Life, One Page At A Time

The lung cancer ravaged my mother like an uncontrolled fire, finally consuming her entirely one morning, seven weeks after her initial diagnosis.

She was sixty-six years old, and just about the most vibrant, gutsy, fun and badass person I’d ever had the joy of being around. She lived up to every inch of her Spanish / Navajo heritage, a sassy, wise, provocative and potent brew of woman who left the imprint of her force-of-nature style wherever she went.

The Montoya’s came to the New World in 1546. Given a land grant in New Mexico, they settled on 700 acres of land living as Gauchos and ranchers and still do, today. And by thier standards, sixty-six was adult infancy. The elders tended to live regularly well into their upper nineties, with one hundred plus ages not the least uncommon.

We all presumed Louisa was one of those old growth Oaks under whose branches of family would rest grand and great grandchildren. Certainly no expected that Oak to be so quickly, unceremoniously burnt to the ground. The cancer moved faster than we could plan. Days slipped away faster from us the tighter we tried to hold onto them. Louisa was tired. Morphine masked the pain, but made her groggy.

We moved her home to the couch and watched her labored breath move her chest slowly, up and down, each breath possibly her last. Exhausted from the sheer terror of losing my mother, I fell into a deep sleep early one night. Suddenly, Louisa was there—a dream, an apparition, a vision.

I kneeled next to her, asking “What should I do?”. I meant, with her belongings, her clothes, a few possessions. But what I felt was, “What will I do without you?”. I kept asking, answered by the air all around us which echoed “Everything’s fine”. Until finally I realized, everything would be fine. Somehow. When I wokr up, my face was wet from tears. I said to Ann, “I never knew a dream could be so sad…”. And in the space before she could answer, my brother called to say he’d just gone in to the living room and found mom—peaceful, relaxed and yes, no longer breathing.

Seven weeks later, Ann and I were far removed from Colorado’s foothills, but every second of the previous months was as close as our breath. We couldn’t sleep, and suffered a sort of dulling malaise that clung to our hearts like those lead capes you wear when you’re x-rayed.

We were staying on NYC’s upper west side in a small one bedroom. It was just forty-eight days after Louisa’s death, a time Buddhist’s consider a key transition point when the consciousness finally separates from presumed reference points.

All night long the phone kept ringing—half asleep, I’d stumble over and pick it up. On the other end was a kind of low-frequency static “Hello….hello, who is it?’. I’d keep asking over and over, able to hear the line was open—but no one responded.

It happened on and off through the evening, my voice falling away in to a space at the other end of the receiver that buzzed lightly with an energy like a small bee-hive.

Around 3:00 or 4:00am, I sat straight up in bed, looking over to the living room. There was Louisa, her long black hair flowing behind her as she glided through the space, then just as mirage like, disappearing.

Ann sat up “What is it?”.

“Louisa”.

We put our heads back down and slept what little we could, too tired to make sense out of any of it anymore. The next evening Ann and I walked to the Hudson. I had a small portion left from Louisa’s cremation ashes, which I let fall into the dark water far below us.

“I’m just trying to let go mom, that’s all”.

My voice echoed inside my ears, as sharp winter air stabbed at us. Silently Ann and I marched back to Broadway, to the subway. Then Ann reached over, her hand to my arm “Can you breathe?’. I put my hand on my chest—the lead vest was gone. Maybe it was a start.

We sat on the subway quietly, side by side. Too worn out to say anything. It had been a marathon of grief, and we were just beginning to realize we might never finish the race. Better to stop running. Across from me, I saw a little girl next to her mother. Five or six years old, beautiful little ringlets of hair spilled over her forehead, which I could see just above the cover of the book she was reading, held out in front of her.

The cover was illustrated in bright colors, and I had to tilt my head down just so to make out the title, “Louise, The One And Only”. The girl’s mother leaned back in to her seat, eyes closed. Behind them both through the subways window I could see the buildings blur past in an endless line, a page, a book, a story at a time.