Day 95

Around one o’clock in the morning on Wednesday, my brother texted my mom to say that he’d be leaving Nashville early on Thursday morning, which meant he’d be arriving late Thursday night. Mom saw the text when she woke up. He gave us only a day’s notice that Mom would have to leave Long Island to go back to Queens. Of course, I had to drive her. But I’m not even close to being ready to go back to New Jersey. I’d stay away forever if I could. So I told her we’d all drive into the city and then I’d turn around and come back here. However, I can only stay a bit longer since I have to be home by Monday. I have to take my spouse to have eye surgery on Tuesday morning. Anyway, a day’s notice from my brother meant we had to scramble to change our plans and reorganize things. 

This morning my son was mopey because he didn’t want to say goodbye to the dogs. Mom was mopey because she didn’t want to leave. As I was packing up the car for her she said, “I’m sad when I get here. I’m sad when I have to go. It’s like I’m living in an imaginary world. God just didn’t want me to be happy.” I know how she feels.

On the way home we stopped in Riverhead. Mom wanted to buy more dog food and she needed to replace the curtain rod that Dad knocked down the other day. While Mom and my son went into the stores, I stayed in the car with the dogs. While we were parked, they wiggled their way out of the carrying crates. Emma jumped into shotgun and Lily sat on my lap.

Back in New York, we discovered the television is broken. The color looks like some crazy psychedelic trip. It’s hard to pay attention to what you are watching when the contrast seems to be turned on too high and the colors seem to be expressing themselves as their opposites on the color wheel. Yesterday, the vacuum cleaner broke. As I was driving Mom to Stop and Shop she kept saying, “Why is everything falling apart? Why can’t anything go well.” The stress and anxiety combined with her grief is making sleep impossible. She sleeps less than I do. “Why did your father have to die?” I ask the same question on repeat every day. I have no answers, but I suggested, “Maybe Daddy’s breaking everything. Maybe it’s his way of telling you it’s okay to sell the house and move closer to me. If you lived near me, I could help you more easily.” She sighed. That wasn’t the answer she wanted. I’m not even sure it was the truth. But I didn’t know what else to say. I’m pissed off at God — if there even is God — too.

By the time we left Stop and Shop I was fuming. Many of the cashiers wore masks pulled down under their noses. What’s the point of a mask if it isn’t covering your mouth and your nose. Several customers weren’t wearing masks either. One man pulled down his mask so he could have a loud conversation on the phone. I complained to an employee. She walked away but didn’t do anything. Then after Mom put the food on the belt, I noticed that the cashier not only wasn’t wearing his mask properly, he was wiping his nose with his hand as he rung up the groceries. At any time that would be completely disgusting, but now in the midst of a pandemic that’s killing thousands of Americans, it’s despicable. It’s unprofessional. It can be deadly. If the staff can’t be clean, they shouldn’t be working. Their actions are putting others at risk.

On a good note, after weeks of not being able to find Aunt Jemima pancake mix for my son, there was one box on the shelf. I bought it. I had to. I know, maybe it wasn’t best move politically, but if Dad were alive he would have bought it. He would have felt compelled since the name is changing. And so I bought for him, and also for my son. Because those were the pancakes Grandpa always made for him.

I was very excited to get another book in the mail. One of my writing friends sent her book, The Whole Truth, which was published last year. She sent it to me shortly after Dad went into the hospital. It took the post office more than two months to get it to me. When I texted my friend to thank her, she was floored that it took so long. Once upon time, I sent things via sea mail from Korea. They reached New York in a shorter span of time.

My son is distraught. When we left Mom’s he said goodbye to the dogs and he was crying hysterically. He didn’t want to go. He wanted to stay with them. In the car, he cried “Why do they have to go?” “I just want five more minutes with them.” “Emma is old. She could die. And I’ll never see her again.” “I didn’t have enough time with them.” “Maybe it was better if didn’t spend any time with them at all. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be sad.” He cried until we reached the Long Island Expressway and then he fell asleep. But the moment we got here and I woke him up, he started in again, “The dogs should be here, begging for food.” “The house is so quiet without the dogs.” “It was only this morning we cuddled on the couch together.”

I can understand him being sad that the dogs have to go back with my brother, but his reaction seems extreme. I wonder, is this some form of transference. Is it easier for him to mourn the dogs leaving than it is for him to mourn his grandfather’s death.” He cried more over the dogs than his grandfather. And the words he was saying, the phrases he used, seem more appropriate for someone who died, not someone — or someones — who is going home.

After dinner, my son connected via messenger kids with a friend he met up in Cape Cod three years ago. I’m not sure who called who, but in the middle of my taekwondo lesson I heard them chatting. My son was laughing. I’m glad his friend was able to make him smile. I’m glad he was able to set aside his sadness for a little while.