things went badly in the house.
During her last years of high school, Isabel was sent off to St Genevieve of the Pines a Catholic school for young ladies in Ashville, NC. It’s my impression that a boy might have been involved. (At least one other girl in the extended family - Larue Lackey - went off the deep end for a man.). Isabel transferred from St Genevieve to Fassifern - a finishing school in Hendersonville, NC. I never heard Isabel talk much about it - but she didn’t talk much to me anyway (never addressing me directly by name). I know that by the time I came on the scene she wasn’t keeping up with anybody from that time. However her annual is signed by a number of girls. Brenda treasured the Fassifern class ring but I think it was lost.
At one point, Isabel had a driver’s license, but sometime in her youth - before she was 20, ran off the road and never drove again. However, as soon as Brenda became 16 she bought a second car for the family which Brenda used to haul her mother and run errands. I recall that the Isabel was the calmest passenger I ever encountered. Nothing bothered her - even the time I drove our Buick station wagon across the rickety bridge. (Brenda, Yancie, Isabel, an I were coming back from Saturday night dinner just across the SC line in Gaffney. I took a scenic side road and ended up crossing a rushing creek over a bridge that literally seemed about to fall in. Once on the bridge and committed I was horrified but Isabel laughed and seemed to think it was a grand adventure.)
According to legend she first saw Curtis when they were all in Cohen’s department store in Shelby - she maybe with her mother and he by himself. She was smitten by the dark, dangerous looking person and was told he was that “Moser boy”.
Although I’ll write about this in Brenda’s stories, I think Isabel visited Curtis twice after he was drafted in the Army late in WWII. The last visit was the train trip to Ft Polk Louisiana. She was accompanied by Brenda then. However, I think there was an earlier trip taken by Isabel and another young woman from Shelby whose husband was also in the service. They drove down (to Ft Polk?) in the woman’s car, having borrowed gas ration cards from a lot of people. I was always impressed by the courage it must have required for her to take that trip.
Here are some post-Curtis stories, again, bits and pieces (mostly my association with her - I'll write about Brenda's association in her stories)…
When she was younger, before I knew her Isabel was thin and very pretty - if that picture at the first of this is any guide you could say that she was smoldering - in the current vernacular, hot. By the time I came on the scene in 1961 she was plump - still pretty I guess - but as a superficial 21 year old I would have had trouble seeing the still smoldering charm of a somewhat overweight 46-year old woman. (Also in my own defense from the beginning I detected something wrong with her.)
I was always deeply suspicious of Isabel - at least until the last year or so. She pretended to be one thing and was I thought something else. Her friendliness - until the end - always seemed feigned.
After Curtis died in 1963 we lived in her house on Blanton St until sometime in the mid-1980s when she moved into an apartment. There was never any question. Brenda was going to take care of her mother and if I wanted to live with her (Brenda) I would come too. It was like a door slamming shut. Brenda felt that her mother would not survive without her. I felt that Brenda would not survive without me.
Throughout the 60's and early 70's I hated Isabel for her drunkenness and dependency - for the hold she had on Brenda and for what I perceived as her deeply devious nature. She brought drunk men into the house. I threatened to kill one with my good carpenter's hammer and I hit another one in the face, splattering his blood on the kitchen floor. A few times I yelled at her. Once I grabbed her behind the neck to forcibly move her from one room to another. I probably wanted to kill her.
Some time in the early 70's Isabel began to gradually straighten herself out. By the time Yancie came along in 1976 she had stopped drinking altogether. She finally moved a little past the vile freak show that had been the Curtis/Isabel partnership. Isabel and I still had an uneasy truce, never speaking to each other by name.
Sometime in the late 70's Brenda and I bought the Blanton St house from Isabel and she moved into an apartment where a friend lived. I always thought it was brave thing for Isabel to do. And of course I was happy to have her out of our house.
Funny asides...
