During my Mother's Dying

During My Mother's Dying

Early July 2006. My Mother lays ill in the last cycle of her life after battling metastatic ovarian cancer for three years. Her name is Dorothy Elizabeth Ussery Bass. Most folks call her "Dot." Although my home has been Seattle, Washington for quite some time, I am again in Virginia, the land where she gave birth to me, and feel compelled to write the following:

Last night I slept ten and a half hours, awaking from a heavy dream combining aspects of Mt. Rainier, the Appalachian Trail, and my friends David & Tina from Richmond. The night before I slept only 3-4 hours. I got out of bed early & went for a walk, rambling around the farm and across the land. Did push-ups on the concrete apron of the old cow lane, my hands pushed down where cowshit used to pile up in amazing quantities. Now it's been washed clean by the rains & bleached by the sun.

The most beautiful songs burst forth from songbirds perched up in treetops and on the barn roof cupolas. We don't have songbirds much out West, they tend to thrive East of the Great Plains - they need deciduous forests. An amazing array of bird songs fill the morning air. It feels cool in the morning only because warm air is cooler than hot air. It later got up to a sweltering, humid 100 degrees. Damn. People slow down. You walk with deliberation and a sense of conservation. People say it is unusual for such temperatures so soon. That's August weather. Global Warning (sic, yes).

I've been enjoying the nights. Stars and familiar constellations thru hazy skies. Watching the moon grow. I love the zip of myraid dragonflies darting and hovering into the evening, transmuting softly into floating clouds of blinking fireflies as night settles. Mid-day it's June bug time. The giant emerald-brown beetles rumble in swarms above bushes and treetops. As the cows are gone, the lack of flies is noticeable. A few ticks though. I picked only three off me after a hike across fields and down a wooded ravine. I'm staying with my sister and her family down on the lake. I really like it there. Peaceful. Quiet. I like the silence where time seems to slow wayyy down. Makes me rethink things - do we really want a second home on Lake Wenatchee with stunning views but jammed between other homes, or would we rather have free ranging open spaces for kids to run and play in right outside the door? I find myself become reattached to the land I came from, as perhaps only a farmer's son could.

Yesterday I stop by the cemetary on my way to Richmond. My father's grave is a year and a half old now. The little animal figurines placed along the gravestone are faded from the elements, as are a vase of flowers. I clear away one wilted rose so I can read his name: William Merritt Bass. My mom's name is already there, the grave ready to receive her when the time comes, the only thing missing the date of her death yet to come. I have a little conversation with Dad.

I walk over the graves of my great-uncle R. Aumon Bass and his beloved Mary Scott Bass. He was deaf and she a deaf-mute. She died 33 years ago and yet I remember her so clearly. They were the last to live in the old Bass Farmhouse. For months after her death we could stand outside and hear Uncle Aumon wailing, mourning her loss. We could hear him crying all the way down the hill to my parents' house. As Aumon presented himself in public as a taciturn man of composure and dignity (unless he lost his temper), the rest of us where taken off guard hearing him grieve. We didn't know what to do.

It made us all uncomfortable.So we avoided the issue. If he talked about her death at all, how much he missed her, I just listened quietly not knowing what else to do. Don't quite remember anymore. Except that he followed her into death 9 years later.

Robert Augustus Masters, one of my current mentors, writes in Darkness Shining Wild death is the last thing to come out of the closet. In our culture we now talk about sex and money, race and religion, politics and the environment, everything else but Death. We don't know how to be with death. We often spell it Death. We don't do that with birth, do we? Death lives in the closet, but not really. When one becomes present to death it is right there in our laps, sitting next to me in the car, hovering over my mother, flowing between trees and headstones and flowers and livestock. I drove passed a dear burst open along the side of the road. My second day here while driving the back roads a deer ran out right in front of me and vanished into the woods. As I topped the hill six more deer stood grazing in a hayfield. My God, it is hot. But I drive with the windows rolled down to feel the air blasting me but really for the smells. I love the smell of rural Virginia. Every state has a distinctive smell, each region of the country does, and Virginia smells different from Florida from Vermont from Iowa from New Mexico from Oregon. From Washington. Just like, I would imagine, Tuscany smells different from Norway and England from Bavaria. Death has its own unique smell, too.

Yesterday in Richmond I hang with David Wilson and his wife Tina Ennulat. It is a joyous reunion, almost tearful. We are the best of friends from our grad school days, they have four beautiful children, and I haven't seen them since the summer of 2001. What makes it special is that we all became buddies as separate individuals, I was especially close to Tina, and then she and David became a couple. So we're all "equal" friends rather than one tagging along just out of spousedom. Gwen, they say hi & hugs to you, and Kristina, they can't wait to meet you. And see our kids. Tina is an author and an editor on staff for a couple of big, glossy high class magazines, while David is a school teacher. He lights up with a passion for children and learning. He loves teaching kids. That's his purpose.

