The Impending Ending

“T’is fearful thing

To love

What death can touch

To love, to hope, to dream,

And oh, to lose.

A thing for fools, this,

Love,

But a holy thing

To love what death can touch”

Anon. 12th Century

Holding her hand

I put it to my lips

These iconic fingers

Whose magic mastered the fiddle decades prior

And now paints landscapes

And impresses Tsiona to draw them holding the brush.

The beauty of form has not diminished

They are perfection in form

Where all other body parts have withered

Their skeletal majesty remains

In my hands as I raise them to my lips

No words,

Just the kiss and the holding and stroking

Says it all.

The bond

Mother and son

Despite everything

Maybe because of everything

I am who I am because of it.

She, the driving force

A Tsunami that swept thought my tiny consciousness

Demanding and unbending,

Love, conditional

The pain and misery

The torment and irrationality

Internalized in a life driven to this day.

Now by her easy chair, perched daily

with dad by her side watching her lovingly.

All is calm.

She smiles rarely

She never did

She looks ahead

with that same tragic sense that flows though my veins

no wonder we are bound

in flesh and spirit.

Dad sits on one side holding her hand and gently stroking it

Devoted to her

From the time she bewitched him

(her fiddle tied the knot)

Suffered her for decades

Yet does not leave her side,

While I, sit temporarily on the other side

She is engulfed by the two men who adore her

Oblivious to the moment

Living in the eternal now

No memory for near or premonition of events to unfold.

All decisions are made with a wave of the hand signifying

“no” or “enough” or “rubbish”, or “not worth my time”

But now unable to vocalize rely on those mimes fully.

How does one face destiny?

The ending of things

In the slow decay of time

The daily challenge of living usually taken for granted,

Where every activity now must be calculated,

necessary, there being an economy of effort

By the nursing aides who measure the time for this and the effort for that.

Watching the slow decline of mental and physical prowess

Accelerating each month,

Facing the ending of things with uncertainty.

The weekly blood analysis plots the objectification of decline

The indices of iron, potassium, albumen, white cells project from the page

like witnesses on the stand, pointing accusingly, in one direction, to the dock.

The children discuss the meaning of this or that change,

having plotted them on the graph

Which meanders up and down prompting this or that intervention.

Powerless to redirect or change the flow of the river of fate,

(This was predetermined by genes and a life of living),

As it ploughs inexorably to the sea of death.

This in between time of decay and shutting down

I am not prepared for emotionally.

Leaving her each time with a heavier heart

This woman is the vitality of my life,

Albeit mostly unacknowledged,

The force majeure, hated and beloved at the same time,

Who had such impact on the soul of the writer,

That nothing passes muster to this day,

Unless it passes through the unconscious critical eye of la nom du mere.

Her mark in my psyche has little to do

with the small frame I pick up to transfer to the

commode today or place in the front seat of the car

on the next visit to the hematologist for the iron infusion.

The head of the department looks at the blood results

without even glancing at his patient. He knows too much and probably

wishes to protect himself from her loss.

How else to explain his lack of humanity.

She now physically resembles Nana,

sitting in the green arm chair, neck flexed hunched over,

and head looking down, into the bleak future, knowing everything.

Suffering the very living and struggle of today.

With the weight of the struggles of the past, heavy on her shoulders.

Mum no longer vocalizes, her cords torn

by the month-long coughing of her recent pneumonia.

(Should have I admitted her sooner? Would it have helped?

Knowing how she hates that place).

Her speech is rare and articulated without sound,

Yet she whispers, “when will you come again”

and my heart melts in pain.

I do not know when.

I do not know if,

There is no timeclock revealed to me

Marking the ending

Which feels not so far.

There is no violin playing outside her bay in the ward.

Naftali comes to visit and plays

but she does not muster the usual excitement

Hearing her own fiddle being played,

knowing the tone (she has perfect pitch of course)

Her eyes lit up with recognition and satisfaction.

That was a few years ago, despite the stroke,

the musical appreciation

That locus of the cerebral circuitry

had been unaffected by the clot

And she wept hearing the sound of her fiddle

wafting in to the ward.

The mind realizes but the heart cannot bear it.

The idea of life without her steady presence,

Her watchful eye on my progress and achievements

Even my downfalls (she alone flew in to Boston

to support me in my trial in 1984)

Now perched on her recliner the world comes to her,

Her progeny lovingly attends in pilgrimage,

recognizing her matriarchy and strength of character

And intuition and moral authority, her presence

and impact on so many lives

Above all mine.

The inner voice keeps telling me

“this is but the way of all flesh” and

“her longevity has been a blessing”

And the facts of nature and time and the blood analyses

all show you with great accuracy

the prognosis of the ending inching closer

As it should.

But the heart bleeds nonetheless.

She reveals the inner connection between love and loss

in her silent uncompromising commitment to her values

and her refusal to ever complain.

This aristocracy of spirit exacerbates my sense of awe.

She is in control of even this.

She bends to no one but herself.

And when the time comes it is she who will decide the end.

Not the disease not the fatigue, not the process.

I want to mark this time, I want to not let it slip,

too often we ignore the slipping and sliding as

the ending inches closer, as if it betrays

the neat paradigm of healthy, disease and absence.

I validate and valerate this phase too.

These precious moments of intimacy, hand in hand,

listening to a Heifetz Chaconne

(and her shaking her head in disbelief at his mastery)

as if hearing it for the first time

(though I play it each time I come)

or Victor Borges’ musical humor,

are the way we share those critical values she holds dearest.

I have inherited from Nana and her the tragic sense of life.

This lens colors all joy and grounds all perception

in a rootedness of shared empathy.

It drives the engine of compassion for others

and sympathy for those suffering.

Now, however the focus is on her pain and her ending,

which tears me apart.