Chapter 11
My last post with the picture of a bat and a ball has gotten even more comments, shares, and likes than the Nutella one. It’s earned me a couple more followers too. I click on the grief hashtag, curious about what else there is. It’s mostly sad quotes in pretty fonts and even sadder black-and-white photos.
My posts aren’t like that. They’re angry and frustrated and perhaps a little more real. Maybe it’s why people like them. Because grief isn’t always pretty fonts and stylized photos of a sunset or a gray sky over a beach.
It’s ugly and out of focus and changes on a daily basis.
And I type exactly that with a picture of my middle finger.
Just as I hit post, Mom asks if I’ll go with her to the store. I try to temper my shock and awe so as not to scare her away from the land of the living.
“Yeah, sure,” I say coolly and slip my feet into shoes. She waits at the front door for me, in her jacket, with her purse over her shoulder. She’s even showered and styled her hair. “You look good, Mom,” I tell her as we walk to my car.
She doesn’t acknowledge the compliment, probably because it’s not really one. After almost two months of darkness and sleep, I’m saying she looks like a real human instead of the lump of skin and bones she’s become.
I try to keep the conversation light in the car. I want to keep her talking, keep her conscious like they do in the movies, to prove to myself and her that she’s still with us. She’s still alive. She tells me she wants to make pork chops, green beans, and potatoes, something she’d normally make with her eyes closed.
After parking the car, I wrestle a cart away from the rest and lead the way into the grocery store, noticing she’s slowed down since walking from the parking lot. She’s lost some of the confidence she had at home as she holds on to her purse with both hands, and I slow my pace to match her timid steps. First, we head to the produce section, where she wearily eyes fresh garlic and parsley before choosing which ones she wants. I notice the slight tremor in her fingers when she places the beans into the cart, but I don’t say anything.
When we move to the meat, she clings to the side of the cart, and I can tell her skin is ashen beneath the bit of makeup she’s put on. When she can’t decide on package of meat, I pick one out.
“You all right, Mom?”
She clears her throat, nods, and positions the cart toward the condiment aisle. This time, I don’t wait for her to stand there, lost in whatever thought she’s been struggling with, and I reach for a bottle of olive oil. We move farther through the store to the dairy section.
“I’ve been buying almond milk for myself, so we don’t have any regular,” I inform her, opening the glass door. “Do you want a gallon?” I ask, glancing over my shoulder.
My mother is bent in half with her hands on her knees.
I drop the milk and run to her. “Mom, what’s wrong.”
She wheezes, and I try unsuccessfully to stand her up straight. She’s completely white, but when I touch her cheek, she’s hot. Her hands are trembling in mine when I tug her toward me. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t breathe,” she pants, clutching at her chest.
Fear tears through me, and I look around for anyone. An older gentleman is at the end of the aisle, and I shout to him, “Help! I need help!”
He cocks his head but scampers away, returning with an employee a minute later as my mother completely gives out on me, and we sink onto the floor.
“What happened?” the employee asks me.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I think we need an ambulance.”
The older man nods in agreement. “Could be a heart attack.”
Mom wheezes, and I’m helpless holding her. I vaguely remember a kid in grade school breathing into a paper bag when he was hyperventilating and think it couldn’t hurt. But there are none to be found in the dairy aisle of the supermarket.
More people gather around, and I wave down a young, acne-faced kid wearing the grocery store polo shirt. “Hey! You got a paper bag?”
He wrenches back, apparently frightened by me. “Where would I get one of those?”
“This is a grocery store! Find me one!” He runs off, and I hold Mom’s cheeks between my palms. “Breathe, Mom. You’re all right.”
“The ambulance will be here in a minute,” another employee says, and it takes everything in me not to wail. How is it I’m stuck in this position again? There’s nothing I can do for her except try to calm her down as we wait.
I find my cell phone and tap on my father’s cell phone number to call him, but he doesn’t answer, and I growl in frustration. Just as the high-pitched sirens blare outside, I stick my phone back in my bag. Two paramedics arrive with a gurney, and they ask Mom questions, her eyes fluttering open and closed as they strap her up with oxygen and wheel her outside.
“You can ride with us,” one of them says to me. I follow them out with Mom’s purse in my hands, our groceries and dinner long forgotten. The gurney clicks and clacks as the paramedics push it into the ambulance. I have to hop up into the back, and no time is wasted as instruments are pulled from compartments. Wires, tubes, needles.
Mom is stuck with an IV.
I hold her hand.
My head bumps against the wall as we take a turn.
It’s all horrible.
The paramedic writes something down on a chart. She’s so calm as she works; I don’t know how or why she could be in this atmosphere, speeding down the road with someone lying in front of her, possibly having a heart attack.
My heart beats out of my chest—maybe I’m the one having a heart attack.
We arrive at the hospital, and the paramedics wheel Mom into the emergency room, leaving two nurses to get her wired up to different monitors. It’s all a blur until a doctor enters. “It’s not a heart attack.”
I breathe out in relief and wiggle my fingers, forcing some sensation back into them after having them shut into tight fists for so long.
“What is it, then?” I ask since Mom is still breathing through a mask.
“Most likely an anxiety attack,” he says. “Has anything like this ever happened before?”
I study Mom, completely reclined, and she blinks a few times, tears rolling sideways toward her temples. I answer for her. “I don’t think so. My brother died in February so… It’s…”
The doctor nods sympathetically and writes something on a prescription pad before typing on a computer in the corner of the room. “I’m prescribing her some antianxiety medication, only a few tablets, but I’m also going to make a referral note about this for her primary care physician.” He addresses my mom then. “It’s helpful to talk to someone. Anxiety doesn’t always go away on its own. Sometimes when family trauma happens, a mixture of counseling and medication is the best solution.”
