Diminuendo
After 180 days of quarantine, I abandoned the quotidian responsibilities of my life (a marriage, a job, a dog, two grown children and a house) and returned to my New England hometown. My mother lives in a lovely retirement Village, where we’d celebrated her 90th birthday with a family reunion in February. Travel felt marginally safe in the fall of 2020, so I took advantage of it to spend a month at her side.
An old friend loaned me a house which faces the same waterfront as the house that I grew up in. When the light comes in through the windows each morning, it calibrates my brain back to childhood. Sailing trophies, bowls of scallop shells, old radios, lithographs of seascapes, flyers tucked under sofa pillows from a music festival, and stacks of soft, tattered beach towels. The floors are bare and creaky, cool to my bare feet. I found a stack of rugs, rolled in brown paper from the cleaners. Perhaps they were sent away after my friend’s mother died at 93 — her obituaries are tacked onto bulletin boards in a few spots and although I don’t remember her, reading them brings solace. I visit my mother for most of each day, and one passtime is to read obituaries sent around by the Alumni society of her high school. She stops me throughout, to laugh or tell stories. I’m amazed how a single, simple detail will trigger a lengthy memory. And make her smile.
I pay careful attention to how loved ones remember their elders, aware that I will one day write my mother’s obituary. So much can be gleaned from a ten-paragraph story. One woman, who had “bumps in the road” (in WASP speak, that translates to a son that died in a car crash and a husband who suffered from Parkinson’s for fifteen years). Her cheery obit told of a sailing trip to Bermuda at 75, and white water rafting with the grandkids. Once, I might have scoffed at the lack of career accomplishments but now, I hope that my life will be viewed with such a lens of adoration and adventure.
One bright fall morning, I took my mother on a road trip to visit a summer cottage that her family had rented when she was small. Even with limited eyesight (only one eye works, and the other is very sensitive to the sun) she provided turn-by-turn directions, and on the final bend of a road exclaimed, “this is where we’d start bouncing up and down in the backseat.” Unlike classic Cape homes, these strange Victorian contraptions had wrap around porches and three story dormer windows that peered out to Massachusetts Bay. Mom told me where to park and although I couldn’t see a path through the thicket, she knew exactly where it was, and raced eagerly ahead to the shore. I kept a firm grip on her arm, her walker and any semblance of age left behind.
She didn’t stop talking for an hour, pouring out a torrent of stories about the cousins living in that cottage, her Uncle Tack making ice cream on that porch, and Aunt Marion rocking in her chair right there. Seems the family decamped from May to October in the polio years, traveling back to town to check in and out of school at the appointed date, but retreating to safety until cool weather returned. Polio spread in the hotter months, so from ages 5–12 she enjoyed a five-month long sequestered summer. Kids weren’t allowed off the porch until nine AM (allowing the adults time to drink their coffee) and looking around, I can’t imagine what they did all day other than pure old-fashioned play.
Those idyllic days are so lovingly fixed as her happy place that I wonder about the effect of the polio quarantine on her mind. Was her development arrested in a manner that we are only considering through the lens of this pandemic, as we imagine how isolation will affect a current generation of children? Or has she merely found the most comforting location for her aging mind to rest? At the end of the path, where the beach rises from the sea, she points out a house around the bend where her best friend used to summer. Mary is still her best friend; she and Mom talk nearly every afternoon — between naps — and this connection pins them to the firmament of a world that is fading rapidly.
I give her showers and cut her nails. Dinner is delivered on a tray with pleasurable reliability. We watch a documentary by David Attenborough, who spent his life exploring the globe’s natural wonders. At 93, his “A Life on Our Planet” offers a grave warning about the planet’s vanishing wild spaces and the extreme population growth that occurred over the course of Mom’s exact lifetime. She gasped at the gorgeous photography, and exclaimed that she’d like to purchase Attenborough’s book for all the grandkids at Christmas. But, three days later, when a friend mentions the documentary, Mom doesn’t recall a thing about it, even though I gently remind her with clues. She’s only a little bit embarrassed, shrugging it off as her friend looks in my eyes understandingly. We nod and move on, and the dignity of her friend’s response brings tears to my eyes.
After all, they’re all declining in one-way or another. The slope downhill is as normal as lunch, and in many ways, they’ve already won. They’re not locked away in a nursing home, and live in collegiate-like proximity while cruising through the final years. A gentile politeness abounds, one that puts a quiet blanket on the chill of aging. They comment on the weather and ask about one another’s children. A stranger would hardly know they’ve been friends for 60 years. And as one succumbs to the inevitable, they’re deeply touched. But it’s not tragic.
We received a copy of the Village’s “Facebook” and I scoured the pages, curious about names to pair with faces I’d come to know during my visits. I noted three same sex couples, a tripling of the count from a year earlier. One of Mom’s favorite residents was a master rower at 80 and still kayaks with her sons at 94. Her beloved neighbor is 96 and Queen of the joint, the locus of all knowledge (and gossip). I think of the wisdom of “use it or lose it” and my sense of what’s cool shifts. Some folks look their age, shuffling with head down through the hallway to collect mail. But look carefully: there is a 98 year old widow, who likes to drink milkshakes in the café, and that hunched over lady keeps the garden in impeccable bloom, even though she recently broke her foot. Mom visits the garden as the fall fades, stooping to smell a rose she planted there to remember my father by, and her pleasure with this ritual is matched only by her admiration for the friend who keeps the neat beds.
The residents can’t gather for meals or visit each other just yet and though they grumble a bit, they seem to know that “this too shall pass”. When I leave at night, I see the glow of televisions in rooms on the second floor, and feel the elegance of this rectitude. What stories do they have to tell? I know details about a few — one raised two Navy Seals, both of whom ran Fortune 400 companies. Another had three children all of whom became Mormans and whose weddings she could not attend because she is Episcopalian. Remarkable lives in repose, snuggled peacefully together as the fall turns to winter.
Mom was unable to reach Mary for over a week. It nagged, so I swung by Mary’s house one evening, only to discover it shuttered and dark. Then, we heard news that she’d broken a hip, and next, that the hip got infected at the rehab clinic. Mom seemed to understand this chain of events. They’d lived their lives in perfect parallel — sharing a love for gardening, birding, their children, and the beach at the end of the street. When Mary finally slipped away, we knew within hours. Small towns, and old ladies, just work that way.
What’s the secret to marching so far to an end line? Sean Connery died, and it startled me to realize that James Bond was my mother’s age. Maybe for Attenborough it is curiosity. For the master rower, it’s clearly fitness. For some, it may be sharing a skill for water coloring with a class of octogenarian novices. For my particular old person, it is talk of her children and grandkids — the kids call her “cute” because her pleasure in their exploits is so pure and self-affirming.
She has no appetite for anything but sweets. She orders meals that trigger memories — flounder cakes that remind her of her mother, and hot dogs that remind her of summer. But when the food comes, she only just picks… until it’s time for dessert when she tucks into the apple crisp or the chocolate cake, licking every last crumb and asking with a mischievous grin if I’m going to finish mine.
I’d like to tuck right down there with her, with meals delivered each night and a generator that will protect against the power outages that come with winter in New England. But I have miles to go before I sleep, and have been reminded to log enough adventure and friendship and memories to comfort me when it’s my time to slow down.
