She looks smaller than I remembered. I was here just two weeks ago, but it feels like a lifetime.
My mother's head rests on a pillow. Her eyes are closed. There are hollows in her cheeks that weren't there at the last visit. In spite of the warm day, she is covered with a sheet and a navy blue quilted bedspread. She feels warm to my touch.
In the intervening two weeks, my home state had been shaken by an earthquake, battered by a hurricane, and much of it is still under flood waters. This all seems of only passing interest at the moment.
This morning I drove from New Jersey to upstate New York on a road that I had traveled so many times, for so many years. This time was different. This time, my mother is dying.
“Hi, Mom,” I say, and kiss her on her forehead. I linger longer than usual to catch a bit of her scent. She smells clean, of hand lotion and soap. Her skin is delicate and soft. “I hear you are not eating very much these days,” I say.
She opens her eyes slightly. It takes her a minute to focus her gaze on mine. Not a smile this time. Just recognition. It's enough, however, for the moment. I had not even expected that much.
“I don't want anything,” she whispers. It is barely audible. Just a movement of the lips. But I am happy for any sign of consciousness. Even if her response signals the endgame.
On my previous visit, my brother and I brought ice cream - her favorite. As a child, I remember the voluptuous bowls of ice cream she consumed after dinner, when the table had been cleared and the dishes were still dripping in the dish rack. That Sunday, however, she did not reach eagerly for the dish as she usually did. I half-filled the little plastic spoon and touched it to her lips. Maybe this would excite her taste buds. Maybe she'd want more. She closed her lips over it, letting it slide off the spoon and then melt on her tongue. She closed her eyes. When I offered her another, her lips tightened. No amount of enticement could tempt her to open her mouth for another taste. Her message was clear. Not interested.
This afternoon I read to her. The book was Paddle-to-the-Sea (1941) by Holling Clancy Holling, which is about a small carved canoe in which an Indian brave sat tall, crafted by the hands of a young boy in the wilds of Canada. The boy sets it on its journey from the mountains of Canada through the Great Lakes and then to the sea. It was a story I loved as a child and only recently rediscovered. Mom slept as I read. I kept on, if only to keep the sound of my voice resonating in her subconscious. I wanted her to know that someone who loved her was nearby.
It reminded me of the many times she would read to my brother and me as children. Not only the Little Golden Books that formed the core of our book collection, but also the latest edition of the comic book Little Lulu – our very first magazine subscription. Without fail, the afternoon it arrived in the mailbox we would run to the living room couch, where we sat, one on each side of her, resting our heads against her soft bosom as she read each panel to us. We hung on every word.
I finish Paddle-to-the-Sea. I stroke her hair. The administrator and nursing supervisor come in. We discuss how Mom is doing. It's hard to talk. My eyes keep filling up. I help to turn her to her other side – she has to be turned every hour. I want to be able to do more.
Mom sleeps. Occasionally she opens her eyes and looks at me. I say, “Hi, Mom. Can I do anything for you?” She closes her eyes again.
As the afternoon wears on, it seems she is having a harder time holding focus in the brief moments that her lids are raised, although she sometimes responds when directly addressed. I know she's in there, somewhere. I just can't get to her. She's on her own journey to the sea.
Mom was a nurse before she married Dad during World War II. She admitted that nursing was never her first love, and was happy to leave it to become a homemaker. Nonetheless, her life was spent appreciating nature and trying to understand the world around her. I first learned the names of wildflowers while on walks in the woods with my mother and Grandmother. I am a historian today, in part, as a result of Mom's voracious appetite for the subject. Her quiet moments were often spent immersed in some enormous tome about the Crusades, the Popes, the lives of the Presidents, or some other similarly dense topic (as they seemed to me then). She lead me on fascinating walks through many a country cemetery, reading the epitaphs aloud and looking for ancestors. She traced the genealogy of not only her family, but Dad's as well - even undertaking a journey with Dad to Canada's Gaspe Peninsula seeking some record of his Irish grandmother who was shipwrecked there over a hundred years before. And organization? Well, OK .... I never really mastered Mom's tidiness, but learned enough from her to at least feel remorse when I am messy.
I turn the pages of a book I am reading, while I stroke her hair. I leave the television on, thinking the sound of voices is helping to keep her tethered to me, to life, even if we are not conversing. Tomorrow, I will read to her again. This time I will choose an article from one of her favorite magazines - National Geographic or Birds and Blooms - still stacked in a neat pile on the bedside table.
There is so much I want to tell her. I want her to know what she has meant to me. How much my life has been shaped by her. About all the important things I learned from her. And yet, in spite of how much she has enriched my life, in spite of all I owe her, all I can manage at this end point is “I love you, Mom.” This, and anything else I might say, seems so inadequate.
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In Memoriam: Janet Travis Delaney
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| Janet Travis Delaney, ca. 1940 |
Janet Travis Delaney died Monday, September 5, 2011. She was 98. Mrs. Delaney was born in Endicott, New York, on December 22, 1912, to Earl Winfield Travis and Jane L. Travis (née Lusk). She was a life-long resident of Endicott, graduating from Union-Endicott High School in 1930. She received her nursing degree from St. Joseph's Hospital, Elmira, N.Y., in 1935, and later joined the nursing staff of Ideal Hospital in Endicott, where she practiced until her marriage to Raymond W. Delaney in 1941.
As the parent of a child with developmental disabilities, Mrs. Delaney, together with her husband Raymond, helped form one of the first parents groups focused on the needs of such children. Over the years, she contributed her volunteer efforts in many ways and was recognized for her work by the Broome Developmental Disabilities Services Office (BDDSO) in 1994. Mrs. Delaney was an ardent avocational historian and genealogist, as well as member of the Old Village of Union Historical Society, an organization for which she served as Secretary for some time.
Mrs. Delaney is survived by children Mary Delaney Krugman and Philip Lockwood Delaney; and grandchildren Sean Dennis Delaney; Erin Delaney Guidici, Daniel Delaney Krugman, and Casey Winfield Krugman. She was predeceased by her husband, Raymond William Delaney, and son, John Travis Delaney.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that Mrs. Delaney's memory be honored by a donation to the Parents Group of Broome Developmental Services Office, 249 Glenwood Road, Binghamton, New York 13905 (607) 770-0255.
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