Remembering That Day

It is February 1, 2006, and I pause on the front steps of the little Red Library in Hopewell, NJ.

My purpose is oxygen; lung-bursting breaths to heal the suffocation that began on September 24, 2004, when I awoke to discover my mother dead from cancer. Soon after, I poured her ashes, mingled with my dad’s, into the pachysandra outside Trinity Church in Princeton, a loam of bones and despair that somehow nourished the Memorial Garden while condemning my life.

In the months that followed — through grief groups, bald spots, a miscarriage — I tried to sleep and forget. But our shared death spiral spilled into the darkness each night. Sentences scrolled across my eyelids like ticker tape narrating our journey of dying, which began with a lump and ended with daughter as nurse and mother as patient. Emptied nephrostomy bags, forced liquid morphine, crushed ice and hope, anger at leaving — and at me.

To heal, I must write.

So, here I am on the library steps, showing up for this first memoir-writing class, in answer to a small ad in the local newspaper.

Once inside, my raw faith in writing does little to quell doubts as I head up the stairs for our first meeting. Who has even signed up for this sphere of judgment, cobbled together by personal struggle that perhaps nobody cares to hear?

“Hello,” I say, sliding awkwardly into the nearest open seat. A blue Sesame Street rug holds up our wooden chairs. Circle time in the children’s room.

Instructor Loriann hands me a copy of Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, our bible for the next eight weeks. My fellow memoirists study its pages with a mix of fascination and social avoidance. We exchange expectant glances. It’s hard to say whether I’m projecting or picking up on something true. Still, I’m grateful — to be here, among books, thinkers, writers, creators. It’s reassuring, if not hopeful.  

I grow fond of our charming circle, colored by personal experiences both intimate and mundane. Bob the checkout clerk at Pennington Quality Market writes endearingly about quirky customer interactions. Katherine the lawyer describes the lingering effects of a traumatic brain injury from a long-ago car accident. Elsie, sassy and in her 90s, dips into her straw-colored portfolio to read detailed anecdotes of her childhood living at St. Michael’s Orphanage on a hill less than a mile away. Loriann and I will start a smaller group to support her storytelling.

My own reconciling begins as suspended memories drop onto the page:

“My mother is dead. The weight of this is beyond comprehension. I wish I could tell an engaging tale woven with witticism and deathbed humor, of a mother and daughter laughing about their life together in soulful preparation for their lifetime apart. But it wasn’t like that. It was ugly and grueling. I watched my beautiful mother die and with her, a part of myself. I am different now. It is within that difference that my true story lies.”

Remembering That Day (Original excerpts from memoir class about the day my mom died)

Thursday was a blur of faces — the social worker, the Hospice nurse, the nurse’s aide, friends. Still, I remember three distinct things. The first was changing Mom’s diaper in the morning — only to do it again around noon to prepare for my friend, Andrea, to read prayers at her bedside.

The nurse’s aide arrived at lunchtime, and she and I gently manipulated Mom’s stiff body to clean her, strip the sheets and pull on fresh ones. Mom hollered at us to stop: “You’re hurting me!” she moaned. It was as if her joints had calcified overnight, unyielding to the slightest turn. “I’m sorry, Mom,” I whispered, fumbling with shaky hands and heart to clean her. “I’m sorry.” She would not have wanted me to let her lie unclean—nor would she tolerate others to be offended by it. Still, her protests made me question my choices. Her comfort was devastatingly elusive.

The second thing I remember was a visit from the Hospice social worker, a freckled woman dressed in earth tones who stopped by to talk with Julia. They walked and chatted through the drifting backyard leaves, while I listened from my seat on the deck stairs, grateful for September sun on my face.

“How do you feel about having your Grandma here?” she asked, giving Julia a push on the swing.

“I don’t know,” Julia said, willfully. “Mommy is always with Grandma.”

“You don’t like that?” she asked.

“No, I want her.”

My sweet girl revealing that she, too, wanted this ugly chapter in our lives to end. Never could she understand what that would mean for all of us — how nothing would ever be the same; how her mommy’s smile would for a long time be forced through grief.

Julia then became focused on showing off her best swing-pumping skills, knees bent and straight, bent and straight. “Wait!” she said, as the social worker turned to go. “I want to keep doing it until I get it just right.” So determined to do something “just right” in a world that felt wrong. Her grandma was very sick and her mommy very sad; an accomplished swing might lift us all, even for a moment, to a better place.

Kids know. Even 4-year-olds who, God willing, are far closer to birth than death. They instinctively understand beginnings and endings, and are often better equipped than adults to cope with the pain and uncertainty. Which brings me to my third memory of that Thursday — knock knock jokes. Julia and I climbed the stairs after dinner for our usual goodnight, which had become ever more cursory as Grandma’s illness progressed. But not tonight. Possibly it was because the room was so quiet, or because Grandma’s closed eyes hid the scary pain — or maybe Julia just knew.

“Let’s tell jokes,” she said.

And so, we did — for the better part of an hour. We told some of them two and three times to fill the quiet in the room and our hearts. It wasn’t about being funny or clever — it was about being present. Mom didn’t react; not a blink or a brightening at the nearness of the granddaughter she adored. She just existed. I like to think she was teetering on the edge of this life and the next, swinging her legs with the folly of our girl party. I know she heard us that night — all levity, laughter and love.

“Knock, knock!”

“Who’s there?”

“Boo!”

“Boo who?”