We drop off their youngest son at a kiddie birthday party. I fit right in with the parents. They are so Virginia with that strange and unique blend of hippie and preppie from my generation. Gwen, I bet you know exactly what I'm talking about. Right in the middle of the city is this gigantic old farmhouse on a double city lot. They've turned the yard into gardens and flower beds amok with red clay and vegetation. The two pet guinea pigs are taken out of their hutch and put in an open pen to get some exercise. The kids are spraying each other with constant streams of water. Water is everywhere, sprayed up in the air, on the slide, on the grass, on the trampoline, squirting straight up from hose-toys. Kids run crazy, laughing, not seeming to notice it is a hundred frickin' degrees. Us adults either explore the gardens or hang in the shade of an enormous wrap-around porch with old-fashioned wooden rocking chairs. It turns out three of them have traveled to Seattle and to Vancouver BC on business!

We leave and go on an air-conditioned driving tour of The Fan, the Bohemian core of Richmond anchored by Virginia Commonwealth University and The Village Cafe. The James River is gigantic in flood. A rushing, raging tumbling mass of brown and white water roiling thru trees. It seems almost a full mile across. So many rapids. Enormous flood stage rapids. Scary fun.
And sure enough, a train of big blue rafts followed by a flotilla of kayaks barrel down and dance thru the wave trains and drop over ledges into churning holes. I feel the tug of the river, the lure of the paddle, and decide I'm quite happy just to watch.

We return to the birthday party to pick up Tina's son. Other parents are arriving. One mother brings her dog. Off leash. Suddenly we spot the dog with a guinea pig in its mouth. No violence. Just holding it in its mouth.

We rush forward, the dog drops the guinea pig, which tries to crawl away. The Dad of the birthday boy picks up the guinea pig and cradles it against his chest. The guinea pig dies right there. We suspect a broken back. Shock. Trauma. Heat. No blood. The little boy is quite distraught.

Suddenly the dog is back in the pen after the other guinea pig. The architect yanks the dog out by the collar as its owner comes rushing over.

"Go put Wilber up in your room right now!" the mother of the birthday kid yells at her son. He does so, in tears. He is angry and splutters threats.

The father is stern but matter of fact. "He's just a dog. That's what dogs do." The woman who owns the dog is embarrassed and blubbers all over herself. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry my dog killed your little boy's guinea pig." Over and over again. I watch it all in slow motion, more just holding the space. All I can really think of is the presence and the immediacy of death. Death comes fast and unexpected. One never knows. We may never see each other again. I feel the point is really to take on the practice of being aware of death and dying and learning how to accept it and be with it so when it comes it comes and we can grieve with it and support one another openly without whispers and discomfort. I remember, Kristina, it seemed to me you didn't quite know what to do when my dad died and I reached out to you as my lover and life partner for support. We all talk about an interdependent web of life all too conveniently blind how interwoven that web is with death. Death can bring the living closer together in life as well. I feel it important to support one another thru the dying and the grieving not leave each other all alone as my Uncle Aumon was. Yes, we really do need one another. Death drives home that social aspect of our humanity. Somehow "need" has become a bad word, the opposite of that good word "independent." Just as the 4th of July comes. I would love to see Earth celebrate an Interdependence Day.

I drive home from Richmond straight to see my Mom. She appears so comfortable and peaceful. Then a wave of pain hits. Or a burst of nausea.

Then's she's peaceful again. We hang out. I read an article to her from the paper. I show her pictures of my family life in Seattle. Lots of photos and videos on the laptop. She loves that. For now her mind is surprisingly lucid and clear. As the cancer progresses and spreads throughout her body and invades her brain all that may change. Mom really wants to see all her grandkids again, Morgan, and Kate, even Talia. I say maybe October is a possibility, but I do not committ. She may be going home this week. Beth has around the clock care lined up at $6000 a month. Insurance will not pay for it. It will come out of her own nest egg. She has an estimated five months left, but who really knows for sure. It could be 2 or 3 months, or a year, and the cancer will continue to exponentially spread as it is no longer being treated. Mom is so weak. Can't walk much. Her legs are swollen, tight, dark purple, with oozing sores. She's quite content to lay in the bed and bide the time. She claims she's comfortable and just waiting for the end. Where as she fought to live with every breath she now seems to accept her own approaching death. Then suddenly she looks afraid, then sad, worries about dividing up the estate, and then moves on.

