Looking Out Windows

I could hear it in her voice when I spoke to her on Thursday. I had only heard it once before: not when she was about to lose her house; not when times were tight and there wasn’t enough food to feed everyone; not when she was initially give a few months to a year to live.

When I talked to her they had just finished the last radiation treatment on her brain, where it had spread from the original tumors that encircled her aorta. Sometimes the words weren’t coming out right and she’d have to backtrack to get it right. One of the additional tumors in her chest had grown to the point that it was preventing her diaphragm from moving, and the doctors wanted to wait three months to see how the radiation on her head went before proceeding.

“It’s my body”, she said. “I don’t have . . .”

She changed the conversation pretty quickly after that. But I could hear it in her voice. Even while we were talking about ways to get me down to see her, once the festival closed and the income taxes came back. She told me about a program for cancer patients that worked to find cheap flights for immediate family members when it gets . . . She was going to send me a link.

I could hear the fear in her voice. In my thirty two years, I had only heard it once before.  It ended up taking four days for me to make it down.

I stood up with my cup of coffee and looked out the window and put my right hand in my pocket. Our window overlooks a big tree and, across the road onto a huge apartment building. The recently plowed snows created a dark and white swirl much like the ones I remembered separating our house and the woods when I was a kid. I stood there trying to imagine the world contained in those blocks.

It felt familiar.  I used to stand that way all the time growing up. The front window in our house growing up overlooked a big tree and, across the road, onto a corn field and woods behind it. When there was snow, it would mix with the soil in the field and created a dark brown and white swirl leading up to the seemingly endless woods. I would stand and imagine what the world contained beyond those woods.

Friday night Jenn and I had a date, saw a show and went to a bar after with some friends and some of the cast. I quit smoking a while ago, but I was pretty well along and decided to bum a smoke from Juan. Jenn told me not to, I wouldn’t be happy in the morning. But I smoked one anyway.

In the morning, I got an instant message to call my step-dad. My phone battery died overnight so I had missed his call. I had to charge up my phone to turn it on, and as I waited, part of me expected to find out that she had been admitted into the new trial she was hoping for. That wasn’t the call I got.

She got the cancer. And died on a Saturday.

I’ve often been told that when I was growing up, I was never afraid of anything. Usually that preceded some outlandish story about something I did growing up.  There are a lot of those. I can’t remember ever being scared. And until last Thursday I had only remembered my mom being scared once before.

My Dad had a temper and was rarely good for her, so when she decided she had had enough of her marriage and decided to get a divorce, she had a restraining order as well. In case he lost his temper and did something.

She told me about it, and was scared. Not because of him, for all he did, I don’t know if she was ever afraid of him. She was scared because she had no one to deliver it to him; there was no one to help her get out. It was the first time I had ever heard fear in her voice.

I served my dad with the divorce papers and haven’t heard much from him since. He has my phone number.

Twelve years ago, Mom met Pat online playing cards and eventually moved down to Texas and married him. Pat invited Patti to live there for the rest of her life. And she did.

We were at Pat’s house the night before the memorial service and we were talking about memories of her and all of her sisters, and how their paths have been so different over the years.  As they talked, I remembered a time we went to visit an aunt. I was young, probably not even ten. We got to the aunts house and as we pulled up into the drive, we heard a scream. My aunt ran out of the house followed by her husband at the time who was chasing her with a machete.

My mom told me to stay in the car and without a hint of fear went out to help. Thankfully no one got hurt that day, but I never forgot seeing the chase, or the machete, or them talking him down. I had forgotten how fearless Mom was, until I heard the fear in her voice over the phone.

Taking the train home from Texas, something Mom was always telling me to do, I had a lot of time to think as I watched the country wiz by with her reflection appearing in the window.

On Sunday, the day after we found out, and the day before my flight down for the memorial, I was talking to Tony Jr. He asked what was wrong and I said I was sad about Granny, as my mom preferred to be called by her grandkids.

“Yeah,” he said, “she’s really sick and she’s in the hospital.” He had seen her over Christmas and knew she was sick. I didn’t know how to tell him. We went down to the Field Museum as we had promised him, he’s all about Dinosaurs right now, and for a while, I half forgot.

Watching Tony Jr. go through the animals and look at all the exhibits in awe it took me back to when I was a kid, curious about the world, amazed at all the things out there beyond my window I had never seen.

When we got to the primate section of the exhibit. Jr. saw a humanoid skeleton and looked at it, tilted his head and said, “Daddy, when did that person die?”

“A long time ago,” I said.

“Oh,” he said.

Jenn had gone to use the restroom and returned to find Jr. pointing to all the skeletons in the Field Museum. “And that one died. And that one died. And that one, a whale, died.” I was frozen. I had no idea how to tell him.

When I was little, one of my grandfathers passed away. He wasn’t a very nice man, but it was the first person I knew who had died. I woke up in the middle of the night crying and my mom came in to check on me. I was in the third grade. She asked me what was wrong and I said I missed him. She looked at me and said calmly, “Just because a person has died doesn’t mean you have to forget what they were like in life.” I didn’t have another nightmare about that.

Growing up I was in many fights.  I was sort of an anti-bully. I didn’t back down from anyone and usually I was in hot water at school for beating up the bully. 

Once a kid threw a rock at me, hit me in the shoulder and started running away laughing. I picked up the rock and threw it back at him as he was running and laughing. The school wanted to expel me from the third grade, I guess. The kid’s head was bleeding pretty badly.

My Mom was livid. To her, they were just mad because I had a better arm and better aim.  And to punish me for that and not do anything to the other kid who threw a rock unprovoked would not stand. We both ended up being suspended for a few days.  She didn’t try to get me off the hook, but didn’t think the other kid should have either.

Of all the fights I finished as a kid, the only one that really got me in trouble with Mom was the only one I started.  I believe she brought a paddle into the school herself for that one.

Mom was a force of nature. If she felt something was wrong, it didn’t matter who it was she would fight it. If someone was wronged she would take them in and help them. She had a way of taking over a room and letting everyone know her thoughts on a subject without needing to speak. When she did speak, she didn’t mince words. I am in many ways my mom’s son

Mom was tough, she was stubborn, she was fierce, she was loyal, she fought for what she believed in and could very easily stomp over anyone not strong enough to handle her. She had an extraordinarily tough exterior.  She wasn’t passive aggressive, there was little passive about her.  She was intimidating at times to those who didn’t know her. But under the exterior she was filled with love. She was simultaneously the toughest and most giving person I’ve ever met.

When she was about to lose her house, she worked furiously to fix it up and find a buyer.  When we didn’t have enough food, she’d skip a meal. When the doctors had given up on her she made them work harder and she fought far longer than they had given her.

The only two times I ever heard fear in her voice was when she had no one but herself to fight for.  She made it through the first one.