There was an earthquake in Shelby - maybe in the early 70's. It happened late at night and woke us up with rattling dishes. Isabel went running across the street to cousin Reid's house, leaving Brenda and I to our own devices.
Another time something happened to the furnace and the house filled up with smoke. The cat Angel woke us up. Again, Isabel ran across the street to Reid's house
After Yancie came on the scene Isabel was a good grandmother - not exactly hands-on (I always wondered how she managed to look after Brenda) but devoted. She was Grandma Bell. Yancie loved her and has fond memories of spending afternoons at Grandma Bell's apartment, lying in bed, watching soap operas and eating junk food that I think Isabel asked Yancie not to talk about.
For a while Isabel actually had a couple of jobs and was president of the local Business and Professional Woman's association. She got into the politics and drama - maybe even getting Brenda to come to a few meetings.
Then a number of acquaintances died, including her friend and neighbor at the apartment. Isabel started to come a little unglued. She wasn't drinking again, but she became afraid and anxious. We bought a larger house with a light airy basement apartment so she could move in with us.
It didn't work out.
It was my understanding that Isabel would stay downstairs and we would stay upstairs. I said something one night when I came home and found her upstairs about to have supper with us. I immediately regretted it because I could see that she was genuinely hurt. I think she continued to come upstairs to eat with us but she started to become more and more irrational. It wasn't exactly my fault but what I said didn't help.
The climax came when Brenda went to work one morning and left Isabel sitting on the commode. Isabel said she couldn't get up without help. Brenda didn't believe her, thought it was an act, and yelled. Later that morning, feeling guilty Brenda came back home accompanied by Margaret her coworker at the Right of Way Department office. Isabel was still on the commode. However when Brenda reached out it required no effort to pull her 160 pound mother up from the commode. She rose with no effort. And I think Brenda said there were no marks on Isabel's bottom from having sat on the commode for three hours. When getting back to the office Margaret, normally a mild-mannered little woman announced "That woman is crazy as hell." We never knew if Isabele had been sitting there the entire time or seeing Brenda's car pull in the drive, she had run back to get on the commode. We suspected the latter.
(When we were all living on Blanton Street Isabel would lie in bed all afternoon watching TV then get up a half hour before we got home to fix supper. Rushing around the kitchen her hair flattened in back from being in bed all afternoon she would complain about having been in the kitchen for hours fixing our food.)
In 1987 Isabel went in a nursing home and we sold the big house no longer needing all that room. Isabel had some good months in the nursing home, blending in
Curtis Polk Moser
He was born Feb 25, 1912 and died Nov 8 1963. He had a heart attack while attending a Shelby High football game and died shortly after arriving in the hospital. I am not sure he ever went into a room. Brenda was with him. I think I was with Isabel at the admitting desk. Brenda said his face turned horrible colors.
This is what I know of his family tree:
This is what I know of his family lore.
The Richardson’s were genteel (“gentiles” unlike the Moser’s who were maybe the other thing). There is supposed to be a picture of one of the Richardson’s sitting on a horse beside Robert E. Lee who was also sitting on his horse (Traveler I think). According to Brenda’s version of the family lore Uncle Brad got that picture, maybe passing it down to his daughter (Brenda’s cousin) Marlene.
Susannah Polk Rape was reported to have descended from President James K. Polk who was supposed to have been born in the southern part of Mecklenburg county where the Moser’s and Richardson’s lived. Brenda said that she and her father once got into a vile argument about the name “Rape”. Brenda told him they had an ancestor with that name and her father declared that it was not true (implying that his family would not sullied by having a ancestor with such an odd suggestive name.) Brenda did not indicate if this was an ongoing argument or if Curtis was sober or if she did it just to annoy him.
Henry Moser was the only grandparent on her father’s side that Brenda seems to have remembered (although Grandmother Dora and Great Grandmother Jean lived for some years after 1940 when Brenda was born). She recalled Grandfather Henry as being a tall kindly man who wore shoes (sandals?) when wading in Buffalo Creek on the family’s raucous Fourth of July picnics.
