(DAD: ah el you look just like doris day!)

“ I am a terrible person, arent I, James?” Mom would sometimes say, in the end days.

I would giggle.

“Hush. I mean it. I shouldn’t be so hard on your father. He has a ‘condition’. “ She was referring to Dad’s mysterious form of dementia. We were told it was Alzheimer’s, and he’d been put on Aricept; a year later I ventured the opinion to the learned professional lady doctor that his symptomology was not exactly standard Alzheimer’s, and was told, “Oh, no , no, your Dad doesn’t have Alzheimer’s, but what we call ‘vascular dementia’ “

This was news that Mom received with ambivalence. Alzheimer’s is what she’d told everyone her husband had. She’d even held out the unreasonable hope that the Aricept would help him. It gave her a certain martyr cache, for the public and for later, after she was dead. It might earn her Heaven. She’d always told me she was “going down below”, I dunno why. Strict religious upbringing by a schoolmarmish Puritan blueblood New England lady, her mom, Rena…

Then, in the  meantime, he’d had colon cancer and now was wearing an colostomy bag, which she took it upon herself to change when needed. She wouldn’t let me do it, though I didn’t mind.

"Would for fucksake lemme change him," i'd ask, exasperated.

"James, language. No, I would never ever ask that of you. It is my responsibility. I am his wife."And she'd do it, lovingly.

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“Mom, you gotta keep your sense of humor dealing with Dad. “

“Well, I know, but …didn’t I kind of  go over the edge with that last comment?”

“Which one? ‘George, the worst mistake I ever made was marrying  you,’ or, ‘George, you are so fat I am thinking you are going to fall through the floor someday?” We were probably watching CNN at the time. Mom loved keeping up to date on “these women today” and what they were up to. She was enthralled and appalled by the range of their topics, and their unladylike tones of voice. And their hair styles and their wardrobe choices and especially their freedom, is what I think. Something she felt she never had---freedom---and she even defined herself by her valiant sacrifice of it, for her children and her husband.

“Oh, stop it.” She would hush up  then, and start to tremble a bit, precursory to tearing up. I would no doubt have gotten up, taken her tiny hand in mine, awkwardly, and saying something lame and comforting, like, “Mom, come on, I was just kidding. You do your best under difficult circumstances. You are watching your husband deteriorate, and it scares you, like it scares me to see. Etc etc.”  Those tiny hands! I mean, my hands are small for a man’s, dwarfed by Dad’s, but Mom’s always seemed childlike next to mine.

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Perhaps 20 years earlier, before Dad’s mental slippage, when he was still the Principal of the High School, a slim elegant handsome man with a gentle bonhomie and savvy simplicity in his European manners, she was his gal. Fiercely loyal.

him...for real..

Prone to saying such amazing things to her teenage son as:

“James Mark, you don’t know a darn thing about love, is what is the problem with you and your generation. You think about sex, sex, sex all the time, but did you know that your father and I can make love across the room?”

“What? What do you mean?” No doubt I had found marijuana by this time, and was thus cockier in dealing with domestic situations. And of course Mom had found my stash and confronted me with it, warning me in dire terms of my fate if I was ever arrested for it. But returning it to me.

Because we had a balance of power relationship now. I wouldn’t bug her about her drinking if she permitted me to get high, and of course drink the beer that Dad bought me.

“Oh, someday, when you grow up, you will understand.”

I finally do now. Ha ha.

But then, it was the most befuddlingly intriguing thing I had ever heard. My mother was a fountain of such wisdom, and it served me well in dealing with “Today’s Woman”, I must say.  Not in a sexual conquest way, certainly; as a Momma’s---and older sisters’---boy, I was much too shy and intimidated to make a move. I always preferred guy-pal status, in person…then obsessive romantic crushes on my galpals, never revealed to them. But to Mom? Sure. We’d often discuss the merits of certain personally intriguing or  tv or movie gals…Mom had a strict injunction never to get involved with a blonde, for brunettes were more “down to earth”. We’d spend hours arguing about which women were 1) sexy, 2) pretty or 3) cute. We had different qualifications for each category.

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When Dad, in a drunken stupor, fell on top of mom and sent her flying into her garden (as he smacked his old skull on the cement patio), breaking her hip and “killing her”, as she put it later, after months of physical recuperation , she stopped changing Dad’s colostomy bag for him. It was now up to me.

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A typical movie night:

“ james, this is a rather vulgar movie, “ she might say.

“Mmm, your mother is right!” Dad would boom, punctuating it with a slap on his gut.

“George, stop that.”

“Sorry”

“Why mom?” I would ask in faux innocence.

“Do you enjoy this? These lesbians? I find it shocking, and your father does too. Right George?”

“OH YES INDEED. DISGUSTING!”  Dad would begin to…it’s hard to describe…sort of massage his colostomy bag.

“George, stop that!”

“Sorry, El”

“Mom, we can stop the movie if you want. “

“No, no, it’s almost time for bed. We should just finish it . I know YOU like it. “

“It is not shocking to me. It is about real women. And they are not all lesbians.”

“No, he’s right, El. That blonde gal is not a lesbian. She was with that black guy. Ach. Disgusting” Dad would add, helpfully.

Mom would sigh and look at Dad. “GEORGE! Will you stop playing with that bag?”

“I CAN’T HELP IT! It’s full! I am so so sorry. I know I am a mess. But Jim, before bed, can we change it?”

“Yes, Dad.” This would shut Mom up and let me watch the end of the movie, with her sighing and Dad probably rapt. Ha, the “dirty old man,” as Mom called him.

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Mom: "Oh what a mistake i made marrying you, damn you!"

Dad: "ach, cm'mon, El,  you got lucky and you know it. All those crumb-bums you were dating then? You got the best of the lot! right, Jim?"

Me: "Well, yeah, or you wouldnt have had me, is how i see it."

Dad: "Right!! "

Mom: "that is true, but it wasn't the point."

 Dad, trying to make good, and make happy: "Eleanor, face it! You got the two best guys in the world." A winky wink at me.

"Oh, you boys."

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Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. I wish there could have been more movie nights. I know you loved them, especially the nights I showed Lifetime movies---all those “Modern Women” whom you disapproved of getting a good scare but being rescued in the end by good men----but  I think I maybe broadened your horizons a bit before the end, with my movies.

It must have been damn awful to lose your husband before you lost him to death. Which you never did, because you died first, but your George couldn’t wait very long and joined you forthwith…I know it was scary to lose my Father.  We had that in common. We used brutal humor to make it through some rough times, but it was necessary. Dad was never so far gone that he didn’t know his “El” loved him still.

I know you are rolling in your grave (a mile away) , or would be if you hadn’t been cremated per your wishes…by my revealing you to this OS crowd, fulla some cool “Modern Women”.  And I am sorry about not acceding to your wishes and scattering your ashes on Cape Cod, and Dad’s too… but…after all , Dad made his wish known to us kids that he sure as heck didn’t want to be “burned up!” so we buried him in his mortal form and put him in a coffin,and put you in with him for all eternity. You two: get along, would you?

If you could make love across the room, then maybe you could do it in, uh, Heaven, or “down below” or wherever you two ended up?

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Big Sis is taking care of me. She is getting to be more like you every day, which is a good thing.

And she’s in love again, at age 63.

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“Jimmy, “ she said, faced with the cemetery law of having to buy two holes for two people even if both of them went into one, “We got that extra plot. That is where you will go.”

Like something you would have said.