I'm going to go visit Mom soon, and then visit more graves. Graves of relatives and neighbors. I'm suddenly present to the large numbers of people who played prominent roles in my life, especially as a child and young adult, who are now dead. Funny. The article I read to Mom from the paper regarded a breakthru in human genetics research. There are 6.5 billion human beings now, and every single one of them was able to be traced back to one single person - male or female is unclear - who lived sometime between the reign of Tutankhamen of Eqypt to Alexander the Great to the time of Jesus. That person lived somewhere in East Asia, most likely from either Taiwan, Siberia, or ...can't remember the other places. The lineages of every other human being alive at that time died out. So at some point all the ethnic and religious groups currently killing and maiming each other in war all shared the same great-ever-so-great grandparents. That is wild. And all those living today from remote tribes in New Guinea to the cosmpolitan streets of Paris and New York are all kin. We are all having sex with people who are genetically our distant relatives. Kristina, we're kissin' cousins! And so is everyone else. This was done thru an amazing combination of genetics biologists, geneaologists, & statisticians teaming up on a supercomputer inspired by the landmark work with the human genome project. And I don't even know if all this is really true.

Time to go live, and someday, sometime, I will die.

The Afterlife, if it actually exists, and I believe it does, awaits as another adventure.

As does this life.

A couple days later....

Yesterday was 100 degrees again. Both temperature & humidity. Until wind, thunder, lightning and driving rain drove me from old graveyards.

A few other things stand out from my journey here in southcentral Virginia: obesity, sweetie, & Jesus. I've never seen so many people struggling with obesity and diabetes. My goodness. Truly round people. All calling each other "Sweetie," "Honey," and "Sweetie-pie." And "Shuga." Except the men never ever dare say that to another man less he become suspect.

At my Mom's care facility in popped a young nurse named Dana. She was short & petite, a refreshing difference from all the roundies turning sideways to get thru the door. Dana had a full head of lush, gorgeous hair dense with tight, thick curls.

"Mif Bass, I'm here to to draw your blood," Dana announced.

"Oh, no," groans Mom.

"Oh, yes. You know we have to do it every two days, Sweetie."

"Oh, God," my Mom groans & moans. "Not again. The last two people stuck those needles in me and couldn't get anything. Anything."

"I'm sorry to hear that, Sweetie."

"Can you do it right?"

"Between me and Jesus, I tell you what. If I can't get any blood out in two tries I'll stop. OK, Honey?"

A few minutes later Dana is ready. She uses a baby needle as Mom has tiny veins. The first attempt fails.

Dana puts a bandaid on my Mom's hand and comments, "Hey, now you're bleeding after I done put that band-aid on. That's not fair!"

The second attempt succeedes.

"See, Sweetie," Dana says. "I kept my promise."

Between me and Jesus.

Blood spurts onto the white blanket.

Dana left her gloves on the floor.

Some one will analyze my Mom's blood to determine drug interactions and dosages.

I go on a tour of cemetaries.

First to visit the grave of Raffie Stokes, my first mentor even though neither of us knew that word at the time, at Bethel Grove Baptist Church. I had trouble finding the grave, and was a bit peeved at my self for being so self-conscious for being a White man in a Black graveyard. Man, it is HOT!

And I find the grave, marked by a little tin square on an aluminum popsickle stick: "Raffie Stokes 1909 - 1997." That's it. His grandson, murdered by an angry girlfriend with a car, has a nice fancy tombstone nearby. Plastic flowers and red clay soil. Then back to my Dad's grave at

Trinity Memorial Gardens. "Dad," I say. "I finally understand the value of a dollar. I get it." And back to Aumon & Mary's graves.

And then on to Pisgah Baptist Church in Rice, an offshoot of Sharon Baptist Church in Sandy River. I walked into the enormous cemetary and am momentarily stunned by the size of my dead relations there. Knowing, too, it is just a fraction. I wander around the deceased elders and infants of my tribe. Basses, Gateses, Bruces, all intermarried, and their spouses families' families. The whole cemetary is somehow interconnected and not just by the crab grass. I want Kristina to see this so she can get an understanding of clan. In part to better understand me, and in part to prepare her for her visit to Japan where an entire nation is clan. I want my children to stand in this cemetary to somehow get an appreciation for family history and the extensiveness of their clan.

Lightning flashes on the horizon. I notice black thunderheads piling up and moving fast. A wall of wind slams into massive oak trees and bends them over. I bow to the whole cemetary and abort my trip to Sharon's graveyard. I think of relatives buried from New England to South Carolina. As I get into the car rain thunders down. I drive as long as I can without turning on the windshield wipers. Then I do. Leaves, twigs, branches litter the road. The rain hammers down. A gulley washer. I love this storm. Lightning forks jagged across dark skies and zips right in front of me. In two hours the storm clears and the air is clean and fresh. Graves washed clean.

I am grateful to all the dead people for their many contributions to my life since my birth. Their names and faces move in and out of my mind. Uncles and aunts, cousins and distant relations, close neighbors and church folks, the bad and the good, the upright and the eccentric. All in service. And now dead as someday we all will be.

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