The family grew up around Waxhaw then moved to Shelby - something to do with Henry’s cotton brokerage business I think.
After Grandmother Jean died in 1949 Henry married Marian Nash - who was my second grade teacher at Washington school in 1946/47 (I liked her - even though her refusal to let me go to the bathroom resulted in an accident that has since become a part of my own family legend). Marian ended up in the late 1980’s in the nursing home with Isabel and my father - although by this time none of them recognized one another.
To Brenda, the most significant aspect of the Moser lore was the possibility (likelihood in her mind) that the Moser’s had once been Jews. She said it was never discussed much (except when her mother Isabel would get mad and call Curtis “an old German Jew”) - but seemed to be understood (although Brenda’s cousin Carol had never heard the story when I brought it up at one of our high school reunions).
Jewishness was the subtext of Brenda’s life. She read books on Judaism, wore a star of David around her neck and had a menorah and a dradle which she prominently displayed (and which I have left on the coffee table in the living room). At times she toyed with the idea of converting to Judaism. We talked so much about it that when Yancie was in grammar school and asked about her religion she said that she was an orthodox Jew (this from a blond, blue-eyed Nordic looking child).
We never could trace the lineage back to the verifiable Jews. However, a second or third cousin named Keiger who had Moser connections told Brenda that he found a town in Germany where all the Mosers were Jews. I think he might have said that the original American Moser’s were peddlers. I speculated that the Moser’s came over in the one of the early immigrant waves then for economic or social reasons became Protestants.
I don’t know much about Curtis’s early life. Although not rich, the family seems to have been well established in the middle class.
I think Curtis attended a couple of years of college - maybe Wingate. He was artistic and musically inclined. Brenda remembers him sitting drunk on front porch of the Blanton Street house playing Ave Maria on his violin, tears running down his cheeks.
I think he was born in Waxhaw. The family moved to Shelby, maybe in the 1920’s or 30’s.
At one point Curtis drove an oil tanker truck. His route took him across the mountains and he later told Brenda how scary it was to drive the big trucks down the narrow winding roads in the ice and snow.
Brenda said that Isabel and Curtis saw one another the first time at Cohen’s, a department store in downtown Shelby (the Cohen’s planted a tree in Israel when Curtis died), Isabel seems to have been taken with the dark “Moser boy”. She always had a thing for the dangerous ones.
Before being drafted into the Army late in WWII, Curtis worked in Charlotte for the Sterchi’s furniture company. He laid out newspaper ads and had a little office with a window that overlooked Tryon street. (I told Brenda several times I would shoot a picture of the wall and the window but I never did and now the building has been torn down.)
The family lived in Charlotte then, in a nice little duplex in a nice little neighborhood near the black university, Johnson C Smith. Brenda remembered this as an idyllic time. A Good Time. Everybody seemed happy. Curtis and Isabel dressed in fancy clothes and went Charlotte’s bonafide nightclub, the El Morocco. They mingled with the town’s up and coming young people while Brenda stayed home, looked after by the neighbor lady, “Mrs. Mews.”
The family moved back to Shelby in 1944 or 45. They might have moved because Curtis was drafted into the Army or maybe because Isabel’s mother wanted her daughter closer. I think it was the latter reason, which, if true, was history that would repeat itself when Brenda and I were married and faced with the possibility of our own move to Charlotte - away from her mother. (Like the cats and vacations, this was one of our ongoing issues.)
I don’t think Curtis saw any combat in the war. He ended up guarding Japanese prisoners on one of the islands, maybe Formosa or Saipan. One of the men he guarded painted a Japanese-looking picture of Brenda on a piece of parachute silk.
(There is a story about the memorable trip Brenda and her mother took to visit Curtis when he was in training at Fort Polk Louisiana. I’ll tell that in Brenda’s history.)
