“It Was Fun”
Without the Major League Baseball playoffs, I’m not sure how we would have weathered the weekend my mother died.
Mom drifted in and out of a comatose state in her final three days. After my sister used her most persuasive lobbying skills, hospice nurses and doctors arrived to increase massively her dilaudid, but abdominal cancer is very painful.
I returned to Washington after 24 hours in New York. My plan was to attend my brother-in-law’s wedding and then fly to Washington, but I never felt right and spent most of my time staring into space. Nina saw it right away and encouraged me to go back to DC.
The preceding night was exruciatingly difficult for Eve and Dad. My father picked me up at Union Station and said, “I’m glad you’re back. We have beef ribs for dinner, but go see Mom before you eat.”
My uncle Mark, a celebrity chef, who is missing Thomas Keller’s 55th birthday to speak at my mother’s funeral, has fed my mother and family for months. In the final week, he was here twice a day and prepared nearly every meal.
I walked in the house, sprinted up the stairs, and entered Mom’s room. Even in the two days her color had grown paler and her breathing more labored. I stroked her hand and said
Mom, we’re all here. We love you, it’s time to let go.
She would have none of it. Instead she raised her eyebrows and moaned a little louder.
Three days earlier, I told her how proud I was of her bravery. She denied her terminal illness for several months, but over the summer started to speak more openly about death. She turned her head towards me and whispered, “Aaron, I’m not sure I’ve really come to terms with this.” Then she grinned. I knew she wasn’t ready.
By the time I returned, she was rarely conscious. Nerves were frayed. My sister who was working the pace of an intensive care nurse with only one patient — was exhausted. We worried about Dad’s ability to sleep but he refused to leave her. They slept side by side to the very end. Dad on the foreign side of his queen sized bed and Mom in a hospital bed. They often held hands through the night.
At times Mom would babble incoherently. Occasionally, the sentences were clear, but made no sense. Dad kissed her Saturday night. She kissed back and with an energy surge frequent to those near death told him the simple, poetic truth: “It was fun.” These were her final words.
Sunday my uncles surrounded us, Mom’s pain grew worse and I found myself unable to spend more than a minute with her. All throughout this process, I tried to stay steady and keep our family loose. But Sunday I started to lose it. I watched baseball, football and frequently checked my fantasy teams. I went upstairs, but I couldn’t say anything. I covered my ears when I heard mom moaning because Eve was changing her position in bed.
Renee, our superhero hospice nurse reminded me,
“Sons really have trouble watching their mothers die. It’s the daughters who do the best work. Don’t feel bad.”
The Redskins pulled out a squeaker.
Mom’s brother Frank and his wife Nina found all the amazing food in the refrigerator and pulled a dinner together. Mark arrived with a cake. You see, Sunday 10/10/10 was my father’s birthday. Towards the end of the evening, Eve put a candle in the cake and we sang Happy Birthday. He turned 74, the same age as my mother. For the first time in 50 years he returned to his wedding weight.
Sunday night found Dad rooting for his hometown Phillies as Mom settled into a pain-free, calm sleep.
When we woke up the next morning, I heard Mom’s shallow, moaning breaths a floor away. I started to get dressed when Eve called me. Then Dad called me more forcefully and I tumbled down the steps into their room.
Mom had died.
Dad was shaving, Eve was preparing her morning care, I was getting dressed and she just let go. Eve felt for a pulse and I lay down next to her to try the same. My heart was racing so I couldn’t figure out what was happening. Was it my pulse or hers? Her chest was still and finally her face relaxed.
Death is peaceful; perhpas because dying is its opposite.
We spent 15 minutes with her body, largely in silence. Then we picked up the phones and started calling family.
Milestones
Well now, everything dies, baby, that’s a fact
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back
Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty
And meet me tonight in Atlantic City
-Bruce Springsteen “Atlantic City”
They stood for a third ovation as my mother rose from her table to leave her banquet. It was a long minute to walk the 50 feet to exit the ballroom. The applause remained constant. She was embarrassed, but they continued. Finally, she whispered to our host who promptly boomed out, “Carla wants you to sit down.” So they did.
