Objects in the Rear View Mirror

Exactly one month ago, because of something I heard while my brother and I talked to my mom's lead doctor at Mass General Hospital, I furtively booked a seat on a Delta flight landing in Boston at just after midnight. At this point, Rosemarie had been in the hospital for a little over two weeks, the promise of discharge to Winchester Rehabilitation Center earlier that week stolen from us like my mom's fear of her father's sea glass through the window by some juvenile hoodlums only she could see. The only difference now was that this was no hallucination.

These past few weeks, I have gone over that conversation almost daily - trying to figure out what the doctor said that lit my soul on fire - but if you were to offer me a million dollars or even the promise of getting to hug my mother one more time with the answer, I would, sadly have to admit that I cannot remember. All I can recall is telling my brother I had to get off the phone to book a flight, finding one that got me to the East Coast before daylight and throwing clothes into a carry on case that has always brought me to places of great joy. Where was it to bring me this time? What was I going to find? Did I have my night guard? Did I take enough pairs of underwear and what still gives me the worst feeling  to this day - did I pack the proper clothes for a funeral? 

It may sound harsh but I have felt as if the planner in me was finally getting his comeuppance on trying to plan. But deep down - not just deep in my soul, but far beyond the reaches of any realm of reasoning was the fact that I knew my mother was not doing well. That her stints in the hospital over the past three and a half years had not so subtlety laid the groundwork for the realist in me to push aside. To not look in the rear view mirror because that was the past. We had to look to the future and to recovery. But to tell yourself that you know what's coming is a lie - because when it comes - you are not ready.

Yet, in one fifteen minute phone call, my world - my brother's world  - in fact the entire world was changing. And no matter how I tried to push aside my fear, I was strangely comforted by mother's reaction to when she saw me, and I knew I would be right - because whenever I showed up on the east coast with no planning, she would look at me as sternly as she could and say, quite loudly repeating the word for emphasis. "WHAT? What are you doing here?" 

"Well someone told me you were sick honey, so what did you think, I would stay home? Besides, it's the Olympics and you know how I HATE working those so this was as good excuse as any to come see you." She looked at me sideways, laughed as much as was able and all was forgiven. 

But then we boarded what would be a two week roller coaster ride. From the lows of peeling back the covers and seeing with my own eyes, the steep decline since I last saw her barely one month ago to the highs of talking to her about our trips across Europe. She told us how she could STILL taste the French Onion Soup at a corner cafe we found across from Notre Dame. She was disappointed when I told her that on my next trip to the City of Lights, the restaurant was gone. Still, she said, that was the best soup ever. And, then she told my brother how we were just reminiscing about Europe. Reminiscing! She was on so much medication yet she could use a word that even escaped me when talking about our trips. She's doing better for sure, her mind is still sharp. But then, the roller coaster plunged down from the loop. There was a man next to her in the bed, chomping gum, wearing a hat. "Shhhh," she whispered. "He's back." 

"Do you want me to tell him to go?" I asked, wanting above all to validate what she saw.

"No, no," she lowered her voice to keep the man from hearing. "He will go away."

I wanted to find out who this man was? I peppered her with questions, was it someone she knew? Was it her father? All negative responses. Seems, he was just a man coming into the room and taking her spot on the bed while she sat in the chair next to it. It was then the hallucinations came fast and swift. A woman waiting to board a train.."Jimmy will help you, m'am," she said. "Hold on.  Hold on." And I would dutifully take the woman's fingers and lead her out of the room. 

From there, we were in a Chinese restaurant, where she got angry with my brother to move the food on the shelf. "No, not that one, that one," she instructed as Bobby blindly found the correct product to move out of the way. As exhausting as it was, we had to find the humor.  How else would we make it through the long day in this sterile hospital room?

Every day was a nightmare ground hog day, but in those terrible times there were still moments that made us proud to be her boys.  There were the nurses and the doctors  -  all telling us what a wonderful woman our mother was, how nice she is and how, even now, how accommodating she was when asked a question. For even seeing the grimace on her face that clearly told us she was in pain, Rosemarie didn't want to take medicine away from another patient who needed it. "You are the patient," we told her. "Take it all. Alfred's insurance is paying for it. Use every last vial." I'm pretty sure there was another smile there.