Curtis returned to his family in Shelby after the war. I am not sure what he did when he first got back. Maybe that’s when he drove the tanker truck. But at some point, certainly by the late 1940’s or early 50’s he started Moser Furniture Company. Brenda never said where he got the money. Maybe from his father. Maybe from Isabel’s mother.
According to the legend, the company did well at first. However, things started to go badly when Curtis’ brother Brad joined the business. Brad spent money they didn’t have on company delivery trucks. He also had a vicious temper and got into fights, sometimes pulling a knife on people. (Brenda told a story about how Brad’s children, Brad Jr. and Marlene would fight, chasing each other with scissors.)
In the middle to late 50’s the company went bankrupt. Brad and his family left Shelby for Florida. Curtis stayed in Shelby and tried to pay off the debts. They would have lost the Blanton St house if it had not been transferred into Isabel’s name.
As described by Brenda this was the Tragic Fall - when everything fell apart. Curtis went from just being a heavy drinker to becoming a drunk. Isabel started drinking heavily. And a very dark side emerged in both of them. All their demons came out. Their house became a gathering place for drunks and deviates. Brenda hid in her room - but not always successfully. (But despite all that Brenda remembered him as the one who looked after her when she was sick, applying musterole ointment to her chest. And he cried the day she married me - which might have been prescient on his part.)
After the Fall, Curtis never had another decent job. He sold Shell Homes, driving around Western North Carolina in a fast-back Buick coupe with a replica of one of the pre-fabricated houses mounted on the top of the car. (Brenda said the car/house combination looked funny in the snow - a car with a house on top with snow on the house.) When I came on the scene in the winter of 1961, he was selling cars at Lackey Buick/Pontiac/Cadillac/GMC truck - working for his two brother-in-laws, WD and Evans. According to Brenda they treated him poorly, but at least did not fire him when pulled his week-long drunks.
I remember him as a dour scary man who did not say much. The following from my novel REDUX is based on Brenda’s household…
She told him to follow her to the kitchen where she would fix his nose. They passed a room illuminated by a flickering light. A man, dressed in a rumpled suit, smelling vaguely of vomit, slumped in a large chair before a television. Ida stopped and leaned forward, her hands on her hips, chin stuck out. Peering at Abby , the man said in a gravelly voice, "Whozethat?"
Abby stepped back. He had an image of the man suddenly leaping up from his chair, like a corpse coming to life, yelling in his face.
Ida said, "Abby Burns - Brad punched him in the nose."
"Sonofabitch" Abby didn’t know if the comment was directed at him, Brad or someone else.
Ida's eyes narrowed and her lips pulled back, exposing filmy teeth. There was bile in her breath. It was like fire. She hissed, "You're the sonofabitch."
The man replied casually, "Slopgut whore," then cleared his throat and coughed several times, eventually leaning forward and stomping the floor with his foot.
Ida, smiled, said "Humph" and continued down the hall, leading Abby into the kitchen.
She directed him to sit at a yellow Formica top dinette table. A dishcloth covered what Abby assumed was a pile of clean plates stacked in one corner of the table. Dirty plates, containing leftover mashed potatoes and pieces of meat covered in grease, had been left at two places.
Curtis liked to drive. For a time the dealership sold British sports cars and I recall him darting around town in an Austin Healey with the top down in the winter. He wore a dapper coat and a jaunty cap. He claimed (and in my experience could) drive better drunk than other people could sober. One day he headed out drunk to Fayetteville (where his brother Bob lived). Isabel and Brenda had me follow him to make sure he was OK - or at least to get help if something happened. He drove in an absolute straight line. After 30 miles or so, he pulled off to the side of the road and when I walked up, laughed and said that he would be all right. He was in a good humor that day.
He started having chest pains in the fall of 1963. He was 51. The doctor told him that it was his heart but he didn’t seem to care. The one time I expressed any sympathy or concern (actually patting him on the head!), he looked at me pitying disregard - knowing that I had no idea what I was talking about. But even I knew that death was a release for him - that he sought it.