The modern Las Vegas casino technology that masks the tobacco smell has not made its way to the Trump Marina in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The 70’s cigarette scent permeates the carpets and drapes near the rows of slot machines that are 98% empty. In the ballroom across the hallway, 150 booksellers and publishers gathered to honor my mother and her co-founder Barbara Meade with the Mid-Atlantic Booksellers’ version of the Irving Thalberg award. Publisher’s Weekly covered it this week.
Using her walker, my mother methodically made her way to a cocktail table where people arrived to congratulate and wish her well. Walking the long hallways in the hotel required immense energy. At 74 and owners of the most famous bookstore in the region, the P&P partners were treated like the grand dames of the ball. Nobody mentioned Mom’s illness, but their smiles and body language conveyed what we all thought: “We made it. She’s still with us.” She soldiered to get to this event.
Cancer patients need milestones and our family pointed to Thalberg all summer. After my grandmother’s 100th birthday in May, the next milestone became my son’s 10th birthday. She might have visited New York, but she was hospitalized that week with an infection. In August, Atlantic City felt years away. Now, we quieted before she spoke.
Mom alternates between moments of cogent eloquence and stream of consciousness prose that would not make for a good acceptance speech. Mom was necessarily brief. She spoke for maybe a minute focusing on a single motif:
It’s fun to be here. I’ve always had fun. It’s fun for me to see you and I hope you have fun selling books.
Barbara spoke movingly about her 26 year journey with Mom and how well things had turned out. She urged the young booksellers in the room to consider partnership and find ways to work together. 3 minutes and two themes: Fun and Partnership
As we started eating our salads, one of the store’s most senior managers, Mark LaFramboise introduced a new award that would be named in honor of my mother. The Carla Cohen award will be given to the book that most reinforces the right to free speech in society. Pretty heady stuff. Another standing ovation.
People stopped by the table to offer us help with the search for new ownership of the store. Friends bent down to give her kisses. She remembered all the faces and many of the names. People love her and many of them (especially the women) expressed it.
I scouted high and low for comedic material about the evening, but the search turned up nothing. The story feels increasingly cinematic — a real-life tearjerker, a celebration of institutional endurance, and personal resilience.
Independent bookstores are an endangered species, but, so too, are Borders and Barnes and Noble. Politics and Prose has a soul. To think it will die because of the kindle/Ipad revolution is to view the world through the prism of a spreadsheet or an Ipad App. Independents are threatened, but they don’t have cancer.
During the dinner, Mom told us that she wanted to keynote the booksellers Winter Institute — an Academy to study their craft. We have our next milestone. It’s 4 months away.
Special thanks to Ben Hunter who reminded me of the Springsteen ballad in the epigraph
Family Guy, Hebrew School and Cancer
Yesterday morning I sat on the couch next to my mother and typed “Family Guy Scarejew Jon Stewart” into the YouTube search box and showed my mom a clip. She couldn’t hear so I got my headphones and then she laughed.
I entered “Family Guy DMV” and Mom smiled through the morphine haze that can overtake her in the late morning.
Later, we sat outside in the garden observing how few monarchs visit her butterfly bushes. 3 times she told me that hurricanes had wiped out the butterfly population, but she couldn’t recall the name of the hurricane that did it . “Katrina,” I reminded.
Mom I have new project for Dad. Want to hear?
When it comes to raising the kids with a Jewish historical and spiritual context, I’ve failed. My father steadily reminds me and his quiet, persistent, and constructive criticism is warranted.
I’d prefer to blame Nina (who looks, but is not Jewish) for this parental deficiency, but, while she has encouraged, suggested and even prodded me to take action my ambivalence has been paralyzing. On only our second date (Tomoe Sushi), I told Nina that the kids would have to be Jewish.
She said ok.
We got married 3 years later.
For reasons I can’t explain or feelings I’ve skillfully repressed, joining an organized Jewish community eludes me. My overt connection to faith, ethnicity, and ancestry start with my name (I’m making a film about it) and continue with my career (AnyClip is an Israeli company). But I struggle at home. I’m more successful choosing Christmas trees than synagogues.
Mom let’s face it. I’m not good at the “making my kids Jewish thing” so here’s my idea. Do you think Dad could be their formal Jewish educator? We’d be borrowing from the evangelical movement. Call it Hebrew Home School.