I think we forgot what day it was somewhere around day two, and the roller coaster wasn't quite done arriving at the home platform. Perhaps that is what the woman she saw was waiting to board? If so, I would have gladly given up my seat.

To write all this down isn't to yet again eulogize my mother - a strange enough sentence to write as it is - but as way, I suppose to remember that despite the roller coaster not stopping, the ride had given us consolation prizes. There was that horrible Wednesday when she was clinging to life and our grief poured out until there were no tissues left in the room. We said our good-bye. Could she hear us? Did she know what was happening. And, then, that horrible day was followed by a scene out of a Hitchcock movie. I was back at Carney St., too upset to go back up to that room, when a call came. She was sitting up, asking where I was, when was she coming home and sad that she was disappointing us by not making progress. I hopped in an Uber and made it to MGH in record time, telling her I was at lunch and work let me out when they heard she asked for me. 

"Okay, " she said. "Okay."

"Give me a kiss," I said, and she puckered her lips and said she loved me.

This is a great consolation prize. I will take it. Is the ride over yet? Ah, but theme parks are never what they seem, and another day of chatter was followed by another dip of the coaster car. More talks with the medical team, with terms too hard to understand without asking more questions, gaining more knowledge than anyone should ever know about what was happening to their mother. For no matter how hard a fighter she was, no matter how she found a way out of South Boston, and no matter how she made her world better, it was her heart that was controlling this ride. And as strong as Rosemarie was, the heart that always gave too much love out to others, was just not returning that same level of love to her. I suppose that's a writer's interpretation of a horrible phase in life to shed a new light into a dark corner. Because if you don't find the light, if you don't look for the sun that peeks out from under the curtain of the windowsill, you perpetually live in the bleakness.

So for this past month - often times unsuccessfully, I have tried to find my footing on ground that continually moves because the roller coaster just doesn't seem to want to put on the brakes. Jumping  out of the car will cause bodily harm and if I were hurt, that would not make Rosemarie happy in the least. But what I know will make me happy, and as surreal as it still is to hear people tell me that they are sorry for my loss, is seeing how my mother will always be here. 

My mother is in my kitchen - from her mixing bowls to her mixer to her measuring cups and pans. She'll be in the love I bake for others while I wear her aprons that she bought in Venice and Paris and in Williams-Sonoma because she loved that store when all she got there were pop-up sponges and aprons. She's on my walls in pictures from Europe and Los Angeles and memories of her gazing at the Christmas Tree in Rockefeller Plaza before seeing her life long dream of seeing the Radio City Hall Rockettes. There are a million memories to erase those weeks of this roller coaster ride and there really is no need to pinpoint what in that conversation one month ago that told me to get on a plane. All you need to know, or maybe by writing this, all I need to know, is something inside told me and I listened. For even in the dark, we are able to find the light under the curtains and although the darkness finally won out - my mother will always be here. 

She's in the love she's taught me exists in this world, and, she will always make me laugh. She made us do just that with one of her funniest hallucinations.  She was in a speeding car driven by my brother, begging him to slow down, they were going to crash! I took her hand and told her the car was slowing, he was braking. She calmed down and fell back asleep.

For two weeks, what is without a doubt, an exhausting journey can also be seen as giving us the greatest gift. To tell your mother, over and over that you love her to the point where she even said - during one of her lucid moments - "Okay, Okay, Enough Already!" Now how can that not make you laugh? Let's annoy Rosemarie with even MORE love. And then, when we were faced with moving her to hospice, I know we made the right decision. I told her that she was making progress, to not be sad and the doctors wanted to move her to a better place. Above all, I wanted to be certain that she never thought she was disappointing us. We were all leaving this sterile hospital room together.

