Memory

It's funny how memory works in its random fashion.

Like doing laundry.

Which reminded me of a conversation I had with my sister and an old friend of our family, Cassandra, who was visiting as my mother lay dying on the sofa bed in the livingroom. We were gathered together to visit and take care of her and she was flitting in and out of consciousness - sleeping mostly. So we talked. My sister and Cassandra talked about doing laundry - how to keep colors bright. I, in my ignorance and general lack of interest in such things, made an ass of myself by declaring that it was my practice to just throw all my clothes in the machine, add the cup of detergent and press start. I've often thought excessive attention to the niceties of material goods to be a bourgeois trait that a communist such as myself would never deign to emulate.

My parents were good members of the bourgeoisie. My father, an incredibly gifted man, is an architect and his personal life-project has been remodeling the house I grew up in. My parents bought the house shortly after I was born. It's an old Victorian - I remember the day my father told me it had turned 100 (well, it probably wasn't the exact day, but it was the year). It had been remodeled successively probably by every owner since it was built. Structurally, it was sound, but a bit of a mess. My father's life project essentially has involved gutting the house room by room and remodeling each. Problem is, what with maintenance, and the fact that some rooms can't be completed until others have work done to them (running electrial wire and pipes necessitate multiple-room rehabs) . . . well, let us just agree that it is a multiple-life project and admit that there are still rooms that lack ceilings. Dad was particularly proud of the stepped ceiling he designed and installed in the living room that my mother would later spend the last remaining months of her life in. At one point, my mother disparaged that intricate ceiling as "so bourgeois" which was a bit of a shock considering that I had always believed that she aspired to bourgeois-hood, which she did. I think, mostly, she just wanted the fucking house done, which was an impossibility given my father's creative impulse combined with his insistence on flawless execution, combined with the fact that he also has a day job.

When I think about my mother lying in her last days, I think about how brave and strong she was. How she faced the terror of death with stoicism, but a human, tender stoicism. A grace. Like the time I visited her in the hospital, when nobody knew what was going on, not the doctors, not the family, not even her. All we knew was that she was having some sort of weird seizure - and she, herself didn't even know that - which is one of the things that terrify me most about her experience. The doctors finally decided that there was pressure building up around her brain because the cancer cells were preventing the spinal fluid from draining normally. They needed to do a spinal tap, more or less immediately. The doctors explained all the risks and benefits and the family had a quick conference, but what choice did we have really? Of course. Because of various and sundry timing difficulties, I was the only one with my mother when the doctor came to do the procedure. I sat in a chair and held my mother's hand as she lay on the hospital bed on her side. The doctor, behind her, prepared himself and I held my mother's hand and she looked into my eyes as the needle punctured her lumbar region. She didn't speak, but her eyes did - of determination mixed with fear of the unknown of the what-next. Of hope and pain and loss. Of strength and love.

It's funny what a rolled-up dirty white sock and a purple button-down shirt thrown carelessly together into a beat-up old top-loading machine can evoke.