Of course, when he died, we became responsible for Isabel. Which might have been one reason for his look of pity.
NOTES (I'll add notes as new information pops in my head.)
Girlfriends (2/5/10) - There were some. Brenda remembers a woman that Curtis would bring around. I don't know what the stated connection was (maybe she was his secretary) but Brenda understood (perhaps hearing Isabel and Curtis fight about it) that she was a girl friend. Brenda said the woman was very nice to her, as if she was trying to win her over. After Curtis died a letter came for him from another woman (in Chicago?). I don't remember the contents except that it was obvious there was a romantic connection. Brenda seemed pleased that her father had in his last years even a tenuous connection to the possibility of happiness. She called the woman to tell her what had happened. I don't remember the details of how that went. However, I think the woman had a Jewish name - which also pleased Brenda.
Airplanes (2/5/10) - Curtis was a pilot, maybe learning to fly in WWII. I don't think he ever got the sort of license that allowed him to take up passengers. But he and his brother flew to Chicago on business trips (which might explain how Curtis managed to see the girlfriend mentioned above). Brenda remembered somebody (maybe Brad) taking her up in a little plane. She liked it. She told about her mother running around on the ground below as seen from the airplane. I don't know if this is something she saw or something she was told.
This is what I know of his family tree:
This is what I know of his family lore.
The Richardson’s were genteel (“gentiles” unlike the Moser’s who were maybe the other thing). There is supposed to be a picture of one of the Richardson’s sitting on a horse beside Robert E. Lee who was also sitting on his horse (Traveler I think). According to Brenda’s version of the family lore Uncle Brad got that picture, maybe passing it down to his daughter (Brenda’s cousin) Marlene.
Susannah Polk Rape was reported to have descended from President James K. Polk who was supposed to have been born in the southern part of Mecklenburg county where the Moser’s and Richardson’s lived. Brenda said that she and her father once got into a vile argument about the name “Rape”. Brenda told him they had an ancestor with that name and her father declared that it was not true (implying that his family would not sullied by having a ancestor with such an odd suggestive name.) Brenda did not indicate if this was an ongoing argument or if Curtis was sober or if she did it just to annoy him.
Henry Moser was the only grandparent on her father’s side that Brenda seems to have remembered (although Grandmother Dora and Great Grandmother Jean lived for some years after 1940 when Brenda was born). She recalled Grandfather Henry as being a tall kindly man who wore shoes (sandals?) when wading in Buffalo Creek on the family’s raucous Fourth of July picnics.
The family grew up around Waxhaw then moved to Shelby - something to do with Henry’s cotton brokerage business I think.
After Grandmother Jean died in 1949 Henry married Marian Nash - who was my second grade teacher at Washington school in 1946/47 (I liked her - even though her refusal to let me go to the bathroom resulted in an accident that has since become a part of my own family legend). Marian ended up in the late 1980’s in the nursing home with Isabel and my father - although by this time none of them recognized one another.
To Brenda, the most significant aspect of the Moser lore was the possibility (likelihood in her mind) that the Moser’s had once been Jews. She said it was never discussed much (except when her mother Isabel would get mad and call Curtis “an old German Jew”) - but seemed to be understood (although Brenda’s cousin Carol had never heard the story when I brought it up at one of our high school reunions).
Jewishness was the subtext of Brenda’s life. She read books on Judaism, wore a star of David around her neck and had a menorah and a dradle which she prominently displayed (and which I have left on the coffee table in the living room). At times she toyed with the idea of converting to Judaism. We talked so much about it that when Yancie was in grammar school and asked about her religion she said that she was an orthodox Jew (this from a blond, blue-eyed Nordic looking child).
