Drinking with the Saints

We put my mother's ashes in the ground in my hometown in Iowa today. There's something indelibly shocking about seeing both of your parents' names on tombstones.

My brother suggested I read something so I revised a past post that was the product of many dinner conversations with my mom during the years that she lived with me.

My mother’s education only went as far as the 8th grade, and then she went to work. But even before that first paycheck, she remembered get paid a nickel to pick the bugs off the neighbor’s potatoes. She began her first full-time job at the age of fourteen, living with a doctor, his wife, and their newborn. Never leave the mother alone with the baby, she was cautioned. In the middle of one night, my mother awoke to a commotion, and was told that the mother had tried to kill the baby even though the husband had been right there with her. In the morning, the wife was packed off to an asylum, the baby went to live with relatives, and my mother found herself out of a job. 

After that she and her twin sister Millie worked in the cafeteria at Loras College. She remembered how she put the cherry just so in the center of the grapefruit halves for the priests.

Then they were waitresses in Dubuque, Iowa at Diamond’s Bar and Grill and at the Triangle Café. There were no tips in those days. Except from one guy who always tipped a quarter. The waitresses would trip over each other trying to get to him.

There was a stint at Betty Jane Candies, hand-dipping chocolates. Eat as much as you want, she said her boss told her. The eating with abandon only lasted a day or two.

And she sold cigarettes and smoking paraphernalia at Stampfers, a fancy department store in downtown Dubuque.

Then she worked in a club across the river in East Dubuque as a dice girl in the game "twenty-six." Millie spun the roulette wheel. One night their parents walked in, surprised to see their daughters there. My mom told me she and her sister were just as surprised to see their parents.

Millie went out to Baltimore first. They had a girlfriend who could help them get good paying jobs at Glenn L. Martin, a company going full throttle in the manufacture of aircraft for World War II. Mom borrowed money from a friend to send Millie out first in the spring of ’43 and then they both worked to save money, and my mom joined her sister in the fall. Millie was a riveter, and my mom worked for Glenn L. Martin as a file clerk.

Then came the jobs that I envy. If I could go back in time and be my mother for a couple of months, I'd be a hatcheck girl at the Chanticleer, the Band Box, or the Club Charles. I'd live in Baltimore and hear every fabulous band and collect all the autographed headshots of the stars. I'd be the photo girl snapping souvenir pictures, remembering to ask first if the gentleman and his date would like a photo--because you never know, the gorgeous gal on his arm might not be his wife. 

A couple of things happened next. I'm not sure in what order. My mother had a boyfriend, a grocer, who was shot and killed one night when he went back to check on his store. And her sister got married to a guy who didn't especially like her. She went back home.

After my mother returned to Iowa, she worked as a hostess at a bar called The Circle where the bartender introduced her to a snazzy older man with blue eyes so beautiful, you could dive in and never want to come back up. They eloped. 

My father didn't want my mom to work--though she worked in his grocery store for a couple of years until he sold it. But there was a home cooked supper every night, baking to satisfy my father's insatiable sweet tooth, making delicious jams and jellies, canning, filling our back porch with crocks of pickles, and sewing our clothes.

After my father died and she was swindled out of his life insurance, she went back to work. She was 51 years old, had an 8th-grade education, and had been out of the workforce for almost 20 years. She made parts for machinery. She made plastic buckets, getting paid minimum wage. She worked at a factory that had something to do with fabric, and one year there was a small fire and she came home with bolts of salvaged flannel. Nightgowns for everyone! Her big break came after she heard about a union job at the John Deere plant. She drove a fork truck there and worked on the assembly line doing whatever job they asked her to for more than 9 years--until she was laid off just a month or so before she would have qualified for a pension.

Then she took care of an old woman, keeping her company and preparing her food. She worked in a bakery in a town so far away that her wages barely kept pace with the cost of her gas. There was another minimum wage factory job or two. 

When Millie’s husband died, my mother moved back to Baltimore where she worked for the City of Baltimore as a custodian cleaning office buildings.

Now she’s rolling the dice for the angels and making martinis for the saints.

It's a long and winding road. And we are all on the same path.

Last Call

The final batch

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know that I ration my mom's martini intake. I mix up a batch, then pour a single martini into each jam jar and lock them away. For this batch I carefully counted out the jars we'll need to get us to our departure date. Who needs x-es on calendar squares? We have mixed drinks.

Just a bit ago, I got the automated call from the sheriff's office regarding the tsunami. We are not being asked to evacuate. Which is good. Very good. I gasped though as the message unfurled. 8.3 magnitude earthquake in Chile. Tsunami forming. Holy crap. I stopped breathing for a minute as I imagined waking my mom and getting her into the car and remembering to put the wheel chair in the car, in case the traffic jammed in a mass exodus and we had to run for it.

There's still quite a bit of martini mixed up in that gin bottle. Note to self: if you do have to evacuate, take the bottle!

