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THE VISIT--April 2000
As we enter her
room, the first woman in my life lies
sleeping on her back, oblivious to those unsettling sounds
of failing flesh in this, her last way station before track's end:
hacking coughs, torturous clearing of air passages, befuddled cries
of dismay from down the hall, the sounds of wheel chairs rolling
haltingly by on asphalt tile, and the hissing of Mother's air mattress
pump, designed to prevent sores in the bedridden.
Insulated from all this (for a long time we hope) by age, agility,
and forced good cheer, we come bearing gifts: fried fish
and chips from Captain D's, with elixir of Coke. She awakens smiling
as she recognizes us. Says she has just eaten, but maybe she'll take
a little piece of fish. Kandy breaks a succulent golden nugget and feeds
her, as she has been mostly paralyzed since falling in October. Fried
fish
aroma fills the small room. "Oh, my, that is quite good!" she says.
"More
fish!"
After more fish, she commands, "Coke!" Born November 23, 1908, in
Atlanta,
ninety-one years, eight children, and eighteen grandchildren ago, she
has
outlived
a thousand crises, a most troublesome husband, and three of her own
children.
"More fish!" she says. Her window sill is crammed with an array of
flowers--potted
and cut, in various stages of freshness, mute attempts of far-flung
children
and grandchildren to say hello, or cheer up, or we're thinking of you.
After enough fish and Coke, we talk of times past: she recalls old
stories
we've heard countless times: how when we lived near the airport in
Charlotte,
1934, my brother Robin, age three, threw a rock at a low- flying
airplane.
The airplane escaped, but the rock returned and hit him in the head.
He survived and is now sixty-nine. Kandy brushes mother's thin, white
hair,
and afterwards paints her fingernails with an awful purplish nail polish
left by a well-
meaning visitor. As she starts to nod off, we squeeze her hand and say
our goodbyes. But
as we turn to leave she breaks out singing, amazingly loud:
"Oh, I'm Captain Jenks of the horse marines
And I feed my horse on pork and beans!"
Startled in our leaving, we stop in the doorway to applaud, and
laughing,
continue
on our way, wondering just where in the world that came from, and who
has
cheered up whom.
[Betty Girardeau Crowe died February 3, 2007, at ninety-eight years of
age.]
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