Author Charleen Hurtubise: ‘Well-meaning mourners tell me it’s a blessing my parents left together. I’m stung by the callousness of these words’
Saturday, the night before Mom dies, we stand on her deck at the edge of the woods and look up into Orion’s Belt.
It is only the day after Dad’s funeral and Mom is asleep in a hospital bed inside the French doors, beside the fireplace. The hospice reminds me of birth. Instead of waiting for a new arrival, we wait to usher Mom out, wherever she may be going. Enya plays softly in the background, Mom’s breathing is peaceful but shallow and I have a fleeting memory of laying on a pillow beside her after a morning at kindergarten, listening to her sleep. We are losing her. But not yet. Not this moment. Outside my childhood home in Michigan, the sky is clear and the air mild for January. My sister speaks in hushed tones, pointing out the two stars tacked either side of Orion’s Belt.
The boys – that’s what she calls her two new puppies; unruly Malamute brothers who leave muddy paw prints on our mourning clothes as we move between nursing our ill parents and laying them to rest – are named after those stars.
They romp with life under the sky, through mud and melting snow. The taller one has strange grey eyes and looks human. My sister will teach them to pull a sledge.
Mom and Dad both died on a Sunday. One week apart. Dad was sick, more or less, for 10 years. A series of strokes led to dementia. Our youngest sister said he was like a big train coming to a long, slow halt.
How he held out for so long was a wonder, and sometimes a strain. A rota of sisters spent the weekends looking after him to give our youngest sister, and Mom, a break. I, the sixth child of eight girls and one boy, wasn’t one of them.
There was always enough food in our house but everything else was cutthroat: attention and recognition more precious than new shoes. I didn’t stand a chance. I coped by running away, beginning from the age of 10, charming out-of-town visitors and then pleading with them to take me home.
Surprisingly, they did. This is how I spent half my summers with Canadian relations or on the farm with cousins. As soon as I could, I inched my way out of the chaos, moving first to Detroit, over to Boston, then back towards Kalamazoo. Finally I ran away altogether when I married an Irishman nearly 20 years ago. We live in Dublin and are raising our three children here.
I’ve anticipated coming home to Dad’s absence for most of my adult life. But not Mom. Never Mom. She was my home push pin on a travelled map.
She gives us her grandmother’s smile, and tells me she likes my necklace and my teeth
When I get the call, I leave my older, school-going children in Dublin with their father, and make my way through airports to connecting flights with our four-year-old whose Irish name is still phonetically pinned to Mom’s fridge. She calls him ‘Roo’ for short. We arrive late on Wednesday night.
Mom is awake and weak. I think of the baby bird I found lying under the maple in the side yard so many years ago. I nursed it for a day, and after it died, I wept and buried it in a cigar box along with some manner of funerary tat.
A key chain or a fridge magnet, I can’t remember exactly. But I do wonder, if I dig the earth, will I find them? Where else would they go: the bones, and the debris not so quickly reclaimed? If they are not wrapped in the remaining roots of the fallen maple, where are they now?
Mom sips water from a spoon. She gives us her grandmother’s smile, and tells me she likes my necklace and my teeth. Roo is shy and buries his face in my neck.
Mom has grown thinner over the past few years. We thought she was exhausted from looking after Dad. It wasn’t his fault, but he wasn’t easy. Sometimes it was hard to remember the man he had been. Dad’s dementia, for my pristine Mom, took its toll.
She was nine years younger than him. We all harboured secret hopes that she would gain strength and stay a few more years. But she told us herself she was ready to go.
This wasn’t her world anymore. In the days that follow his death she seems to gain strength, have a change of heart. She calls for food her body can’t digest. Even sips of tea make her sick.
Roo and I spend the next few days in a rocking chair beside her bed. I find a book I made and sent from Ireland years ago when my older two were his age, before he was born. Photos and snippets of a wintery trip home. We titled it ‘A Michigan Fairy-tale’.
I’m sure I wasn’t her most rewarding offspring
It is full of Mom and Dad cuddling their grandchildren, reading to them, baking Christmas cookies, building snowmen. I wonder if Roo minds he doesn’t feature. We didn’t know, couldn’t have known, about him yet. I read the story aloud.
My parents slipped out in the way my children slipped into the world – showing something of themselves: the contemplative daughter who didn’t cry, her eyes roamed the room as though she’d been here before. My middle son arrived wailing with the injustice of it all yet so easily soothed in my arms, a happy-as-Larry soul.
And my baby. Roo. A vulnerable child who folded his face into my breast and immediately withdrew a cache of sympathy. Dad left with an audience, his children gathered around him, Johnny Cash playing in the background.
I never was Mom’s favourite. I’m acutely aware of this as I rock my child at her bedside in the days after Dad dies. I was sensitive, for certain, and had my own ideas. I’m sure I wasn’t her most rewarding offspring; more of a green beetle than brown of Darwin’s natural selection. But Grandmothers have a different reserve for grandchildren. I could forgive her anything for how much she loved my children.
