21. Twelve Days Before Christmas: Part Two - The Last Six Days
December 19th. A little background first: Mr. Wonderful and I have answered our morning alarm at 5:15 AM for our entire marriage. We used to do a quick jog downstairs to plug in the pre-built percolator, did this and that while it moaned and groaned, and gargled and gurgled our Chase and Sanborn brew, then parked our asses in the living room and just chilled — together — before anyone woke and sought us out.
We are still doing our morning routine, although he’s the one jogging downstairs — I’m already there waiting in my super-de-duper recliner — the one my fabulous sister bought me. The beautiful buff-colored leather contraption is very much like a carnival ride for the chairbound — the seat part goes up and down, the lower section lifts to all levels, and the back can recline fully or raise the head and shoulder area to any comfort level. My extra-deluxe model has a built-in heater to help soothe this or that bit of pain here and there. I appreciate Marjorie’s generosity and think of her whenever I kick back and am warmed all around. It’s very much like she’s there giving a big hug — the kind I shy away from now out of fear I might crumble.
Anyway, on this particular morning, I missed coffee with Mr. Wonderful because I had a v.e.r.y. p.a.i.n.f.u.l. Saturday evening — which caused Tim to place his first ever call to the 24/7 hospice nurse — who consulted a physician — who upped my Tramadol to handle the stabs and jabs. Unfortunately, the extra meds knocked me into a semi-comatose state from which I could not escape until mid-morning. When my eyes finally slit open, I sucked down a big-ass mug of coffee and got on with my half-day.
And. It. Was. Wonderful.
I wrote some blogs, enjoyed a ham and cheese omelet (some of it), spent some wonderful time listening to Hadley tell me where Bernadette, her Elf on the Shelf, was hiding this morning (in a hanging planter), and after she laughed at the sleeping habits of winter pixies, she went mouth-first into an extended ramble on the topic of IF and WHEN she might hear from the North Pole. She’s been waiting as patiently as any seven-year-old to find out if she made the Good Girl List. I assured her she was a shoo-in, but she was emphatic that she needed proof.
After that back-and-forth, Hadley wanted to play some sort of guessing game that she made up using a plastic egg carton full of plastic animal figurines.
Game Rules: “Close your eyes, MammyGrams, take a figurine, feel it and guess what it is.”
Unfair Advantage: I had absolutely no idea what part of the Animal Kingdom we were dealing with, unlike she who loaded up the egg carton and knew full well. Needless to say, I totally sucked at this game — but I had quite the time listening to her laugh when I suggested the cat I chose might have been a water buffalo. We finished the game, 12 to 0, and off she went to brag about her victory and tell her mom about the feline/bovine incident.
I wound down for the night by watching a Hallmark movie. That evening’s ‘drama’ was about a group of former high school friends who return home for the memorial service of their favorite teacher. These young professionals abandoned their jobs and their lives and flew in from all over to share their grief.
I was more than impressed with their commitment to the man and it made me wonder who might attend my memorial service — then I was reminded of the classmates who passed before me — the ones whose names are etched in my memory because they were really good people who died way too early. I hope I get to see them in Heaven. Perhaps it’ll be a chance meeting at the grocery store like it used to be when they were here on earth, or perhaps a more pre-planned event will be announced over Heaven’s surround-sound speaker system — “South High School, Class of ’75, a welcoming gathering for Sheryll O’Brien is now taking place in aisle 7.”
God I hope aisle 7 is the freezer aisle. You can bet your ass I’ll be reaching for a pint of Truffle Kerfuffle as soon as we catch up on our lives and afterlives.
December 20th. The Good Girl List arrived! I heard Hadley’s voice announcing the long-awaited event as she sprinted from her house next door to ours — clutching tight to the scrolled paper announcement Bernadette delivered from the North Pole.
“……. And she was hiding in the Christmas tree. And she had it in her hands. And I’m on the Good Girl List. And Santa will be coming!” the adorable kid breathlessly announced before bounding back out the door proclaiming, “I need to get dressed for school, then I’ll be back for Mashup Monday breakfast!”
Mr. Wonderful and I basked in the glow of youthful exuberance. I thanked the good lord I was here to witness it and I branded it to memory.
Speaking of memory. This happened and it broke my heart — nope, it shattered it into a million pieces. Nancy, my publisher, emailed me as she has 22 times before saying she was at the pre-publication stage where she needed the front matter for my book, Alva, and also the book jacket blurb. I got busy writing the dedication and the acknowledgements and deciding this and that about all the stuff that comes after the front cover and before the book actually begins.
AND. THEN. THIS. HAPPENED.
I opened a new document page so I could write the blurb for Alva, the last book I will ever publish — the 17th book in my Pulling Threads series, the saga I have been crafting over the course of three years. From the start, I’ve put characters who I’ve come to love like family into perilous situations — saving those whom I adore and offing those I deemed unworthy.