She closes her eyes, and I hang my head.
Something like shame washes over me. Each of us, Mom, Dad, and me, we’re shadows of the people we used to be. We’re trying not to disappear, and it’s impossible to truly confront what happened. Like if we don’t admit it, it didn’t happen. At least, that’s what it’s like for me.
When the doctor leaves, I pull out my cell phone and give my dad a call again. He doesn’t answer again, so I call his office and talk to his secretary.
“He’s in a meeting right now,” she says.
“Tell him it’s an emergency.”
“An emergency?” Her voice rises, and I assume she’s thinking of the emergency we had two months ago.
“Yeah, my mom.”
“Okay, hold on.”
The line quiets until my father picks up a minute later. “Cassandra, what is it?”
“Mom’s in the hospital,” I say. “We were at the grocery store, and she had a panic attack.”
“Jesus Christ.”
When he doesn’t offer anything else, I ask him, “Can you come home?”
“I’m in the middle of a meeting with the CFO.”
I huff. “She’s in the hospital, Dad.”
“It was a panic attack. People have those all the time. Take her home and put her to bed.”
“Like I’ve been doing for the past couple of weeks?”
“Yeah.”
When I grumble, he sighs like this is all so difficult for him.
“Anything else?” he asks.
“No.” I don’t give him the opportunity to hang up on me. I instead press the red button before he can. I text Aunt Joanie to tell her, and she says she’ll be over after work, but that doesn’t help me with getting to my work on time.
Gary eyes me when I finally run into Sassie’s, and I hold up my hand, but it doesn’t stop him. “You know I’m letting a lot of things slide with you, but you’re half an hour late.”
“I know. There was nothing I could do about it.”
He folds his arms and gives me a disappointed-parent look. “I’m going to have to write you up for this. You’re on thin ice here, Cass.”
I stuff my purse into one of the cubbyholes in the corner and steal a pen from the jar, ignoring him. If I worried about every write-up from Gary at Sassie’s Lassies, I’d be lying next to my mother in bed right now. This job is the least of my worries.
After cleanup and shutdown, it’s almost midnight by the time I clock out, but I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to deal with my parents, with my mom on whatever pill makes her like a zombie. Or wondering what time my father will be home or if he’ll be drinking. It’s all too hard. People said it would eventually get easier. But when does eventually start?
In the empty parking lot outside, I sprawl back on the hood of my car. It’s cool out, and I pull my jacket up around my neck as I open the contacts on my phone to call Vince.
We usually only text, and I’m dazed by his gravelly, bedroom voice saying my name. “Cass?”
“Yeah. Hey.”
“It’s the middle of the night.”
“Not really.” I glance at the time on my phone. “Only 12:13.”
“Only 12:13,” he repeats with a sleepy laugh.
“Did I wake you up?”
“Kind of,” he says. “I fell asleep a little while ago.”
“I just got out of work,” I tell him, imagining his eyes closed and hair sticking up, cheek creased from his pillow and sleep. I don’t let myself imagine what he sleeps in.
“Everything all right?” he asks quietly.
I stare up at the dark sky, stars twinkling here and there. I want to talk to Vince in person, with his pretending not-to-smile smile, but I don’t know how to ask. More likely, I’m too chickenshit to ask. So I settle for his voice in my ear instead. “What do you think happens when we die?”
“Hmm,” he says after a moment of silence. “I don’t think there is one answer.”
“What’s that mean?”
His voice becomes stronger, as if he’s sitting up, fully awake. “A lot of people believe different things, and I don’t think any one is right or wrong. I think maybe it all kind of happens, like whatever you believe will happen…does.”
“As in heaven or hell or one hundred virgins?”
“Yeah. I guess…”
“What if you don’t believe in anything? What if you think the end is the end?” I’m sincerely interested in his thoughts. He is the expert.
“I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it much.”
I sit up. “But you bury dead people for a living. What else is there for you to think about?”
He yawns. “You ever read Peter Pan?”
“No.”
“It was my favorite book when I was little,” he tells me, and I smile. I don’t know why, but I like knowing that little factoid about Vince.
“He says ‘To die would be an awfully big adventure,’ and I guess it’s true. It’s the biggest adventure of them all. It’s inevitable we’ll all find out what’s on the other side one day, whether it’s a big guy with a beard or an island in the middle of the ocean.” He pauses for a few moments, building my suspense. “I don’t know what it’ll be, but I’m okay with not knowing for now.”
I’m okay with not knowing for now.
It’s not life-changing, yet it’s so perfectly uncomplicated. Like Vince, uncomplicated. I want to be like that, like him. Easy like Sunday morning.
I try to push away thoughts about what Sunday mornings would be like with him. Probably lazy and warm, hazy and still. The kind of stuff Pinterest aesthetics are made of.
I’m tempted to confess all that’s tumbling around in my head, but I can’t. It’s physically impossible for me to even form the syllables with my lips, although I think he already knows that about me. Like my brain, my heart, and my mouth don’t exist on the same plane. They don’t speak the same language.
Before I can begin to explain what’s inside me, he says, “I’ve seen what grief can do to families, and I know you’re trying to parent your parents right now.”
“Parenting my parents? Is that what I’m doing?”
“Seems like it to me.” He clears his throat, his voice coming through louder, and it sounds as if he’s right next to me when he says, “I know I’ve said it before, but you’re doing okay, Cass.”
“Feels like I’m drowning.” I straighten my neck to lift my head higher, keeping it above the water.
“Just breathe,” he says. And I do.
I tilt my head back up to the sky, microscopic underneath the vastness of it all, and close my eyes, giving in to my own insignificance in the face of an awfully big adventure.