My mom continues to talk about going home. I think she will get lots of visitors. Tonight at dinner she reviewed her burial plans: she wants to be cremated and then have the ashes buried in my father's grave. She has a plot next to his that I guess was purchased for her at the same time his was, but she's very clear that she does not want to be buried there. I assured her that I understood. That other grave though--she's obsessed with it. It shouldn't go to waste, she says. We own it. I should be buried there, she says. Or my brother should be buried there--it drives her crazy that good money was spent on it and no one has plans to rest eternally there.

What are you going to do with your body? she asked. I told her that I was going to be cremated and leave instructions for my children to deposit the ashes in the Mississippi, the Seine and the Aegean. I hope they'll take those trips together. Then again, who knows, maybe I'll change my mind about all of that. It would be nice if I had a good 20 or so years to think about that.

How to Grieve

Hunt for beach glass with a friend and let her give you all that she finds including the first piece of PINK you've ever seen.

Let her coax you into long evening walks.

Sit on the patio with your friend and drink wine.

Pet her dog.

When friends call and ask if you'd like company, say yes. Let them bring you cupcakes, chocolate, vegetables, wine, the fixings for chili or soup, concoctions they've made, and books. Let them talk to you, take you to lunch, or to taste wine. Let them nap while you also nap. Let them cook for you or with you or you cook for them. Let them run errands with you. Watch movies that they recommend. Let them talk about love. Let them talk about grief. Or anything at all. Let them look you in the eyes when you're afraid your eyes might fill with tears and flood everything. Love them for not being afraid. 

Dan's ashes arrived on Friday afternoon. Priority mail. A package that required a signature. A package that bore a label that said "Cremated Remains." The mail carrier held the box against her body while she  handed me the clipboard so I could sign. When she handed me the box, our eyes met. I think she knew what she was handing me. I carried the box upstairs, nearly cancelled my lunch date, but it was too late. The door bell rang and it was time to go. I didn't talk about the ashes. 

My friend Paula had just arrived from Phoenix when I returned home after lunch. I didn't tell her about the ashes. 

That night after we said good-night, I opened the box. Inside was a simple black container nestled into packing paper. The container had heavy white tissue paper rubber-banded around it. Inside the container was a bag, stenciled in bold black letters with Dan's name and a number. The number was also embossed onto a gold tag that was attached to a twist tie that firmly sealed the bag. Inside the bag was what remained of a body I adored. Unfathomable. That the bag was so heavy. Yet fit in a box small enough to hold, say, a bottle of Grand Marnier. Everything unfathomable. 

Saturday, I still didn't tell Paula about the ashes. But I told her today. It's a difficult thing to tell. 

I'm not sure if I can say it aloud again. So I'm saying it here.

It's coming for me

I heard water running this morning, and in the recognition of that moment, I simultaneously realized that I'd been hearing water running too long. I have a history with water. This time it was my powder room toilet. Pulling the heavy porcelain lid off the tank, I saw the water was well above the water line etched inside. In fact the water was just an inch or so from overflowing. I jiggled the handle. No effect. I flushed. The same scenario unfolded again. I flushed once more. This time the water stopped, and I laid an "out of order" note on the lid.

The plumber left a couple of hours ago after installing all new "innards" in the toilet tank and a new shut-off valve. My refrigerator has been giving me trouble, too. The in-door water dispenser goes rogue once in a while. You fill a glass or a water bottle and come back to find a pool on the kitchen floor. It's been a long time since I trusted my appliances. They're like wild teenagers waiting for me to leave so they can throw a kegger. I try to outwit them by only using them when I'm home, one ear cocked for misbehavior. But they're devious and don't respond well to correction either. The repairman has been here three times for the fridge, but by the time he arrives, the dripping has stopped. The toilet in my bathroom has a handle that has been repaired twice that still gets stuck every few weeks or so--usually in the middle of the night--so that I leap up in a panic, certain that my feet will land in water.

Last night the farmer who farms the land I own in Nebraska called to tell me that the dam in the crick (that's how we say it in the Midwest) is being undermined by the rushing water. I will have to spend five hundred dollars to fix it--or let the water gnaw away at the land.

The first house I remember, where I lived between the ages of one and five, had a front door that faced the Mississippi River. I lived for five years in the Land of 10,000 Lakes and still go there regularly to visit. I've wanted to live by the ocean ever since I heard my first Beach Boys song. Water, are you listening?  I love you. Really. You had me at the first burble or lap or crash.

The river of grief that was my divorce is narrowing. Filling up with silt. Being squeezed to a trickle. But still there are issues (scroll way down the sidebar to the timeline.) I'm going to say that when everything is resolved--all of the last annoying drips of detail--that my water problems will dry up and reveal sheer beauty.

And, Water, just so you know, you're where my ashes will go when I die.


Photo credit for the photo of me: The Awesome Amazing Unparalleled Luminous Katie Jo Emanuel Heller Le'Rawk Mattson