I write this about my late mother from inside the New York City Public Library, a more apt
place to memorialize her than a church sanctuary. Reading was her religion.
I wasn’t close to my mother for most of our lives
together. No awful drama to point
to. No abuse or spoken hostilities. Really,
no extreme display of emotion one way or the other. You see, Shirley was
Norwegian, second generation American Norwegian. Being reserved was in her
DNA.
Her paternal grandparents immigrated from Norway in the 19th
Century, settling in Minnesota. Her father Carl Eskelson married Madge Shirey
of Minneapolis during the first part of the 20th Century. They had
five children: three sons and two daughters. My mother was number four, born in
1927. The Eskelson clan grew up in the
north central part of South Dakota within the boundaries of the Standing Rock Reservation, part of
the Great Plains region. That means flat
and windy; hot in the summer and freezing in the winter. The one saving grace for the area was the great
Missouri River, which contained the region’s east side.
Both Carl and Madge were teachers. Carl became superintendent of schools for a
time. I am not sure what town or area he covered. I do know that every one of
those five children were smart. Really
smart. And my mother may have been the smartest of the bunch.
That likely could have been the rub from the beginning. I was no Einstein in school. I fell somewhere
in the middle, consistently average.
During childhood I also drew attention, which definitely was in violation of her Norwegian principles.
I was the only girl in a family of six children. It didn’t always make a
difference, but in some matters it did. I got my own room. Big advantage. My
grandmothers paid more attention to me than they did my five brothers, which made me feel special. Another Norwegian no-no. I got fewer
hand-me-downs, too, translating into precious little money being spent on me and
not my brothers.
Another seeming wedge between us was the weight I gained
throughout my adulthood. She actually spoke up about that a few years ago. “I
decided I have to say something,” she said. I nodded in approval to her
suggestions that I eat less and exercise more. For my health, she said. I was
hurt and wish at the time I had had the foresight to see it coming and be
better prepared for a more layered conversation. I missed that opportunity. I never lost the weight and we never spoke of
it again. That doesn’t mean the issue wasn’t present during future visits.
I have often wondered how different my mother’s life could
have been if only she had been born a little later. I don’t know that she would have had
children, given a choice. She could have
devoted her time and energies to running a library. That really was her calling. When I think of
my mother happy, she has a book in hand. I still see her sitting sideways in a
chair, legs dangling over an arm, book open.
The Shirley I knew is a different person others knew. I
guess being the only daughter placed expectations on the relationship that were
never realized for either of us. It’s
hard to explain. There was an unspoken disappointment throughout the years,
from both of us. I know that I was often an idiot, saying the wrong thing in an
attempt to impress. Like the time I
brought up the subject of genital mutilation.
I know, just writing this makes me question my sanity. It was relevant in my work at the time, but
surely not appropriate to discuss with Shirley.
For her, it must have felt like an assault.
Our relationship will always be the most complex of any I
have or will ever have. I loved her and
respected her and I believe she felt the same about me. We just never reached
that ultimate goal of great friends.
I began to worry about Shirley’s mental capacity a little
over a year ago. Really worry. It wasn’t just the ordinary stuff like
forgetting where she put something. It was forgetting people and places and words. When I visited her in Montana in
June of 2015, I saw a confused and vulnerable woman. And thin. Her weight was just below 100 pounds. She was living alone by this time; several months earlier my father had been placed in a memory care facility.
One evening during the visit, I was hanging with my brother Jim and sister-in-law Dawn when I got a call that the Missoula police were
at Shirley's apartment. She had called 9-1-1 to report me missing; she was worried because she hadn't heard anything from me since I took off on my bicycle earlier that day. This, of course, had not happened. I explained to the
officer that Shirley was experiencing a delusional episode and please let me
talk to her. Shirley would not budge
from her story. “No! You should have
called.”
It was from that moment I, with my brothers, began preparing for her to come to
Texas where I could manage her care. She arrived late August, two months after the June episode.
It was incredible to have my mother two miles
away instead of 1,600. Of course it was a different Shirley. She was unencumbered and – maybe this is my
bias – liberated. She loved her
beautiful apartment. Meals served three
times a day at the dining room just down the hall from her room. In the first few weeks, she gained 10 pounds.
We had just enough time to establish a favorite café, get a
new wardrobe, and meet great-grandchildren for the first time. She sat at our Thanksgiving table for the
first time ever. She had also taken up walking every morning outdoors around
the apartment complex. Sometimes other residents would join her but she
preferred to walk solo because “they walk too slowly.”
Late December Shirley seemed to just fall apart, physically
and mentally. Multiple trips to the doctors, one to the ER, did nothing to slow
the progression toward her death. During that time, I found a few lists she had
been writing down. Mostly lists of names. Precious names. Names of relatives,
her brothers and sister and other paternal and maternal cousins. She knew. She understood she couldn’t trust
her own memory to hold onto them, so she wrote them down.
Caring for my mom those last weeks was the greatest gift I
could imagine in this world. We had all kinds of fun: eating out, listening to music, watching old movies, playing games, putting a
puzzle together. It was as if we finally
fit as mother and daughter. No pretense,
no judgment. Real love. We both felt it. One time leaving her after a visit, we
kissed and hugged as usual, but this time she held on a little longer.
Shirley was Norwegian to the end. When paramedics came to
her apartment early in the morning of Feb. 8, she told them not to bother. She was fine.
"No, I don’t need to go to the hospital," she said. This from a prone
position on the floor beside her bed where she had landed after falling in the early
morning hours.
I don’t need to go into further detail about her death. It came about 24 hours after arriving at the
hospital. She left this world peacefully, listening to Beethoven. Her last
words, I utterly and selfishly can say were to me.
“I love you, too.”
