March 12, 2006 - The Morning After A Death in the Family

March 12, 2006 - The Morning After A Death in the Family

It's Monday January 30th, 2006 the day after my mother died peacefully in her sleep at William Beaumont General Hospital in Morningside Heights a suburb of El Paso. I wake from a fretful night of drifting in and out of a sleep without dreams that I can remember. I kept thinking my mother's spirit would come in the nigh and say goodbye. She didn't and for good reason. Her time on this earth had passed and she was on her way to where ever we all go after death. Lingering to dwell on the living is a concept of those left behind-you did not linger as you left her to join the Navy nearly forty years ago. Everyone moves through life and beyond at their own bidding not that of others.

Last night after returning to my Dad's home, I had called my wife IM and two daughters ME and RD and told them of Mom's death. IM and ME decide to fly out on Wednesday morning. RD had just taken a new job and couldn't get the time off. She was feeling terribly guilty but we consoled her saying that Mom would understand. My mom had seen all of her great grandchildren except RD's youngest son, TF. RD's oldest daughter AF had woken late Sunday, the night Mom died, and had called for her mother. When RD entered AF's bedroom and asked what was wrong, AF said a lady had come into her room and had smiled at her and left. I suspect it was my mom visiting her great grandkids before going on. Perhaps, she had lingered just long enough to say goodbye to them.

I pull myself out of bed, don my Rhode & Swartz running outfit-a giveaway from the company of the same name acquired over a decade ago, now a comfort when I run in the cold. Outside my dad's place on Pierce Avenue, the temperature is in the high 40s lower 50s. The high desert gets cold at night. The intersection of Dyer Street and Pierce Avenue is at 3,935 feet above sea level. Where my wife IM and I live in San Jose, it's 171 feet above sea level. Outside, the sun has risen on a new day illuminating the sun-baked landscape of this intersection between Mexico and the United States. The predominant color of El Paso is a gray tinted slightly brown. The color peeks out around the rectangles of color creating a mosaic that produces a picture of the El Paso-Juarez, Mexico metropolitan area, home to around 2 million residents. There is precious little humidity in the air outside and your skin dries out quickly after you arrive. Residents have acclimated to it, but for visitors like me, it takes time for the body to adapt.

The ubiquitous building material of El Paso is stone. It's found in fences surrounding many of the homes in Morningside Heights and in the walls of a good number of homes as well. My Dad's rectangular lot on Pierce is completely surrounded by a rock wall constructed over thirty years ago. The lawns in this neighborhood of El Paso contain mostly desert flora but many have been concreted over with only small patches of desert plants. Water is precious here and the growth of the metropolitan area has drawn heavily on the Rio Grande, leaving little to be squandered on grass lawns and big leaf trees, My father has a tall fruitless Mulberry tree, the only green in a lawn of concrete. It's nearly 50 years old, planted at a time when water was more plentiful.

I run a few blocks west up pierce then turn left south on Russell Street and run five blocks to Harrison Avenue-the avenues of Morningside Heights are named after U.S. Presidents: Fillmore, Polk, Taylor, Tyler and Harrison, south from Pierce. I turn right and proceed up the incline of Harrison toward Alabama Street ten blocks west of Russell. At Alabama, I come upon Clendinin Elementary School-they are thanking the school board for giving them funds for something, the billboard out front declares. I dart around parents and students hurrying to school. El Paso is anxious to start a new day. I turn right onto Alabama heading north up a steep incline toward Pierce and McKelligon Canyon Road a long block beyond. There I turn left and follow the asphalt ribbon that snakes its way five miles into the canyon in the Franklin Mountains that gives the road its name. I won't run the ribbon's length only the first quarter mile or so. It's a very steep right-curving climb that will test the will of any runner. As I pump my legs running on my forefoot, the progress of each footfall seems measured in inches, but each puts me closer to the crest. Every muscle and bone of my body is opposed to this uphill climb, but like the Greek Sisyphus, I persevere believing that somehow I'm keeping death at a distance.

