Life; and Other Real Stuff
by
Dick Prosapio © 2003
It was Monday night and the Packer-Oakland game
was about to start when the phone rang. My sisters voice was soft
and quiet, a definite warning sign, "When did you talk to mom last?"
Now what? I thought, is she missing? "Umm, Last
Saturday."
"Well, she can't talk."
"What do you mean?"
"She has had a stroke and she can't talk and I
don't know how long she's been this way." My sister had not been at
home since Friday.
Had a stroke! I thought.
"Saturday. She was fine Saturday." My anxiety
level shot from zero to one hundred in an instant, yet I can't tell
what I'm feeling at all. Numb. "Have you called the doctor?"
"I asked her if she wanted me to call and she
indicated she didn't."
"Well, I think she ought to be in the hospital
don't you?" What the hell is going on here? is the parallel thought
in my mind.
"I asked her if she wanted to go and she indicated
she didn't."
I don't know what to do. I'm 1500 miles away and I
don't have a clue on what to do. "I think you should call the doctor
and see what she says."
"Call a damn ambulance!" is what I'm thinking.
"OK."
"Call me as soon as you know something."
"OK."
I hung up.lost. In shock? Stunned? I don't know. I
thought, "If she's going to die I know she doesn't want it this
waynot some kind of slow, drawn out debilitating series of strokes."
As if there might be a choice in the matter.
Just then our 14 yr. old bursts in the door, "Can
I go four-wheeling with Sarah's cousin in the mountain behind her
house?"
It's dark outside and it has just finished snowing
about an inch. I look at Elizabeth, she looks at me, "I guess it's
ok." She says, I give her a nod of assent. Our kid is gone in a
flash.
I'm starting to pace. "I don't know what to do." I
say to Elizabeth. I had tried talking to my mother on the phone but
she made no sense at all except for two things she kept saying in a
very small, seemingly very young, voice in response to my saying, "I
think you should go to the hospital." She kept saying, "OK" and
"Fine."
I couldn't tell if she was answering my request or
protesting that she was "fine" and didn't need to go. And what
difference would that make anyway? "She should go." I thought.
Elizabeth echoed my thoughts; "She should go to
the hospital." She said. Her mother had lived on for three years
after a stroke, debilitatedbut alive. How would my 90+ yr. old
mother deal with being debilitated? Not well, not well at all. She
hates being dependent. She has figured out all kinds of ways to get
by alone since my father died nine years ago. She has made friends
and created a network to respond to her every need. And she resents
anyone who tries to make it easier."Why don't you sell this big
house and get a small managed living apartment?" I suggested.
"I'm not going anywhere. I have friends and
neighbors and they all help with whatever I need. If I moved
somewhere else I wouldn't have anyone."
There was no movement about any of this..ever. And
she got by. But now? Now what?
The phone has been her connection to this web of
support. What happens if she can't talk on the phone? The isolation,
already pronounced because of her deafness, would be total. She
couldn't survive that.
I'm still pacing.aimless, lost.
Brett Farves' father died last night, suddenly and
without warning. Brett is the quarterback for the Green Bay Packers,
in case you're not a football follower, and tonight the Packers are
playing one of the most important games of their season against
Oakland. The outcome might determine whether or not they proceed to
the play-offs for the Super Bowl. I know, big deal! But of course,
it is..to Brett to his team mates and to the little town of Green
Bay, Wisconsin that supports them.
The question was clear for everyone involved, if
Brett chose not to play, everyone would understand, even if it meant
they would probably lose.
So we're very aware of the drama involved in this
football game, the news of my mother, and, as the clock continued to
move, the fact that we had sent our 14 year old off into the night
with someone we didn't know and an hour had gone by..and we didn't
know where she was.
Elizabeth was growing more tense by the minute,
"Why did I do that? Why did I say 'yes' when I knew it wasn't the
right thing to do?"
"Well, we thought it was ok at the time dear."
"Do you think we should call the police?"
"No, let's just wait awhile."
I could sense her becoming tighter with each
minute. Finally I said, "I'll get in the truck and see if I can find
them." Just as I had done with our oldest when she was out during
her game-playing days, saying she was at work when she was
really hanging out with some very unsavory friends. I knew that
wasn't the case this time, but I knew it was getting to be time to
be on-the-road-looking, once again, for a teen. When does this
parenting thing become fun? I asked Elizabeth later.
"It's not so bad from birth to two. Then it's all
downhill."
I've been experiencing a lot of the "downhill"
over the past decade. "What if she's stuck in a snowdrift on a
mountain? She never dresses for the weather, what if she's freezing
to death? Will my mother survive this stroke?" All of this "traffic"
is jamming my thoughts. And, since I know what the unexpected loss
of a father is like for a son, I wonder about Brett Farve having to
put on a game face for himself and everyone else. I knew though,
that he would be playing for his father above all.
Soap opera?
No, real life, played out in three families
separated by miles and circumstance. Real life; and death, impending
and feared and final.
It comes down to this doesn't it, we are all
connected to each other by these human dramas. Miles and status are
only artificial separations. This experience of living..in this we
are all closely related on this very small planet.
Our 14 year old turned up after three hours, none
the worse for the experience, though I can't say the same for us.
Green Bay won 41 to 7 in one of Brett Farve's, and the teams, finest
games played for his father. And my mother? We still don't know. But
life is suddenly not so simple for any of us.
As added irony, the same day of all of this
unfolding we received a Christmas package from Elizabeth's brother
in which were included some things we had left behind during this
past summer's journey. Among them were a stack of old photographs of
my family.most of them pictures of my mother when she was two and
three years old. Suddenly even the span of time between birth and
death, experienced as a separation one from the other, seems just
another illusion.
Dick Prosapio ©2003, All Rights
Reserved
