Snowglobe

I am submitting this piece for the Tuesday Writing Essentials "Spotlight" piece. This is therapy for me, and I cherish all of you who re-read this posted here today.... 

The house is frozen in time-like a snow globe- protected under a dome of paper-thin glass.  A tiny, fragile world captured, untouchable.  It's all that he can do, the best that he can do- to survive the loss of her.  Not quite in denial, that she has gone, but hoping against all reason, that she is somehow still here. 

Every day, for three long years, he was at her side, holding her hand as she plunged further into decline.  He tried to hold on, with all his might, but she kept losing her grip, slipping away into the depths, like a mermaid being sucked back into the sea.  He tried to sing to her, to tell her stories, to brush his fingers through her hair-devastatingly tender acts to keep her here.  But in the end, she has left us all.

I remember the day that Mom died with a clarity that slays me.  The smack of reality still stings.  It will forever.  A ringing rudely rattled my sleepy head.  A quick glance at the clock.   I didn't want to pick it up.  I answered with the dread that only comes with early morning or late night telephone rings.

"Hello?"       Too long the silence.

"Hi, Pat. This is Rhonda.  It's your Mom.  She's passed away?????".   The words fell hard and slow like huge, heavy stones, crushing my heart.  Rhonda gently carried on, with more details, but it was like I was submerged, like someone was trying to talk to me through the density of water.  I didn't want to know the rest, somehow.  Each word she spoke just elaborated upon-and validated- that which I did not want to hear. 

I sat up in bed.  My head a helium balloon about to lift off my shoulders.  I lied down again, and my husband stirred.  He knew, as soul mates do.  He took the phone and told Rhonda that we would take care of things.  We would tell my Dad. 

The ride over to my Dad's felt like slow motion. As he slept unaware-we carried the news that would bring his world to an end. 

What mere words could wrap around the wound that I was about to inflict?  I tried to rehearse what to say.  Silence filled the car- like lead.  A big part of my own heart had just flown away, but I had to stay tethered and sane.

And too soon, we were there.  I rang the bell-he didn't come to the door.  To steady my soul, I inhaled the scent of this place-my family home.  The fragrant pine trees that surround Dad's house, like huge green arms, seemed to soothe me with an airy, knowing composure. 

Dad finally appeared at the door, groggy and befuddled.  I swear, I had had the words.  But when I opened my mouth, a strangled sob rose up from deep in my gut. 

"Oh, Daddy!  She's gone!"

His face instantaneously fell-there was fear in his eyes.  That disarmed me, even more: fear in my Dad's eyes.  He hugged me, or hung onto me, and started to sob, and I remember thinking how frail he felt.  A bony chicken carcass had taken over my Dad's once robust stature-these shoulders too small to handle the weight of this sadness.  

He turned-nearly collapsed- into the bedroom door-off the darkened hallway-and crumpled onto the bed.  He held his crooked arm to his face, and it is then that I witnessed the deepest pain imaginable.  He erupted in fits of sobbing, so brutally heartfelt, that I wanted to turn my head away.  Pain like this almost too private to be seen. 

My husband intuited, as much, and excused himself to wander through the muddy yards.  I could only bend down and enclose my Dad, like a child, and sob my own great drafts of salted tears onto his bristly cheek; a horrible symphony of pain.

As the months have passed, he has done all the "right" things.  He has packed up all of Mom's clothes, each seemingly innocuous shirt, pair of slacks or pair of shoes triggering a memory, magnifying her absence.  Each bag of clothes somehow holding part of her and thereby, the parting with each, so sorrowful.  He only admits this to me-this irrational attachment to mere cloth.   I have the same attachment, the same sentimental affliction. 

He has cleaned and ordered every room in the house- a bit fanatical-at first-overcome with a need to bring order- perhaps to fend off a world that had spun out of control.

He has unearthed and sorted attic boxes heavy with photos of  toothless baby smiles, toddlers covered in cake, communions, graduations, weddings and Christmas mornings.  Happy times frozen in black and white.

In the house, all is ordered and clean.  But there are signs everywhere of his need to have her present.  Her Arizona Highways magazines are fanned out on the coffee table, as if she will soon be home to thumb through one of her favorite issues. 

There are two coffee cups by the coffee maker, and he sheepishly admits that he pours a cup for Mom each morning.  I see a bowl glittering with her junk jewelry on the dining room table.  As I dig my hand into the tangled treasures, I can see her putting on each necklace, usually to dress up one of her "man-tailored shirts" and black pants.  Mom-Windham's answer to Katherine Hepburn! 

When I go to visit Dad, I must go into the little room, which used to be my Grandmother's bedroom.  My Mom always loved this room, for its sunlight and for its warm, pumpkin-colored wide pine floors.  After Nana died, Mom slowly adopted this room and took it as her own.  She called it her "Indian Room".  In it, she showcased most of her own life's treasures, most from her beloved Arizona.  Navajo rugs anchor the space.  Kachina dolls, carved from cottonwood, stand as silent sentries on a shelf.  Cheap Mexican pottery, is placed atop the bureau, with the care and tenderness afforded to rare Indian artifacts. 

In this special room, now his bedroom, Dad has placed pictures of Mom, in special vantage points, so he can see her when he lies down at night.  On the bedside table, I see a framed Navajo prayer.  I cannot recall the exact words, but the message is clear.  I am here.  I am in the soft winds that blow.  I am in the rising of the sun and in the spangle of stars at night.  I am here.