We never could trace the lineage back to the verifiable Jews. However, a second or third cousin named Keiger who had Moser connections told Brenda that he found a town in Germany where all the Mosers were Jews. I think he might have said that the original American Moser’s were peddlers. I speculated that the Moser’s came over in the one of the early immigrant waves then for economic or social reasons became Protestants.
I don’t know much about Curtis’s early life. Although not rich, the family seems to have been well established in the middle class.
I think Curtis attended a couple of years of college - maybe Wingate. He was artistic and musically inclined. Brenda remembers him sitting drunk on front porch of the Blanton Street house playing Ave Maria on his violin, tears running down his cheeks.
I think he was born in Waxhaw. The family moved to Shelby, maybe in the 1920’s or 30’s.
At one point Curtis drove an oil tanker truck. His route took him across the mountains and he later told Brenda how scary it was to drive the big trucks down the narrow winding roads in the ice and snow.
Brenda said that Isabel and Curtis saw one another the first time at Cohen’s, a department store in downtown Shelby (the Cohen’s planted a tree in Israel when Curtis died), Isabel seems to have been taken with the dark “Moser boy”. She always had a thing for the dangerous ones.
Before being drafted into the Army late in WWII, Curtis worked in Charlotte for the Sterchi’s furniture company. He laid out newspaper ads and had a little office with a window that overlooked Tryon street. (I told Brenda several times I would shoot a picture of the wall and the window but I never did and now the building has been torn down.)
The family lived in Charlotte then, in a nice little duplex in a nice little neighborhood near the black university, Johnson C Smith. Brenda remembered this as an idyllic time. A Good Time. Everybody seemed happy. Curtis and Isabel dressed in fancy clothes and went Charlotte’s bonafide nightclub, the El Morocco. They mingled with the town’s up and coming young people while Brenda stayed home, looked after by the neighbor lady, “Mrs. Mews.”
The family moved back to Shelby in 1944 or 45. They might have moved because Curtis was drafted into the Army or maybe because Isabel’s mother wanted her daughter closer. I think it was the latter reason, which, if true, was history that would repeat itself when Brenda and I were married and faced with the possibility of our own move to Charlotte - away from her mother. (Like the cats and vacations, this was one of our ongoing issues.)
I don’t think Curtis saw any combat in the war. He ended up guarding Japanese prisoners on one of the islands, maybe Formosa or Saipan. One of the men he guarded painted a Japanese-looking picture of Brenda on a piece of parachute silk.
(There is a story about the memorable trip Brenda and her mother took to visit Curtis when he was in training at Fort Polk Louisiana. I’ll tell that in Brenda’s history.)
Curtis returned to his family in Shelby after the war. I am not sure what he did when he first got back. Maybe that’s when he drove the tanker truck. But at some point, certainly by the late 1940’s or early 50’s he started Moser Furniture Company. Brenda never said where he got the money. Maybe from his father. Maybe from Isabel’s mother.
According to the legend, the company did well at first. However, things started to go badly when Curtis’ brother Brad joined the business. Brad spent money they didn’t have on company delivery trucks. He also had a vicious temper and got into fights, sometimes pulling a knife on people. (Brenda told a story about how Brad’s children, Brad Jr. and Marlene would fight, chasing each other with scissors.)
In the middle to late 50’s the company went bankrupt. Brad and his family left Shelby for Florida. Curtis stayed in Shelby and tried to pay off the debts. They would have lost the Blanton St house if it had not been transferred into Isabel’s name.
As described by Brenda this was the Tragic Fall - when everything fell apart. Curtis went from just being a heavy drinker to becoming a drunk. Isabel started drinking heavily. And a very dark side emerged in both of them. All their demons came out. Their house became a gathering place for drunks and deviates. Brenda hid in her room - but not always successfully. (But despite all that Brenda remembered him as the one who looked after her when she was sick, applying musterole ointment to her chest. And he cried the day she married me - which might have been prescient on his part.)
