I scanned the entire volleyball court for her, only to find her sitting on the sidelines. Her eyes were closed. Movement danced around me on all sides, but my eyes were locked on her motionless figure. What’s wrong? I asked. In her right hand was a container of Advil, in her left, a bottle of water. Mom never takes pain relievers. What’s wrong?
I don’t want to start here, but I must adhere to the truth. For the truth is, this is where it begins. I don’t want to begin here because I don’t want her death to be the trigger for my memory of her life. But I’ve slowly come to realize that only in death does life have any real meaning anyway. It is the fact that there is a definite end that makes each standing moment stand. Moments are remembered. Death first, then immortality.
She was brilliant, he says. He shakes his head. Head of the class. My dad wraps his large hands around his mug of tea and drinks. He sets the mug gently on the table and, with his hands still wrapped around its circumference, looks down into it. I remember, he begins. He is now reading the tea leaves, but these are tales of the past…
She used to wear her hair in two braids and never paid me much attention. I was from the country, you see. A country boy. Your mom, she was a city girl. But not like the other city girls, you see. None of that haughty pretention, that strutting around the streets as if a foot above everyone else, looking down. No, she was grounded.
Let me tell you something about stories. It’s something I learned, telling them. Words are magical. They make things…last. Moments exist in eternity, eternally – over and over they unfold and refold. And people never die, in stories. They just keep on living.
I took the Advil out of her hand and she opened her eyes at me. A headache, she said, and smiled. She set the bottle of water down and cradled her head with both hands. Her eyes were shut again. Just a bit of a headache. And despite the smile that rested lightly on her lips, I caught a leak of pain in her expression.
She never paid me much attention because no one paid me much attention. He laughs, takes another draught of tea. You could say she was the first, in fact, to even chance me a glance. And, just like that, he is lost in his sanctuary of memory.
She said she would be O.K., but Dad and I knew something was off kilter, decidedly amiss, somehow not quite right. It was a topos of the world turned upside down. It’s a feeling you get when you know someone well. Well enough to know that she never gets headaches. Well enough to know that she never takes pills. That she never sits on the sidelines.
We put her in the car and drove her to the hospital. Before we arrived, she fell unconscious in the backseat. When we got to the emergency room, they had to put her on a stretcher.
The doctors here decided that my mom needed to get to the neurological center downtown. We’re putting her on a helicopter, they said. Wheels aren’t fast enough. Just before they wheeled her onto the helicopter, they asked me if I had anything I wanted to say to her. I just stared. If you have anything you to say, she might still be able to hear you. I had nothing, so they strapped her into the helicopter.
We were in the same class and we were paired up because she was the best and I had the most dire need for improvement. My dad chuckles. I remember, once. We were getting onto a bus. Or she was getting onto a bus, rather, and I was curiously following her. Accompanying her, if you will.
When Dad and I arrived at the neurological center, people were already expecting us. We made a move to sit in the waiting room, but they steered us to another space – our own waiting area, separate from everyone else. We were told to wait there, shut off. Distanced. I seated myself in a chair and tried not to think much.
It was pouring rain that day and I didn’t have an umbrella, otherwise I would’ve given it to her. We were standing in the middle of the bus, holding onto what we could, when she turns to me and says she’s had enough. I’ve had enough of you following me around! she says. Off you get! There is not enough room on this bus.
At some point, a doctor walked into the room.
Perhaps this is how life goes. We think, sometimes, that life can fix itself. This can’t be happening to me because it can’t be happening to me. We rely on the doctors of our lives to take care of things that go wrong, that are beyond our control – our capability, or knowledge. Monthly physical: all systems in full health. But what if we get a bad report? What if the doctor delivers only bad news? What if there is nothing we can do to make him tell us something else?
The doctor walked into the room and strode purposefully toward the chair in which I sat. His manner was cool, steely. Braced, is the word. His eyes fixed steadily on me as he advanced, and mine likewise followed him in his approach. When he reached my chair, he placed one hand on the armrest and knelt down so that he was perfectly eye-level with me. And when he spoke, it seemed I was listening to a news anchor, looking into a T.V. screen, through the lens of a camera.
Brain aneurysm, he reports. Less than 1% chance of survival.
Everything is going well in life, and then, at some point, a doctor walks into the room.
And he asks me: Do you believe in miracles?
I was shocked, of course. Enough so to obey. So the bus stopped, I got off, it closed its doors behind me and continued on. And suddenly I found myself standing in the rain! I was just standing in the rain.
That’s what stories do. They keep people alive. But words can never become the person, can never recreate every aspect of his multi-faceted character. But what else do we have? Words can last even after the memory fades. So, slowly, the person becomes the stories, because the stories are all that are left. It’s imperfect immortality, but it’s the closest we can get.
My dad has finished his tea so that all that is left now are the tea leaves. He is smiling down at them as he recalls…But she came back. I must have been standing there a quarter hour at that stop, so wet my bones felt wet. But there she was, stepping off the return bus, carrying the umbrella I’d given her so that she wouldn’t get rained on.
My dad is quiet for a minute. He looks up. I reach over for the kettle of hot water, and refill his mug of tea.