She didn’t like that we lived abroad. Every phone call home she found a chance to plead ‘come home, honey – why do you live so far away?’ I had a few reasons to offer, but restrained my answer to: I’m happy here.
That wasn’t quite the truth. I’m happy my children live here. But I – I am displaced. Always the outsider, always having to begin again. Navigating around walls I cannot see, yet learning to avoid them. The learning dismantles me more than the walls. I owned the contents of my backpack when I arrived in Ireland over 20 years ago, and little more. How could I have known about the isolation and loneliness of motherhood? Of the yearning to dissolve into a culture which reminds me at every turn: you do not belong.
Her face is giving off the last of its light, like a waning moon
And now that I know, these many years too late, how do I go home when everything I love is here – looking towards me for answers. I’m their push pin exiled on a careworn map.
Friday morning before Dad’s funeral, Mom is conscious for the last time. A hospice volunteer sits beside her and hums ‘Moon River’ while we hold back tears and make room for each other in front of the mirror. We kiss her goodbye and rush out the door, already late. When we return, we learn she has not opened her eyes all day.
She will not, ever again. For the rest of the evening, we long to shirk the ritual of condolences and get back to her as quickly as we can. For the next three days we keep vigil at her bedside.
Mom leaves as she lived. She waits until everyone drifts off. The sister keeping watch falls asleep with her cheek on the bed next to Mom’s. Something wakes me at 5am. I leave Roo’s side and tiptoe down the hall. Her face is giving off the last of its light, like a waning moon. She takes three last breaths, and she is gone, so peacefully, from the quiet house on the edge of the woods. Outside, a lone Canadian goose flies over, calling through the mist.
When Roo wakes, they are taking her away. They lay a single rose on her pillow. We place a green teddy beside her for her journey.
Where is grandma going? he asks. And where have they taken Papa? I wonder, too. The house is still. My push pin pulled from the map.
We are nine parts standing side by side on the altar, remembering her, our whole. Will there ever be a reason to come together like this again? We each tell a story of what she meant to us: I remember her jumping up and down with my children when we arrived home off the plane.
How she put on hats and read stories and bought them a doughnut at the town square. I imagine this is the kind of mother she was for the older girls, when she had the time, the strength. It is hard to get through the telling. Dad’s send-off last week feels whimsical compared to this.
That night, we celebrate both our parent’s lives. Well-meaning mourners tell me it’s a blessing they left together. I’m stung by the callousness of these words. Imagine dismissing my mother, the value of her life, in a sound bite. A single chord drones with sadness. Everything else feels flat. Moving through the house, I press against the walls, avoiding everyone.
A brother-in-law lifts his fiddle, and someone else, a guitar. My parent’s only boy – the baby waltzes my aunt on to the floor. In time, most of the party joins them. The foyer’s wooden joists bow under the weight. If you stand outside our house and watch through the windows, you’ll see what my parents built – and then left behind. Love isn’t everything, we tell the mourners, it is the only thing.
We will make another book, Roo and I. This time he will feature. A finale to ‘A Michigan Fairy-tale’. I will refashion the stories, minus the sorrow. I will make it all, somehow happy. I have a folder of new photographs. My son eating a popsicle beside Mom. A snowman and his leaf cap. We built him in between visits to her bedside. Patting the horses in the pasture across the dirt road from the house.
I am stunned at how close leaving home feels to grief
The mist rises on this field the morning they take her away. I am stunned to find how well I know this feeling. All those years ago, when Dad put his arms around me to say goodbye, I wanted to change my mind, return my ticket. Stand there forever under the safety of home. Later, on the platform, when the train pulled into the station, Mom squeezed her eyes tight and held on long after I let go. I am stunned at how close leaving home feels to grief. Death touches the same edges with ache and longing. And questions. Only, I’m not the one leaving home this time.
I return to Ireland earlier than planned. I need to hold my children, the ones I left behind. Become their mother again, leave the grief-filled child in Michigan. My children sleep in my bed while I am away, and I wonder when they put their faces to my pillow, will they search for a scent that is mine alone?
I feel fragile on the journey, as though a single word could break us. Roo falls asleep, his head on the seat, his legs across my lap. I’m glad to be taking him home. It feels safe. There isn’t a single ripple of disturbance over the thousands of miles of distance. The lights are lowered as we make our final descent into a hushed Ireland. I look out the window. The sky is clear and full of stars. We are riding with Orion above the wing. I look up into his Belt and know how I will end our tale.
Where are Grandma and Papa? I think of my babies slipping into the world. My sister’s boys pouncing over fresh snow. All three of my children will meet the pups in the summer when we return; they’ll be fully grown. Will they have lost the romp and revel of their youth? One day, but not yet, not anytime soon. The boys are two stars fallen like snowflakes to earth. There is room on the Belt now for two. My new home push pin is tacked to a Northern sky.
Essay published in People & Culture Magazine
Sun 4 Jun 2023
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