Faith

A Eulogy

Two years ago, when my mother was eighty-five, she required major surgery for the ovarian cancer that led to her death. She came through the operation amazingly well – she was awake and alert within hours. But, after being discharged home from the hospital she developed a 'post-op ileus,’ which meant her gut stopped working and just stood paralyzed. This is why doctors always ask if you've 'passed gas' after surgery. (Which she hadn't by the way, a result of the quick discharges encouraged by our broken health care system; but don't get me started...)

The ileus caused her hours of unrelenting nausea and vomiting, a type of suffering I wouldn't wish on anyone. My two sisters and I cared for her, and each other, as best we could. First we unpacked, quickly and quietly, then set up the bedside commode designed to minimize pain from her three-day-old, seven inch wound. While one ate (in the hallway outside of Mom’s apartment, so we wouldn’t make her nausea worse) another dropped homeopathic remedies under her tongue, and the third delicately massaged her belly to help her gut start working again. We taped a sign on her door so her many caring neighbors would know she was home, but not well enough for visitors. We even went shopping for something, anything that might help - prune juice, antacids, laxatives.

Between the waves of nausea Mom tried to rest, but when they came she moaned - with an occasional “Oh honey.” At these times we all stopped what we were doing to attend to her. We had an assembly line to deliver clean moist cloths and basins, and were always at the ready for the next episode. It was the least we could do after the many years of her tending to us. Eight hours and two calls to the doctor later, we were told to take her back to the hospital.

As Mom sat in a straight back chair outside of her bathroom, pale and weak, we ran around like squirrels repacking and preparing for the 45-minute car ride. Once everything was set in the apartment, washcloths and basins ready, we slowly walked her to the elevator. She experienced a particularly bad episode of retching just before getting in. On the way down, she moaned "Oh, God, please help me" and leaned her head onto mine. I gave her a gentle hug. The elevator door opened and we walked her towards the curb, a daughter on each side and the third with the car ready.
Mom stopped on the sidewalk and announced, "I am passing gas…"
"Really?" we said, shocked and excited.
"Yes," she smiled, amused at our astonishment, "and it’s a good one!"

And, by God, that resolved her symptoms! We still climbed into the car but with the nausea gone we talked and laughed during the ride to the hospital. Mom was readmitted, but for only a brief stay.

For years we kidded my mother about her ‘direct connection’ to God. She sat in conversation with Him every morning. She thanked Him for all the good in her life, her health, her wonderful new ‘independent living’ community, she even thanked Him for my hands (I am blessed to be able to attend births for a living). Then she ran her list, asking God to keep people, so many people, in His care. Of course this included her children, her grand and great-grandchildren. But it also included our in-laws, her priest, my sister’s house cleaners, my son’s teachers, people on drugs, the president, the soldiers. The list went on and on; if you’ve met her, and certainly if you’re here today, she’s probably said a prayer for you, too. She did this every single day, although, she did tell me once that if she was ill, she’d cut it short saying, “…and You know the rest.”

In all the years of knowing this, I was never so close, so present for it - the simple yet genuine “…please help me” prayer in the elevator, answered moments later. When my sister acknowledged how hard it was to bear so much discomfort, Mom replied simply, “Well, we do have to suffer some on this earth.”

She had a way of leaning on her god, asking for help (usually for others) but, and this is the key, she was always willing to accept what she could not change. It wasn’t easy but it’s how she got through everything life handed her over her 87 years.

Accepting what is… We’re going to need that to get through what life hands us without her here to cheer us on and keep us in her prayers.

Lessons of the Pie Crust

LESSONS OF THE PIE CRUST

Everyone loves a fresh baked pie, especially the buttery crunch of the crust. In our family, we would fight over an orphan piece of crust, the six of us, and our Dad, who taught us this appreciation.

Once, when I was about ten and sweetly unaware of the life pressures that prevented Mom from finishing a pie, she let me, well, my sister, Theresa, and me, eat a whole crust! We had smelled the golden treat baking two days before in the kitchen of our Baltimore row house. Small and simple, the kitchen had a table with only three chairs, but a large window with a swag curtain that gave Mom easy access to holler us home from the alley, or yell, “Donna, tie your brother’s shoe.” Of course, once we knew she was watching, we’d holler back, “Hey Mom, look at me.”

I had watched my mother flip and gently press the tender dough on the Formica counter. She sprinkled white flour like fairy dust and rolled her pin this way and that, ball bearings jiggling with each new run. Once it was thin and round, she flopped it into the glass pie dish and tucked in the unruly edges. Then she fluted it into a perfect zigzag, a skill she’d eventually teach to all of us, and to our kids. After a quick rinse of her hands and a swipe on her apron, she tapped fork holes, just so, all along the bottom. “So it can breathe,” she said as she popped it into the oven for the pastry gods to bless.

The rich aroma filled the house, but Mom never finished it. No strawberries, no apples. No can of pumpkin in sight.
“When will it be ready?” we whined after the golden brown pie shell sat on the white corner cabinet for two days. It begged to be eaten, and we begged back.
Mom stopped sorting laundry, pushed a loose hairpin back into her dark French twist and pleaded, “Please, girls,”

What was it, I wonder now, that prevented her from finishing? I asked her once - was it the endless financial pressures? Was it the time my older sister one almost eloped? Or when another wrecked the company car? Or, perhaps it was when the youngest, a dog lover, was attacked in a neighbor’s yard because he didn’t (or maybe couldn’t?) read “Beware of Dog”?

She didn’t remember. And it was not likely to have been one of those memorable events, it is more apt to have been the everyday heaviness of life … running the household on a shoestring; raising six children, polite and nice but self-centered and full of their own angst; or attending to a neighbor’s need.

I guess life can simply get in the way of itself. She couldn’t fit in finishing a pie, and couldn’t see when she might.

So, two days after she baked that crust, while Theresa and I did our homework at the kitchen table Mom peered over at us from her sink full of dishes. Before I could assure her, “I am so doing my homework,” she asked, “Would you two like to eat that crust?”
Our eyes lit up. “Yeah!” we said in unison.
“Oh, go on and eat it,” she said. I can almost see her smile as she returned to her work -- barely a break in the rhythm.

Oh, we were thrilled! We began to gobble it up quickly. After all, things in our family were never given without methodical division. And we knew someone could walk in any minute wanting to share a piece. The first bites tasted scrumptious and melted in our mouths. But as it disappeared we became uncharacteristically generous.
“You finish it,” Theresa said.
“No, you can have the rest.” I said, and wandered away from the table.

It’s taken me fifty-some years to realize just how many lessons I learned from that simple experience. For one, the crust tasted good because of the contrast it offered the filling -- without the filling the pie lost its balance - all yin and no yang. And “special” presumes limited opportunity. While eating the whole thing felt special, and memorable, the crust itself ceased to be. I ate most of it, of course, but deep down I began to see just how small of a jump it is from not quite enough, to far too much. But most of all, and I might say, best of all, I began to recognize that it was my mother’s attention that was the real gift.

So now - especially now - I find myself deeply grateful that we had so many days with fewer burdens. Days, when, after a meal with meatloaf and mashed potatoes, she could present us with a fragrant, fully baked pie to fight over.