No Woman, No Cry

On June 9^th of this year, just one day before my birthday, my father passed away in his bedroom.  He had been on home hospice care since January, right after my grandmother died.  About a month before he died he became bedfast.  My siblings and I took turns administering the Morphine and Lorazepam required in making him comfortable.  The last couple of weeks of his life we had to take shifts, switching off days and nights to give him the medicine every hour on the hour.  We just couldn’t let our mom do it.  We were trying to alleviate some of the trauma it would have caused her after she just went through this same exact experience with her own mother.  My mom also has terrible tremors so her head and hands shake.  She couldn’t have given him the medicine anyway.  Never leaving his side, of course, I can still see my mom kissing my dad full on the lips, even when he became unresponsive. 

After the cancer and after the strokes, my dad was no longer able to function on his own and my mom had to do everything for him, help him walk, take him to the bathroom, bathe him.  At the time she was also my grandma’s caretaker.  So, with baby in tow, I took on the task of researching and visiting every nursing home this side of the Mississippi, because something in that house had to give.  We found a pretty good home down in the city, clean and reputable.  After much pleading on our parts and on the parts of her social workers, we finally and begrudgingly admitted grandma into the home.  This almost killed my mom.  My grandma didn’t make this transition any easier and constantly begged my mom to bring her home, complaining every time we would visit about the nursing staff and how horribly they had treated her.  My mom, being in fragile health and in a fragile mental state, eventually brought her home but by that time kidney failure had set in and my grandma died on January 1^st in the back bedroom of my mom’s house, with myself and my mom by her side.  She was one hundred and two years old.  I’ll sometimes hear my mom say that she wishes she could’ve been strong enough to care for both of them.  You have to know my mom to really understand this.

There were times when we thought that taking care of my grandma would kill my mom and maybe it would have if she had continued to live.  We thought that taking care of my dad would have killed her too, and who knows what would have happened if that had continued as well.  I have tried to help my mom with the care required of my grandma and dad but even I couldn’t bear the emotional weight of it.  My mom’s hands may be shaky, but they are the strongest hands that I’ve ever known. When I think about everything my mom’s been through, not just this year but in my lifetime, I feel guilty for ever feeling sorry for myself.  

Growing up, I always identified my mom as my primary caretaker.  My dad was gone a lot, and it just seemed like mom was the one who made the world spin.  I was the youngest of her four kids, her “surprise” baby.  While all of the older kids were off playing or getting into trouble, it seemed like we were always alone together.  I took notice of her early on.  With four kids on a shoestring budget, she worked her fingers to the bone.  She was tireless but faithful, even though it seemed like around every corner there was heartache.  I’ve seen my mom cry her share of tears.  She survived breast cancer in her forties, shortly after she had me.  In 1990 my seventeen year old sister died in a car accident.  This is when my mom started having heart problems.  And yet in spite of everything, even losing a daughter, she never once gave up her faith.  She still remains the most faithful person I’ve ever known.  She never became angry or bitter.  She never took her disappointments in life out on others. That’s the mark of true character, true integrity.  My mother was my first hero.  (My husband being the second.)  She has been a tried and true example of grace and selflessness to so many of her friends and family members, always opening her home to anyone who needs a place to stay.  She is the only person I know of who has never spoken an ill word against anybody.  Trying to get her to make fun of someone is a lost cause, unless it’s herself.  (I know it’s hard to believe that I could come from someone like that.  Remember, I had a father too.)  “Bless her heart” she’ll say, and she won’t even be patronizing about it.  We dubbed her “Saint Jo” because she takes in anyone who needs shelter and she loves everybody.  When my dad died, it was terrible.  It hurt me more than I thought it would and it still hurts.  His absence has been more profound than I ever could’ve dreamed.  But someday when my mom dies, I think the part of my heart that she’s always held up will collapse.  I think my world will stop spinning, at least for a while.

Tonight marks the first official night my mom will spend in her “new” house.  We’ve been renovating my grandma’s house since a couple of weeks after dad’s funeral.  I decided that enough is enough and we needed to get my mom out of her house.  The house, besides having the stigma of death attached to it, was falling in around her.  The cost of fixing up a house like that was way beyond our budget.  So we looked at my grandma’s house, got all of my cousins to agree to give it to my mom, hired a lawyer and took to the task. 