Oh, the power!
Anyway, Alva was crafted with two goals in mind: push the central story to its conclusion — and take my readers down memory lane by reintroducing character-specific storylines meant to tug at a few heartstrings.
Anyone who’s picked up a book in a store or library and flipped to the back cover to read the blurb knows how important those 100 or so words are. The intent is to turn a potential-reader into a real-reader and hopefully a hooked-reader. My job as the author is to write a compelling reason why people should invest their valuable time reading a 90,000 word tome written by Sheryll O’Brien.
After a couple of hours staring at a blank page I broke. I began sobbing and before long I was in a full-blown panic attack, shaking uncontrollably and gasping for air.
Tim heard me from upstairs and came running. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t remember.”
“What? You can’t remember what?”
“Alva. I can’t remember what the story is about.”
Silence.
“I wrote the damned book and I can’t remember the damned book! I have a vague idea about what my characters did, but I can’t drill down to the S.T.O.R.Y.”
Silence.
“My final story and I can’t remember it. I can’t write the blurb.”
Hysterics.
A bit of backstory. Mr. Wonderful and I have mentioned — in passing — my memory lapses and increased confusion over the course of — I can’t say exactly because I forget how long — but for weeks, I guess.
Until ‘The Alva Incident’, the things I’ve forgotten haven’t had much relevance — or maybe they have and I can’t remember. But this memory lapse — this big-ass black hole of nothingness inside my head terrified me and then it unhinged me.
More hysterics.
When I gathered myself enough, I wrote Nancy an email asking that she or Andria craft the blurb and send it to me to read. I explained in one sentence the situation. She simply replied, “No problem, girlfriend. I’m here for whatever you need.”
I know the situation broke her heart.
And like I said before, it shattered mine.
December 21st. My hospice nurse came today. Two weeks ago I dreaded the notion of opening my door to The Women of Hospice — strangers who were going to take me hostage in my living room and stand guard until Death came calling. I was set straight on that point during our first chit-chat. According to my hospice tag team, my nurse would ‘visit’ as many times a week as needed. She would do a physical and ask some questions and, based on the ‘show and tell’ portion of the visit, she would decide what I needed, provide what was needed, and decide when to return.
On this trip to Wildwood, Nurse M got the “How are you feeling” and the “have you noticed any changes” part taken care of lickety-split then got to the other reason she was there — a review of the Comfort Kit — a plastic pouch that contains little bottles of medicine that I’m assuming could get me arrested and put behind bars if I was caught walking the streets with them. Since I’m no longer allowed to walk to the kitchen, I doubt I’ll be running into a cop, but just having the ‘stuff’ in the house caused a sweat. The ‘stuff’ of course is m.o.r.p.h.i.n.e., my soon-to-be drug of choice.
Nurse M started her overview of what was inside the kit. I paid attention as she pulled this and that bottle and syringe from the bag — Mr. Wonderful, in comparison, honed in like an eagle readying for a dive of knowledge. He inched to the edge of his seat, leaned his forearms onto his legs, and stretched his talons or cracked his knuckles — in all honesty, I’m still not sure what took place in those few seconds, but it was intense.
Time for a little background. Tim is a question-asker. No matter the subject, Tim is at the ready with a question, and then another, and then another. He likes to drill down into the minutiae and find out every little thing about every little thing. I, on the other hand, am the one in the room screaming, “It’s wall-to-wall carpet, so yes it goes from one damned wall to the other and yes it goes on the floor!” So when Nurse M said she’d be giving a tutorial on the Comfort Kit, I knew I’d be needing a morphine drip that afternoon.
After Tim’s third question about quantum physics conversions from milliliters to milligrams or some shit neither he nor I know anything about, I decided to call in reinforcements. “Hannah, get your ass over here now!
“Why?”
“The hospice nurse is showing your father how to syringe morphine and he’s asking questions.”
“On my way!”
Just having her in the room slowed my heart rate and helped with my breathing — she became my human form of morphine. Nurse M sighed mightily at the confident person I put in charge of my controlled substances — and that person’s name is Hannah. When Nurse M backed off our driveway, my daughter and I took bets on whether the healthcare provider calls in sick on her next scheduled visitation day.
December 22nd. I had an awesome day! The increased Tramadol did the trick and, aside from causing an extra nap or two, I felt really good. I didn’t feel like writing so I spent some time watching the Hallmark channel — and by watching I mean to say that I stared at the screen and let my eyes glaze over. My television set is permanently tuned into the feel-good channel because I just don’t have the mental capacity to handle upsetting shows like Sesame Street anymore. So I guess you can say I’ve become a devotee of the 24/7, October-January Christmas fest on Hallmark. It’s not that bad, really. The actors and actresses are easy on the eye and the storylines are easy to follow — much easier than guessing the Number of the Day with Count von Count.
