WALKING ON THIN ICE

Mother Dwarf a year before hell - foto by smith

here’s the piece i wrote that won Lady K’s heart, although she was already leaning my way due to my enigmatic tee-shirts and outlaw ways.

As Mother Dwarf Lay Dead and Dying

For three minutes there, I was a murder suspect. But enough of me, let’s talk about mom.

1974, Mother Dwarf mentioned Leonard Cohen’s music sounded like a soundtrack for a funeral home. Last week she died listening to I’m Your Man here at Smith’s funeral parlor & art studio.

Guess she was right. Give the lady a rose. Why not - Christ arose, and he was dead.

She hit the emergency room September 29, 2004. Took her 9 months, 68 pounds, 3 intensive cares, 3 emergency rooms, 3 near deaths, 2 hospitals, and 3 therapy homes to get back home.

Then 7 days to die.

Biblical implications here. . . mom deconstructs her mortal life in 6 days, then really rests on the seventh day . . . and the eighth . . . and the ninth . . . forever and ever null mom.

I could have saved her - but she would have killed me, and I’m way past a good looking corpse.

I make a good son though. The massive antibiotics the doctors used to kill her blood and bone infections also killed her kidneys - so they sewed a needle into her neck like good little vampires and put her on dialysis four hours a day, three days a week.

Broke my heart to see her suffer so, so said I’d give her one of my kidneys for transplant just to get her off the bloodsucking machines.

Brought tears to her eyes. Couldn’t have that. Ruin my rep.

Next visit said hey mom, hope you didn’t think I was just giving you my kidney. It’s more of a rental situation. “But, you wouldn’t repossess from your own Mother, would you?” Of course not - pause - not as long as you made your payments. . . I’m not a monster.

Laughter much better than tears.

February 2000, Mom waited as car passed, then stepped into the crosswalk. Driver stopped and backed up to park in a space he’d passed - without looking, of course. Backed into Mother Dwarf. Crushed her knee. Knocked her to the asphalt. Made the back of her head all soft and squishy - then fled to eastern Europe without even saying sorry.

That’s the day Mother Dwarf started dying, though neither of us knew it. Doctors put in metal erector set and slapped her leg back together at an odd angle that got ever odder. Our medical system seems not to care about the old and broken unless they’re money green. Must be their hypocritical oath.

Takes a village to raise a child. Takes a bottom line to repair the old.

Last September, a week away from mom’s new knee, I come home from work to find her sitting in bed. She couldn’t walk. Had sat there all day - her pain pills and phone out of reach - waiting for me to rescue her.

It wasn’t my fault, so why do I feel so bad? This rescue business reeks of guilt.

Intensive care found both her blood and bone joints abounding in bacterial infection. Also heart arrhythmia, pseudo gout, blood clots, bacterial clumps which might head for her heart, and more long bad names the doctors said quickly.

She began hallucinating - knights plotting to kill the king and take the castle. Dead men on concrete. Thunder and lightening in the room. Took her first near death dance, her first death dance back.

“Take one crisis forward / Two disasters back
Do the death dance baby / Spin the man in black”

Out to a rest home muscle rebuilding program, where the doctor - either for profit or stupidity - switches her heart medicine without telling her or her doctors, and puts her back into intensive care twice, almost killing her both times.

I do more grieving for the Pre-Dead Mom Who Wouldn’t Die. Grief on the installment plan.

More hops skips tests of mom’s mortal coil caught in reoccurring rhythms, but finally she gets just strong enough to fool the therapists into releasing her.

Her first 3 days home, mom was delighted. The 4th day she told me how hard everything was here. She wasn’t strong enough yet for studio life. Came home two weeks too early. She fought so stubbornly for 9 months to get back here - but once home saw her pain and limitations had months or more to go. Plus everything she’d fought to get back to - her art supplies, her found object stash, her giant TV showing Indians baseball - was one floor down. She was sixteen steep pain wrenching steps from her home.

Wednesday night she was quiet. Thursday night deeply depressed.

Friday night she was hallucinating again. Asked me who my friends were.
What friends?
“The three weird people you brought home with you.”
Where are they?
“One’s under my mattress.”
What do they do?
“They find out things.”
Are they dead or alive?
She looks at them awhile , then says “I can’t tell.”

It was call an ambulance, or watch her die. She’d made it clear she was NOT going back to the hospital. Told me before she’d wished she hadn’t made it - even suggested a few times not quite joking I kill her . . . each time answered I’d have to make it look like an accident so I could collect her insurance money.

Saturday morning she asked me to sit her up. Hugged me as I did. That was the last she spoke.

Over the next hour I held her hand, played her favorite Leonard Cohens, talked gently to her, said she could go or stay, it was up to her, I’d do whatever was required either way.

Watch her breathing stop 10 - 15 times. She’d breath out, be still for 40 seconds, then start again in wet, shallow gasps. Watch the vein in her neck twitch less and less till not at all. She died at noon.

Tried to call her nurse, but my voice broke. Start bawling when I try to speak. EMS came at one. Told them mom had a Do Not Resuscitate order. They asked to see it. Doctor hadn’t delivered it yet. EMS said the law required them to try to revive her. Told him I understood, but I had to honor mom’s wishes, so we were going to have a problem. Looked at me. Touched mom. She was cold. “How long?” An hour. “Why didn’t you call us right away?” Couldn’t talk. Gently he said I’d done the right thing, because it was too late to revive her.

Policeman came. Said “Art on the walls . . . air conditioning . . . I must be in heaven.” He showed me photos of his own learned-from-TV paintings. Then his Lieutenant called, was stopping by. Cop told me not to get upset by anything the Lieutenant said because the man was a little loony.

Loony Looey immediately assumes I murdered mom. Begins interrogating me in a rude voice. Try not to smile. Explain she was in rest homes for 9 months, home one week, had myriad medical problems all documented by multiple doctors - show the pile of pill bottles, and then show him mom - who looks concentration camp frail.

Lieutenant sort of shrugs, says “Sorry for your loss”, tosses me a small wave, and leaves. Now that’s good cop / bad cop . . . or rather good cop / moron.

Mom didn’t have to die, but I couldn’t force her to live. She was happy for three days. Spent 4th day mulling her situation. Then three days dying. Can’t fault her logic. Might do it myself in her slippers.

I knew these past months of being a rat race worker as well as mom’s sole life support system and errand boy was tearing at me. I’d started snarling at minor irritants, my inner light darkening. But I had no idea how bad it was until death lifted her problems and my lack of solutions from my soul. Whole nine months had been mom and work and work and mom and mom and work - with but a tired wee bit of me every now and then for a way tired way irritable wee bitter me.

I’ve given my lawyer employers six months notice. After December 2, no lying lawyers, no dying mom. Just a lazy boy up a lazy river in the noon day sun.

Picked up mom today in her cheap cardboard box. Some dawn soon release Cat’s and her ashes. Then take mom’s box and the even cheaper cardboard box Las Vegas shipped Cat home in in 1987 and make a piece of art.

Could call it Madonna & Child - except Madonna reminds me of mediocre music and pedophilic priests.

~ ~ ~