It seems like the universe has been against this renovation from its conception.  The first obstacle in our way was the house itself.  It was a smelly, terribly dark and tiny place.  After knocking down walls, uprooting carpeting, painting the walls and then painting them again to get the stink out, we had a nice clean slate to work with.  But the task still seemed overwhelming. The bathroom was deteriorating and needed to be gutted.  The kitchen was neglected and needed to be gutted too.  There were plumbing issues in the basement, sewer issues, and electrical issues.  The house seemed like a huge metaphor for every obstacle my mom has ever had to overcome. 

We needed help.  I married an Italian, and if you are familiar, family means everything to them.  So my father in law stepped up and spent days and nights working on that house with my husband.  This project could not have even been close to being accomplished without the help of my father in law.  They worked tirelessly on turning that house into a castle for my mom.  A tiny castle, but a castle nonetheless.  Our savings account shrank to half its size.  When my counselor said, “Uh, people your age don’t usually take on this much responsibility,” this is pretty much what she was referring to.  Friends and even relatives questioned our sanity.  It’s not like your mom’s ever lived in a house this nice before. Why spend all this money to make the house so nice?  Why not just do the bare minimum so that your mom can just move in right away?  I always responded to the cynics the same way.  Because if your mom went through what my mom’s been through you would do the same thing.  Or maybe you wouldn’t.  All I know is the bare minimum is just not good enough for my mom.

Although it was slow going, the house was nearing completion.  Then the unthinkable happened.  Four months into the renovation my father in law, who had run about 32 marathons in his lifetime and was in better shape than most thirty year olds I know, had a massive stroke.  The family was devastated.  My husband was crushed to see his dad unable to walk, swallow or breathe on his own.  They had grown so close, especially from working on the house so much together.  The odds of someone even surviving a stroke in the brain stem are slim.  My father in law was lucky to be alive, but there were so many complications.  He kept aspirating and having to be ventilated.  He came close to crashing multiple times. Those first few days in the ICU were one big roller coaster ride. To say that our spirits were crushed is a huge understatement.  My mother felt terrible, like her massive need somehow played a role in his stroke.  She felt extra terrible since she was on the first vacation she had taken in years visiting family when it happened.  My husband could barely bring himself to go over to the house.  Here was a project that he and his dad had started and that he so desperately wanted to finish with him.  His dad told him the night of his stroke, “Get me out of here.  We have a house to finish.”  The situation finally took its toll on my husband and he came home one night completely overwhelmed and scared for his dad’s life.  “Pray for me,” he said, as he put his head in my lap and cried.  I tried to pray, but in all honesty, in the back of my head I thought, really?  Really God, right now?  We were so close to finishing the house.  We were so emotionally drained from dealing with so much death in my family.  And my father in law was so healthy.  He was like Superman.  He could do anything.  I understood my dad being sick, he was in poor health and didn’t take care of himself, but why this, why now?  If you’ve ever had a crisis of faith, you understand that during these times it’s often too difficult to ask God for anything because you’re too busy asking Him “why?”  After I had strained to pray, my husband lifted his head.  “I wish your mom were here.  I could really use her prayers right now.” 

After that night, we started to make a plan of action.  We needed to get this house off of our plate, we needed to wrap things up and get my mom moved in.  Life was crashing in on us and we needed to relieve at least one of our stressors.  Then, one day shortly after that, our Italian connections came through.  I pulled up to grandma’s house on a Saturday and had to park across the street because there were so many cars parked in front of it.  Getting out of my car I heard a bunch of loud voices and laughter.  I walked into the house and my husband’s cousin, his three uncles, one of his aunts, and some of his uncle’s friends were installing kitchen cabinets and doors.  My husband beamed with pride.  Here was his family, doing all of this work for a woman they barely knew, my mom, because of the love they had for him and his dad. 

Tonight all of the hard work of the past six months pays off.  Tonight my mom will finally be able to rest in this house, this house that love built.  Don’t laugh.  It’s true.  The love I have for my mom, my husband’s love for me, his dad’s love for him and his family’s love for my father in law all came full circle to finish this house.  My mom will rest easy tonight.  I hope she settles in, all cozy and snug on her new sofa, opens up her Bible which she does every night, and takes it all in.  I want her to enjoy every square inch of this house.  I hope she beams with pride when she shows it off to her friends.  She deserves it.  She’s had to sacrifice so much to help those she loved.  I hope I’m half the mother she was to me, half the woman she is today.  She gave me the gift of life and now, I hope we’ve given back some of hers.  I think I will rest easy tonight too.  I hope that if she does cry tonight when she’s alone that they are the heart mending kind of tears that she so desperately needs.  The kind that signify overcoming every obstacle life can possibly throw at you.  I hope they are tears of joy.