IN MY SHOES: Becoming An Orphan – At The Age Of 55
The opening grafs of this excerpt of Christopher Buckley’s soon-to-be-published memoir, “Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir,” is about the night his mother, Pat, died in 2007 (his father would die 11 months later):
To the extent that this story has a dimension beyond the purely personal, I suppose it’s an account of becoming an orphan. … I do realize that “orphan” sounds like an overdramatic term for becoming parentless at age 55 …
One realization does dawn upon the death of the second parent, namely that you’ve now moved into the green room to the River Styx. You’re next. Another thing about parental mortality: No matter how much you’ve prepared for the moment, when it comes, it comes at you hot, hard and unrehearsed. …
I drew up a chair and held what I could of her hand, which was cold and bony and edematous with fluid. The nurse returned shortly and said that Dr. D’Amico was on the phone. Joe D’Amico was her orthopedist, a kindly, attentive and warm man. …
Joe came on the line. He said how sorry he was, that she was a wonderful lady. He said: “What you’re seeing there isn’t her. She’s already in heaven.” …
He asked, “Do you want to leave the respirator in or let nature take its course?” I said, “Let’s remove the respirator.”
I’d brought with me a pocket copy of the book of Ecclesiastes. A line in “Moby-Dick” lodged in my mind long ago: “The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon’s, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe.” I grabbed it off my bookshelf on the way here, figuring that a little fine-hammered steel would probably be a good thing to have on this trip. I’m no longer a believer, but I haven’t quite reached the point of reading aloud from Christopher Hitchens’s “G-d Is Not Great” at deathbeds of loved ones.
Soon after, a doctor came in to remove the respirator. It was quiet and peaceful in the room, just pings and blips from the monitor. I stroked her hair and said, the words coming out of nowhere, surprising me, “I forgive you.”
It sounded, even at the time, like a terribly presumptuous statement. But it needed to be said. She would never have asked for forgiveness herself, even in extremis. She was far too proud. Only once or twice, when she had been truly awful, did she apologize. Generally, she was defiant - almost magnificently so - when her demons slipped their leash. …
Just before 2 o’clock in the morning, April 15, 2007, the respiratory line indicated that her breathing had stopped. Still her heart continued to beat, according to the faint but distinct blips. I rushed to find the nurse. “It’s normal,” she said. “It takes a little while.” She examined the monitor, held Mum’s wrist and nodded. It was over.
The Stiletto believes that you do not become an adult when your parents die, rather when you can forgive them for their real and imagined transgressions, faults and deficiencies. With any luck, your parents will still be alive when the epiphany occurs that they did the best they could under the circumstances.
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