All of mom’s anxiety about death focuses on my father and her bookstore. 10 months into cancer, those remain her primary worries. Now Dad could have a new project that would distract him from the disease. She grew excited, pitched and sold him in 5 minutes. Perfect clarity for the moment. Naturally, Dad had to say yes.
You can learn a lot about marriage observing the twilight of my parents 52 years together. In the past 10 months, His only night away was for his granddaughter’s 7th birthday. Dad dutifully fills the pillbox and hands her syringes of morphine. He’s even learned to make milk shakes full of the calories she loathes, but must consume.
Meanwhile, she nudges him to think about life after her. She worries about Dad and the house and dad alone. He’s not ready to talk about any of these practicalities. My father’s support network is extensive, but when we go home he is often left alone in their enormous old house coping with my mother’s exhaustion, fear and confusion. This decline depletes vast reserves of my father’s once famous and still considerable energy.
Sometimes my mother’s condition can overwhelm. Yesterday, she had a long overdue appointment with the audiologist. Her hearing has deteriorated so much in the past month that Dad worried the disease had metastasized to her ears Doctors, have since reassured us that her hearing loss is not affected by her tumor.
As Mom got ready to go to her appointment, she couldn’t find her pocketbook. Long before cancer infected our family, purses, keys, and eyeglasses would wander off and hide somewhere in my parents house. Mom insisted she brought her bag home from the bookstore the day before. Dad agreed and was convinced that a thief penetrated our living room and stole this pocketbook while we watched the US Open Final.
We looked high and low until we spotted the small red purse on the back seat of the car. Dad’s frustration transformed into enormous relief as he realized he wouldn’t have to deal with new insurance and credit cards. Either way, she wasn’t going back to the DMV to replace that license.
As I stepped off the train at Penn Station, Dad called to report that Mom had an amazing day. With her hearing aids adjusted her alertness dramatically increased. Tomorrow morning she will attend the quarterly Politics and Prose staff meeting.
Tennis Therapy
My father and I snuck out of the hospital today and played an 80 minute set. I won bringing my lifetime record to 2-176. But I’m 2 for my last 6 and with him rapidly approaching 74 and my new Babolat raquet I feel my best days are ahead of me.
Mom’s cancer has me far more familiar with Washington DC traditions than I have been in years. How could I have forgotten about the joys of playing in 100% humidity? When we returned drenched in sweat, the receptionists and candy stripers gave quizzical looks. Who walks into a hospital looking like they just left the gym?
Meanwhile, the doctors have finally figured out that Mom’s narcotic cocktail was creating some discouraging side effects. Nobody wants to feel pain, but having cancer doesn’t mandate a trip on the Magical Mystery Tour. Our conversations made me flash back to freshmen evenings in the woods at Hampshire College.
With some reductions, she’s considerably clearer. There is light at the end of this week’s tunnel. Hopefully home for the weekend.
Where I’ve Been
Amtrak somewhere in Delaware — Last week, I ran into a friend who promptly asked, “Where have you been?”
9 months ago my mother got sick. A month later, the diagnosis was cancer. A month after that, we learned it was terminal. Nobody was more shocked than my mother. After all, she reasoned, her mother was turning 100 this year. Why wouldn’t she live for another 25 years?
The decline has been precipitous. She’s always tired. During two treatments of chemotherapy she reminded me of Nicholson’s MacMurphy after he was lobotomized in the final scene of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Towards my grandmother’s birthday in May, she regained some strength and was able to stand and deliver a lovely toast. She went to work frequently for a while working on staff issues and thinking about a transition. But this past month it’s been more days in the hospital than at home.
When I was 10, I asked my mother a lot of questions about death. My other grandmother was sick and, like many kids, I was trying to understand mortality. My mother told me, “If I ever get really sick, I think it would be better to just jump off a bridge. I’d be doing it for you of course. Watching people die is horrible.”
Jet forward 33 years and it turns out my mother is fighting it with family support. My dad has left her exactly one night in 9 months. My sister, a nurse, flies home for a week nearly every month and I ride the train to DC frequently. For a time, I competed for the FourSquare mayorship at Johns Hopkins.
So Where Have I Been? Working in New York or traveling to Israel and California. I’ve been at Little League games and out to dinners with my wife. I’ve been to the Catskills for 4th of July. But mostly I’ve been lost in thought. Not entirely anywhere.
