“I slipped a piece of paper in your day book,” Mom says. We’ve just returned from a trip to Oakville, where we share the same chiropodist. “It’s my voluntary euthanasia declaration.”
Oh no, not this again. We’d arrived at our appointments fifteen minutes late, due to my squeezing in a ninety-minute rollerblade before we left. She’d been cross with me on the way. Disappointed at my tardiness, a carryover from my teenaged years living at home when I never took anyone’s time, aside from my own, seriously. Shocked that I’d hired a cab rather than drive myself. I know what she’s thinking: Two hundred dollars, wasted.
“My right hamstring’s so sore from all my running that it cramps when I try to drive,” I told her. “All that on and off with the accelerator.”
“Oh yes, Danny, that makes sense. You’re telling me your leg’s too sore to drive, but you just rollerbladed twenty miles?”
There’s no worse disapproval than my mom’s telling silence. Trying to atone for pissing her off, I made a big fuss out of paying for her appointment. “How much was it?” she asked.
“Forty dollars. Pretty good, don’t you think?”
“That’s a little steep, if you ask me.”
But Mom’s mood improved. Over the years, her reprimands have never had much impact on me. This may be related to a lifetime of seeing Dad shrug off her criticisms with nary a second thought. Or perhaps half a century of trying to impress Dad left me too drained to fret over Mom’s responses to my often inconsiderate behaviour.
Since the seventies, Mom’s been hospitalized for her bipolar condition only two or three times, all for short durations. Life after Dad, to my surprise, has shown no signs of breaking or destabilizing her. But she misses him, sometimes desperately.
As I serve Mom tea in my kitchen she starts to reminisce about him. Mom’s tough, less prone to crying than she was when I was a child, and she can talk about surprisingly intimate and revealing things while appearing completely composed.
“As you know, your father and I had different ideas about how long our lives should hang on. He never wanted to have anything to do with a living will.”
Mom and I have been through this many times before. I reassure her that if or when that dreadful moment comes, I’ll respect her decision. That’s as direct as I can be about it.
“I can’t talk to Karen about his. She always starts to cry. And Larry just gets very, very quiet.”
Great, I think. And who am I? The cold, unfeeling child?
“You know I visited your dad’s grave a week ago, on the third anniversary of his death. Have you visited at all?”
I look at Mom sadly and shake my head.
“I spoke to him. Planted a few yellow flowers.” Mom’s eyes start to well up but the tears don’t form. She talks about how she wishes his gravestone was bigger.
“Did he want something big?” God, I hate talking about this.
“No, he just wanted to be buried beside a tree.”
I think back to how excited Dad was when he first planted the row of poplar trees in our backyard. It was right after we’d moved into our new home. Dad was forty-one. I was almost eleven.
“You just wait, Danny,” he told me. “Over the years these poplars will grow to be huge. They’ll be around long after we’re gone.” I blanched at the thought of either one of us being gone. I felt resentful, jealous of the baby poplars—that their lives had just begun, that they would outlive us both.
As I walk Mom down my front steps, I think of how Dad always asked if I was going to put a ramp in to the front door, for him and his wheelchair. At that point we both knew he wouldn’t be coming to my house anymore. He needed Wheel-Trans, a van with specially equipped ramps and space for paraplegics, to get anywhere. Dad simply wanted to see what I’d say. I never had the ramp built. I feel guilty about that now. What is love, after all, but a series of symbols and gestures—as impractical and yet vital and stirring as a diamond ring, a painting or a transcendent song?
As I open the car door to help Mom into her tiny white Mazda, my final image of her and Dad comes back to me: how she kissed him for the last time moments after he died, pressing her mouth against his forehead and leaving it there for what seemed like the longest time: her final mark, her last impression. Mom warns me, as she turns the key and starts the ignition, that if I don’t respect her “final wishes” she has a stash of pills for the moment she decides she wants to end it all.
“Hey Mom, you sure you don’t feel like going for a walk or something?” The thought of her going upsets me. What if I never see her again?
“No, I should take off now, before the traffic starts to build.”
As I watch her drive away, I realize that one of the reasons I miss being with Dad, and love being with Mom, is that it’s the only time I can slip back into being a boy.
Another memory drifts back to me and keeps me cocooned in this blissful and secure state for the rest of the day.
Our family’s gone camping in the Gatineau Hills in Quebec. My parents are taking us to visit a famous cave. At the cave’s opening is a path that diverges from the main road. Larry and I tear down this lower path, his matchstick, four-year-old legs scampering in a futile attempt to keep up with me. Already, everything is a life-and-death competition between us. My parents and Karen continue up the main road, assuming the two routes will eventually meet. A few minutes later, winded, Larry and I find ourselves deep underground at the bottom of a six-foot-deep cave. Too panicked and disoriented to attempt to retrace our steps, Larry starts hollering. I squint, trying to adjust my vision—it’s inky black all around me, with tiny shafts of light peeking in from above.
“There they are, Donna.”
Dad has traced the source of our screams. Though he can’t see us, I can see him, squatting, trying to make out our tiny figures in the shadows below. The cave’s walls are too steep for us to climb, and too high for Dad to descend.
“Larry, grab hold. Danny, you’re next.”
Dad lowers his left leg down the cave wall while his right leg bends low to the ground for support. Larry quickly wraps his little arms around Dad’s thigh, like a baby monkey hugging an oversized tree trunk. In no time, he’s swung out of the damp darkness and back into the warm light. My turn. I hang on, smelling Dad’s sweat, his comforting and familiar muskiness. With one giant swoosh I’m hoisted to safety.