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By david newman
We are in a bus, going to see a movie. The other seats are filled with people from…I am not sure. The bus driver is the woman who teaches a graduate seminar on Chaucer, and the movie we will see is The Pardoner’s Tale. We are chatting about the Tale, about the folly of trying to kill death.
I look up and am surprised to see that the driver is my grandmother. But then I am too busy trying to follow her orders. All of the rooms in this house must be swept perfectly clean of dust and dirt. My mother cannot do this for herself, so it is my house, too, and the room in which I begin must be mine. “Make it perfect!” calls my grandmother, and I know I cannot succeed.
I pull out a chest, begin behind it. There is more than dust and dirt. Things alive, worms, maggots, swarm in the filth. I run the broom over the gross, filthy carpet, and see that I can only touch the top layer of the mess. What lies beneath breeds, proliferates, even as I clean. Because I clean.
My grandmother’s voice, stern before, turns to ice: “You are failing, this is terrible, can you not follow simple commands? You always fail. You could be perfect. You choose not to be.”
Fuck you, you bitch! You sweep! I am not—You always—Christ… But I must not speak so. She has a bad heart…I will summon death with my words, my failure. Death will bring a massive heart attack, a deep coma, irreparable brain damage, a decision about life support.
Does dreaming separate the space between collapse and death? Is she, am I, are we – ah, but now I am at our favorite Mexican restaurant, with Dad. Dad has asked if I’d like a beer, or a margarita. No, Dad; I’ve been to rehab, you know I do not drink. Not now, not now, but Dad is speaking to all of us: “Mom is in a better place, she is happy now, not like before.”
He is speaking only to me: “The roof needs shingling. We have a leak. Can you fix this?” I have done this before, made a mess instead of fixing it. I cannot fix the holes I made to lay the basement, the water runs under the shingles, under each new layer of shingles, this is making the leak much worse, inside the house the black mold is spreading faster than I can scrub it, and worms and maggots writhe on the carpet, in the enchiladas I am eating.
Dad calls to tell me what to do, but the connection is bad. “You must try harder, I am losing my house, I am losing everything, I am—” Dad? You’re fading out…I cannot understand. Bad connection, I am losing you.
This is the natural progression of Parkinson’s with Lewy body dementia, the doctor told us to expect that at the end, the mind would die. I will summon death with my words, my failure. Death will bring a loss of self, a piece a day, hallucinations, rage, mutterings of forgotten childhood surprises, irreparable brain damage, a decision about life support.
Does dreaming cease within a dying mind? Or does dying cease within the dreams? Is he, am I, are we—ah, but my mother is reading to me, and I am so happy to be a good child. I love Last One Home is a Green Pig. I like the monkey, I want him to win, he always wins, but the monkey and the duck always get help, and my mother is teaching me the sounds that letters and words make, she is helping me…she says the words say, “I will not deceive you.”
I do not understand at all, for she is screaming now, “Where have you been? You’re killing me with waiting up for you!”
You have been drinking, not waiting up. Drinking since your own god damned precious father drank himself to death. Yes, I’m drunk, too, who cares? I would not even think this rage if I were not…but I wish I had not, because she has a hammer, is beating holes in the room where she taught me to read, holes filling with water and filth and squirming things I cannot keep out, unless I drug myself senseless, and she is frail and barely conscious, sitting in her excrement in a room she has not left for so long, so long.
“You better come quick,” someone says, “she is slumping over, hasn’t eaten in weeks, but when we call the paramedics, she rouses and says her mind is perfectly under control. They can’t take her like this.” I can’t take her like this, but I can take fistfuls of pills, say to myself, You did deceive me (I do not know why), and the hammer falls again, and we are trapped in a dream between oblivion and death, and I will summon death with my words, my failure. Death will bring a loss of self, a rage, the cure for rage that is worse than rage and summons dying anyway, mutterings of forgotten childhood surprises, irreparable brain damage, a decision about life support.
Does the mind dream trapped between drugged oblivion and death by drugging? Is she, am I, are we—ah, but the bus is wending up the steep mountain road, we are staying at a cabin in a forest high above the desert, and my grandfather will walk through the pines and aspens with me and hold my hand and explain about the cycle of life in these woods. We come here every year, it is the happiest time of the year, my family is all here, and the trail turns, fades. We cannot go back, cannot tell anyone where we are heading, into or out of grief and guilt—ah, but…
david newman teaches IB and AP English at Odessa High School and is a regular editorial contributor to The Dallas Morning News (and other papers).