“Well, you don’t have to cry about it…”

******

I was up until midnight finishing some work at my desk.

From time to time, I would step inside Mom’s room, just behind my workspace, to assess her breath, confirm her life. Other than the ragged rise and fall of her chest, she hadn’t moved since afternoon.

The house had a monster-in-the-shadows stillness. As I stood upstairs in the office loft amid the clutter of overdue work assignments and looked down at the living room below, I could feel the ebb and flow of my sleeping family; the rhythmic motion of life in the dark. I was bone tired.

I peered in on Mom one final time before turning out the hall light and descending the stairs, leaning down to kiss her forehead. A hint of Jessica McClintock lingered in the folds of her nightgown. “Goodnight, Mom,” I whispered. “I love you.” I imagined her responding as she had countless times before: “I love you too, Sweetie.”

I awoke in the middle of the night to the shrill of the telephone next to my bed. “Hello,” I croaked into the receiver. “Hello?” Silence. I hung up and dropped to my pillow, falling back into hollow sleep.

Hours later I sat straight up, heart racing as if I had forgotten something, forgotten everything. I rubbed my eyes and stretched my achy muscles. Had I slept for days? 5:30 a.m. My first thought: “It’s so quiet.” The baby monitor next to my bed, connected to Mom’s room, whirred softly like a distant fan. I remembered the jolt of the telephone in the dark, and I knew. I made my way up the stairs, both reluctant and earnest, and stopped at her doorway. Dawn’s light slipped through the silence of that attic room. I stepped inside and stood beside her, my hand hovering above the shape of her stiff arm beneath the sheet. She was motionless, her hazel eyes locked in an empty stare.

I exhaled and dropped to my knees beside her bed. It was done. We were done.

“We knew this would happen, Mom,” I whispered. And at the same time, it was impossible, like forever losing the sun or the moon from the sky. Or the mountains on a familiar horizon simply vanishing. Every inch of me, from thoughts to cells, was sapped. My days and nights in the past weeks were a tumble of emotions. I had felt every feeling and discovered others I did not even know existed, dragged to the surface by cancer and dread. But for now, I was numb.

I walked down to my bedroom and slipped in beside my husband, Gary. “She’s dead,” I breathed. “My mom’s dead.”

“Oh, Di. I’m so sorry,” he said, rolling over and taking me in his arms. He held me like that for several minutes. I had never felt so alone, like a little girl left behind in the deepest, darkest woods. As I got up, pulled on my robe and padded to the kitchen, I glanced out the dining room window at the awakening day. A dense fog settled to the ground, wrapping the trees, the road, the grass, the birds in an ethereal glow. I felte the milky drops of moisture on my skin. This morning, the day I began to see the world through different eyes, melted into me with a mysterious translucence.

I reached for the telephone and checked the Caller ID. Last record: 1:26 a.m. from “Unknown Caller.” Her release.

My mom, Joyce Ann Wyld Lasseter, died at 1:26 a.m. on Friday, September 24, 2004.

A gauzy mist hangs from the branches at dawn,

Suspended like heaven’s cloud.

The morning, mindful that you are gone,

spins a gentle, ethereal shroud.

******

It was noon on Friday. Mom had been gone for more than 10 hours when the hearse pulled up and parked in the grassy curve of our lawn. It didn’t look much like the macabre meat wagons of Hollywood lore — more like a luxury ride; slick, shiny, black and profound against the day’s blue brilliance. The morning’s fog had melted, revealing something close to perfection. God, it was a beautiful September day — clear, endless cobalt. The sort where the sun warms your face and the breeze carries hints of autumn. The air clung to my damp eyelashes as I watched three men in dark suits approach the front door.

I sat down at the dining room table with the guy in charge to discuss incinerating the woman who gave me life. The undertaker, I think his name was Frank, was short, stubby, impeccably dressed and bejeweled. Surely, a Sopranos fan. He sounded like Tony’s cousin, talking death plans through clenched teeth, punctuated with the occasional “No doubt about it.” I remember thinking that his chunky gold rings, stuffed onto fingers that drummed my English rose placemats, could be weapons.

It all seemed so surreal, even absurd – him, her death, this. Then I heard the creak of the stairs beneath polished dress shoes. Frank’s partners were taking her away. They had lifted her small, unyielding body from the hospital bed upstairs, fitted her into black canvas like a delicate lace dress into a garment bag, and zipped, erasing her beneath the teeth. I reached the bottom of the stairs just as they carted her down and toward the front door. Efficient, like the removal of clutter.

“Stop!” I screamed. “Let me see her!”

“Guys, guys, give her a second,” hissed the boss.

They gently laid the body bag down on the couch and unzipped it. Her forehead was waxen beneath my fingers, her cheek flaccid to my lips. This would be the last time I would ever see my mother’s face, other than in memories. I studied her earnestly, taking in her taut cheekbones and the wan line of her mouth. I nodded, and they carried her out of my life.

It had been so exhausting for us, our final few weeks together. And it had come to this. As I watched the hearse pull away, I crumpled to the pine wood floor and wept and wept. I wanted my mom’s suffering to end. I also longed for her to be alive and loving me. I couldn’t have it both ways.

Eventually, I pulled myself up and sat down outside on the brick steps, where I had often listened for her calls fading down from the bedroom. It was so quiet. The breeze rustled our giant oak, coaxing a few dry leaves to fall like ash from azure. A stillness filled the panic that had gnawed at me for days. Her absence began to settle in me in an amber of permanence and anguish — and I was changed.