And today, on this four week timeframe, I look around my apartment, and my footing begins to take hold. No one wants to exit this stage, and as hard as that is to realize for all of us, we gave our mother an exit worthy of her life. Full of love, compassion and peace. We might cry over and over for our loss, I might forever wonder about that phone call, and I may have an ugly cry when no one else is around, but the girl who was told she'd never amount to anything has left the world a better place. And simply put, my mother - Rosemarie - not Rosemary - but call her that if you'd like because calling her is remembering her - Rosemarie will always be near because objects in the rear view mirror are always closer than they appear.

Ok Back

How do you begin something that you’ve never wanted to write? How do you encompass all that someone is in mere words? How do you paint a picture of someone that everyone already knows except maybe to tell you of the woman that only I know?

Rosaria Bucca – Rosemarie or on the rare occasion, Rosemary, may or may not have been the illegitimate daughter of a south Boston Italian father and Lithuanian mother. But the one thing for certain that no one can deny was that she was, and will always be, a mother of extraordinary strength, joy and love. She was my savior in a world full of bullies, a champion in a world full of doubters, the loudest applause in a room full of strangers and the one constant at the kitchen table in a house she made into a home.

When I decided to take her to Paris, I never dreamed it would be the first of a trio of trips across the Atlantic. The girl whose neighbors dumped wet bread on her head and who got her cross ripped from her chest by nuns who deemed her unworthy was walking through the city of lights with someone who not only saw her as worthy but also saw her as his shining star. For there would be no Paris without Rosemarie, there’d be no Rome, Venice, Florence or London. In fact, there would be no life at all. But is there a life without Rosemarie? At this moment, I cannot tell you a definitive yes, but I can tell you, like she told me when I moved in 1990, that you must follow your path and no one else’s. No matter if that path takes you three thousand or ten miles, your life needs to be lived. I thought I crushed her soul when I left but little did I know that I would give her a world beyond the reaches of South Boston, beyond Medford and beyond the backyards where wet sloppy bread was thrown on her head from a dilapidated triple-decker.

She can count so many as her friends and family - and not just those here today. There are drag queens in San Francisco, boys in Belgium, women in California and boys that grew up to be fine young men who still revel in the taste of her stuffed artichokes and chicken cutlets.

This was a woman who never gave herself credit, who always put herself down as uneducated and too stupid to understand how the world worked.But what you need to understand is she was the smart one, she knew how the world worked. It works with love and compassion and never questioning that to be a great mother meant to let her children live their lives no matter who they were or whom they loved.

I’ve wrestled for days and even months leading up to this moment if I have told her enough how much she meant to me. And then I take comfort in knowing that last week, I got to tell her over and over. And as we talked about things in her hospital room, it was obvious that I showed her, too. For whether it was a simple birthday card or a walk along the river Seine –a trip on the Provincetown ferry or the high speed train to Belgium - at a dinner in Ogunquit or the Tuscan countryside or lunch in San Francisco or at the Malibu coast, everything I am or ever hope to be is because of a maybe illegitimate daughter of an Italian and Lithuanian from South Boston.

Finally, this week, I walked by my old elementary school and it brought back the memory of when my mother dropped me off at kindergarten. She let go of my hand and didn't look back even as I screamed like a wounded animal for her to come back. It was only later, on one of our trips that she told me the principal told her to do just that – to keep walking and not turn around. That it was the only way to get me to stay and she said that it was the hardest thing she ever had to do. I now know how she felt, because these last few weeks have been the hardest thing I have ever or will ever have to face. And no matter how loud I cry - she is not going to turn around.

But I'm comforted - and I hope you all are by this last thought. In the days after social media, she got tech savvy and texted at all hours of the day, but always, always without fail - there was the evening text at 8pm pacific, telling me she was going to sleep. Ok, I would say and immediately she responded, “Ok back.” This back and forth between us would continue until I finally had to tell her to GO-TO-BED.

 

So, for the final time I wish her good night –to sleep well and not worry. Because although our hearts and lives will never be whole again, we will survive because that is what she taught us to do. Today, I get the last word and say, “okay back.”