After the Fall, Curtis never had another decent job. He sold Shell Homes, driving around Western North Carolina in a fast-back Buick coupe with a replica of one of the pre-fabricated houses mounted on the top of the car. (Brenda said the car/house combination looked funny in the snow - a car with a house on top with snow on the house.) When I came on the scene in the winter of 1961, he was selling cars at Lackey Buick/Pontiac/Cadillac/GMC truck - working for his two brother-in-laws, WD and Evans. According to Brenda they treated him poorly, but at least did not fire him when pulled his week-long drunks.
I remember him as a dour scary man who did not say much. The following from my novel REDUX is based on Brenda’s household…
She told him to follow her to the kitchen where she would fix his nose. They passed a room illuminated by a flickering light. A man, dressed in a rumpled suit, smelling vaguely of vomit, slumped in a large chair before a television. Ida stopped and leaned forward, her hands on her hips, chin stuck out. Peering at Abby , the man said in a gravelly voice, "Whozethat?"
Abby stepped back. He had an image of the man suddenly leaping up from his chair, like a corpse coming to life, yelling in his face.
Ida said, "Abby Burns - Brad punched him in the nose."
"Sonofabitch" Abby didn’t know if the comment was directed at him, Brad or someone else.
Ida's eyes narrowed and her lips pulled back, exposing filmy teeth. There was bile in her breath. It was like fire. She hissed, "You're the sonofabitch."
The man replied casually, "Slopgut whore," then cleared his throat and coughed several times, eventually leaning forward and stomping the floor with his foot.
Ida, smiled, said "Humph" and continued down the hall, leading Abby into the kitchen.
She directed him to sit at a yellow Formica top dinette table. A dishcloth covered what Abby assumed was a pile of clean plates stacked in one corner of the table. Dirty plates, containing leftover mashed potatoes and pieces of meat covered in grease, had been left at two places.
Curtis liked to drive. For a time the dealership sold British sports cars and I recall him darting around town in an Austin Healey with the top down in the winter. He wore a dapper coat and a jaunty cap. He claimed (and in my experience could) drive better drunk than other people could sober. One day he headed out drunk to Fayetteville (where his brother Bob lived). Isabel and Brenda had me follow him to make sure he was OK - or at least to get help if something happened. He drove in an absolute straight line. After 30 miles or so, he pulled off to the side of the road and when I walked up, laughed and said that he would be all right. He was in a good humor that day.
He started having chest pains in the fall of 1963. He was 51. The doctor told him that it was his heart but he didn’t seem to care. The one time I expressed any sympathy or concern (actually patting him on the head!), he looked at me pitying disregard - knowing that I had no idea what I was talking about. But even I knew that death was a release for him - that he sought it.
Of course, when he died, we became responsible for Isabel. Which might have been one reason for his look of pity.
NOTES (I'll add notes as new information pops in my head.)
Girlfriends (2/5/10) - There were some. Brenda remembers a woman that Curtis would bring around. I don't know what the stated connection was (maybe she was his secretary) but Brenda understood (perhaps hearing Isabel and Curtis fight about it) that she was a girl friend. Brenda said the woman was very nice to her, as if she was trying to win her over. After Curtis died a letter came for him from another woman (in Chicago?). I don't remember the contents except that it was obvious there was a romantic connection. Brenda seemed pleased that her father had in his last years even a tenuous connection to the possibility of happiness. She called the woman to tell her what had happened. I don't remember the details of how that went. However, I think the woman had a Jewish name - which also pleased Brenda.
Airplanes (2/5/10) - Curtis was a pilot, maybe learning to fly in WWII. I don't think he ever got the sort of license that allowed him to take up passengers. But he and his brother flew to Chicago on business trips (which might explain how Curtis managed to see the girlfriend mentioned above). Brenda remembered somebody (maybe Brad) taking her up in a little plane. She liked it. She told about her mother running around on the ground below as seen from the airplane. I don't know if this is something she saw or something she was told.
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