one another

for mom


why is it that certain random moments in your life are seared into memory, while a thousand others disappear in the slipstream of time? the smallest twitch of a neuron triggers a high-fidelity reproduction of something that happened decades ago. flashbacks so vivid it's like you're reliving the experience all over again.

even stranger is the rare feeling of how, while an experience is first happening, you somehow know you will remember it forever in its purest crystallized clarity, despite the decay of decades.

i am 6 years old. my slightly-older, towheaded cousin jason and i are climbing the old maple tree in the backyard at our grandparents’ house. venturing higher than our mothers told us to; testing the limits of limbs like a couple of rhesus monkeys. scouting good spots for aerial water balloon attacks on our unsuspecting sisters below.

grandma comes out onto the deck and interrupts our scheming. she asks us to walk with her down the street to the barn store for bread, milk, and cigarettes.

while she fills her basket with groceries, we discover some toys that we absolutely have to have: life-size foam cutouts of reptiles that have dog leashes made of rigid wire attached to collars around their necks. by holding the leads, you can “walk” these replica cold-blooded vertebrates or make them scurry and writhe about on the ground. we are overcome with the sheer potentiality of such great toys. basically the greatest things a 6 and 7 year old have ever seen in their lives.

grandma doesn’t take much convincing at the checkout counter, and we walk out the proud owners of new pets: jason with a lime-green lizard and me with a brown rattlesnake.

grandma takes us home the long way, through the park at loretto heights. maybe it's the heady elevated feeling of control over the natural world, but jason and i are having the time of our lives: slithering our foamy friends up aspens and maples, scaring the shit out of squirrels and eliciting an alarmed cacophony of warning cries from nesting birds.

down the pathway through the tunnel of trees to the back gate of the house (i'm sure grandma is regretting her purchase at this point). scaring our little sisters playing with their stuffed pound purry cats in the garden. laughing like hyenas, tearing around and climbing the old tree, so filled with the happiness and immortality that youth holds...


******


my grandma came from new york city, a daughter of a gaelic immigrant family: the finnegans. she met my grandpa and moved west, marrying and having 6 kids in the irish-catholic tradition. they settled in to raise their children in the outskirts of denver.


the same house where my mother grew up would also become a childhood anchor for me. filled with the love of parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. cousins down the street to play with during the endless dog days. i have many happy memories there: playing whiffleball in the grass, helping grandpa with projects in his workshop, summer slip 'n' slides on the hill...

when winter came, us kids would lay on the carpet inside the den, protected in a fort made of impenetrable couch cushions, our bare feet next to the creaky old heater vent...

and through it all, always the stable reliability of grandma: making you a sandwich, spreading butter on the bread before the peanut butter. or working in the soil among her many ceramic garden gnomes. tucking you into bed at night, rubbing your feet and singing old songs about faraway legends in ireland or china.

she loved books and nearly always had a cigarette in her tiny wrinkled hands. you could usually find her reading on the back porch, or smoking cigarettes in the den; all of her books on the shelves individually wrapped in plastic cellophane, an attempt at preventing the toxic nicotine from yellowing their pages. trying to preserve something in its original condition.


just like grandpa, it would be the cigarettes that got her in the end.


******

although i moved away a long time ago, we stayed in touch. whenever i was through colorado, i would stop by to visit.

it's funny how when you stay in one place, the people and things around you age so slowly over time that any changes go almost undetected. but when you return somewhere after a long time gone, everything different or out of place from how it was when you left immediately jumps out at you.

the old tree in the backyard is missing some branches, the garden gnomes have moved or disappeared, someone has more difficulty walking or hearing. snapshots of decay.


******

when the emphysema began its final offensive, i went to visit her in the hospital. walking in under a brilliantly clear cold blue january sky. she was still mostly deaf, and nearly blind; laying there with wires and tubes and beeping machines. i walked into her room in the icu, and she immediately recognized the bearded grandson whom she used to make sandwiches for all those years ago.

we talked for awhile and i told her about climbing volcanoes in mexico and that i was leaving again soon for africa. i hesitated to find the right words, telling her it would probably be some time until i returned to colorado. by her eyes, i could tell that we both knew the sad unspoken implications of that stammered sentence. she didn't have to tell her wanderlust-filled grandson that she'd soon be taking a trip as well.

the nurse came and told me i should leave so she could get some rest so i kissed grandma on the forehead and told her i loved her and squeezed her hand goodbye.

of all the words i know in english and spanish, none are adequate to describe the terrible rotten numbness i felt walking out of the hospital that day.


a few weeks later, when i was halfway around the planet, she was gone.


******

what floats through a mother’s mind, when she knows she is leaving her children forever? is it a stream of happy memories? the sourness of regret? ideas about what she could have done differently for herself or for her cubs?

although i have no kids of my own, i imagine that the primary desire of any parent is to see their children live happy and healthy lives. and for those siblings to count each other as friends no matter what else happens in the world.

for common history, that formative clout of genetics and environment, holds fast: whether its threads bind something happy or dysfunctional.

or maybe decay is the true nature of all things? do families fail like human bodies or maple trees do? letting each other down, torn asunder by the ravages of time?

later, when we are overtaken by the salty crushing weight of grief, what will become of us? can this flood wash away petty bickering and bitter disappointments? embracing one another once more, even if for no reason other than mourning our mutual losses? are the bonds of kinship rugged enough to overcome the great divide of past hurt and misunderstandings? can forgiveness and possession of shared memory bridge these vast emotional distances?



******

grandma had the dignity of being in her own bed again during those last days; in the same house where her children and grandchildren grew up. lying there, i wonder if she ever wished that she could have wrapped her own family in cellophane, just like those old books she loved to read so much. finding a way to protect them from the soul-yellowing nicotine of unkind words between brothers and sisters.

us, together.

grandma loved and believed in the power of the written word. maybe her memory can be honored by a peaceful reconciliation; a gathering together of a splintered family in this old house. the stilling of the waters in kathleen finnegan's wake.


“we are not enemies, but friends. though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.”