Later that afternoon, I spent a good amount of time chit-chatting with my mother and it was wonderful. Our conversations have been on the short side lately — and I’ve missed our ‘other’ talks, the gabfests that usually ended with the poor old woman gasping for air because of something I said that tickled her funny bone.
On this particular day, Mom was busy getting ready for the invasion of Confederate troops on Union soil — my brother, Don, and his lovely wife, Denise, were coming from Georgia to share my last Christmas, and they were staying with my mother and sister at the hermetically-sealed, modified-Cape the women share in Auburn.
Instead of preparing a musket or two, Mom was arming the fortress with Lysol wipes, antiseptic squirt bottles, and boxes of disposable masks. God bless the woman. She’s been in an emotional kerfuffle since she heard about her middle-child’s medical crisis, and now the sanitized abode she’d locked herself into two years ago was being breached. The concern of course is Covid — the damned menace of eighty-six-year old women, and those hoping to see their sixty-fourth birthday.
I slipped into a momentary fugue where I envisioned poor Don and Denise being forced to enter a pop-up structure on Mom’s front lawn for a quick decontamination shower, much like the ones forced on Meryl Streep in the movie Silkwood, and donning full hazmat suits before being allowed inside the Auburn residence or anywhere near me.
Mom and I didn’t discuss any of that during our call, we stuck to the drama-free topic of meatballs and sauce simmering on her stovetop “Do you think you could eat some? I could send some over.”
“I’d love some, Mom.”
“Good, oh that’s good, Sheryll Anne. Someone can pick them up mid-afternoon.”
I wasn’t sure at that time whether I’d be able to eat them, but I wanted them here just in case. As you know, I’m not eating a whole lot these days and what I am eating is usually found on the bland side of a menu card. I’ve noticed my clothes are a bit baggier and certain parts of me are sagging and dragging a bit more lately. “I’m losing weight,” I declared one day. “Finally, a diet that works,” I scoffed. Tim laughed, shook his head, and went about doing this and that.
I had a bout of nausea late afternoon and worried that I wouldn’t be able to tolerate the sauce and balls, but by 7 PM nausea edged out and hunger eased in and I ate a good bit of the dinner my Mom sent me. It tasted like I knew it would and it made me cry because it tasted like I knew it would. Comfort food — Mom’s comfort food.
December 23rd. Nurse Ratched was right on time for my appointment. My hospice nurse, the one with a great sense of humor, got quite the kick out of my calling her that. It’ll be a one-time thing because she is far too kind to suggest otherwise, even playfully. I consider myself fortunate to have her as part of my life, no matter how close to the end she entered it. Nurse M did her chit-chat and observation schtick, then nodded her head and smiled at my declaration.
“I’m feeling good, really good, yesterday and today I’ve been pain free.”
When she removed her stethoscope from around her neck and started packing her things I asked the two questions I ask each time she comes.
“I’m going to get Christmas and my birthday and New Year’s, right?”
She smiled wide. The happy expression was hidden behind her mask, but the crinkle of a few lines around her eyes gave away her show of happiness. “Barring any catastrophic event, based on today’s exam I’d say you will be having those days and I hope they are wonderful.”
My husband and I exchanged glances of joy. And then I asked the second question. “Do you think I’m looking at a two, maybe three month time-frame?”
She prefaced her answer as she always does about offering no guarantees, but she didn’t laugh out loud in incredulity either. Mr. Wonderful and I did the whole glance of joy, once again.
Late afternoon, Hadley visited and immediately filled our home with the jubilant sounds of a kid at Christmas. When it was time for her to travel off to her father’s home for an overnight stay and exchange of gifts, she wrapped her arms tight and held on for quite some time then bounded out the door for Round One of giving and receiving.
Early evening, Hannah and Jessica joined Tim and me in the living room — the one filled from end to end with gifts he lugged from the basement. Mr. and Mrs. Wonderful relaxed into the moment with our girls — each of us knowing it marked the beginning of our last Christmastime together. We shared an almost sacred bit of silence near our lighted tree and sort of just looked at one another — taking mental snapshots, I suppose. “I have something special for each of you.”
They sighed heavily knowing there were tears in their immediate future.
After I presented my daughters with pieces of my jewelry, there were tears all around.
December 24th. I woke Christmas Eve morning with no pain, no nausea, and no fatigue. Tim joined me downstairs and opened the front door so we could watch the beauty of a light snowfall. He lit the tree and kissed my head on his way to the kitchen to plug in the percolator. After handing off my mug, he sat in his mission chair, as he has countless times before — and stared at me, as he has so often in recent weeks.
After many minutes I broke the silence, “I’ve had three back-to-back wonderful days. Honestly, Tim, I can’t remember when I’ve felt better. Do you think this is one of those rally things hospice patients get?”
His response was immediate. “Nope. I think it’s the power of prayer. I think everyone who loves you is praying that you get to enjoy this holiday season — and God is hearing their prayers.”
My tears were immediate. “And He answered them.”