Morningside Heights is built at the base of the Franklin Mountains and I've been continually running uphill. Since I started I have climbed 510 feet, the steepest part of the ascent began at Alabama and McKelligon Canyon Road. From there to the crest of the hill inside the canyon, I had climbed 190 feet. After I crest the hill and jog a short ways into the canyon, I turn around and begin my journey home, careening down the hill toward Alabama and onto Pierce for the steady downhill run back to my dad's place. Along the way, I pass soldiers running up Pierce toward the canyon-their daily physical training.

When I return home, I encounter the grieving faces of MR and EA. MR has been with my mother and father for over 40 years, while EA has been with them over 20 years. MR is past retirement age but has been coming every Monday to do my parents laundry and ironing. EA is the household cook, nurse, and housekeeper. Sweaty as I am, I embrace them each in turn, their tear stained faces the embodiment of grief. I console them with my barely understandable Spanish mixed with English phrases; they respond with a combination of Spanish mixed with English distorted by their sobbing. My father enters the kitchen from his morning shower and the two women turn their attention to him. I slip upstairs, shower and change into clean underwear and t-shirt and the same jeans I wore the night before. I return to the kitchen and find my two sisters and my niece seated around the dining table waiting for me to join them for breakfast.

I hug each of my sisters EV and LC, my niece CB and kiss my seated father on his forehead and I clasp his shoulder with my right arm, hugging him to me. He is sobbing and after a few moments he regains his composure and I take my place at the table. Once the meal begins, the conversation gets lighter and we begin to joke about the arrival of our youngest sister later in the day. We also make plans for our meeting with Martin Funeral Home, where my mother had been taken from the hospital. My mother had purchased a complete burial package from the home that supposedly left few details of her funeral and burial to be handled. She had selected her casket, set aside the dress she wanted to be buried in, and paid the costs of preparing her remains for burial, the room to hold an afternoon rosary, and the cost of the hearse and limousines to take her and her family to the church for funeral mass and to the cemetery for her burial. You would think that there was nothing else left to decide but there were more details that needed to be addressed. We had to discuss the timing of the rosary, church service, and burial.

During and after breakfast, Dad's phone-the same number since the late 1950s-continued to ring as members of the community called to offer condolences and comfort to my father. My oldest sister and niece were also using their cell phones to call members of the Filipino community that knew and loved my Mom to notify them of her death. The unofficial leader of the community, PG-the one person who would get the word out to everyone-was not answering her phone, nor was Mom's best friend, HM. The one number we had for Mom's brother SQ, had been disconnected. We were all speculating that he and his wife ML had moved to Houston to be with their children and grandchildren.

After breakfast, we decided to drive to the home of Mom's best friend and notify her of Mom's passing. It was not going to be a pleasant task. HM was wheelchair bound and was short and thin as a rail. You would think that she would break if you hugged her too tightly. But that impression would be completely dispelled once you looked into her eyes. They were the eyes of an iron-willed matriarch who a couple of years back had survived bypass surgery that would have killed a lesser person. The sole support for her daughter and two grand children she was alive because she was not ready to die. We all piled into my Dad's white Chevrolet Uplander-the first new car (minivan, actually) he every purchased-and drove to HM's home in the Mountain View suburb of El Paso-north on Dyer Street to its intersection with Hondo Pass then left. When we arrive, HM's daughter CM was sitting outside on the front porch. As we all exited the van and approached the house, CM called out “hello kiddy boy”-my adolescent nickname I hadn't heard in some time. She greeted me as if it had only been a couple of days since we last saw one another-though years had intervened. “Hello CM,” I replied bending to hug her small thin shape. She greeted my sisters, niece, and father in turn and then led us inside to her mother, who was seated in her wheel chair at the kitchen table, papers strewn before her. She looked up and accepted each of our greetings in turn, though you could sense that she was upset.

Unknown to us she had called right after we had left to visit her and EV had told her that Mom had died. HM was grieved at the loss, but also hurt and angry that we had waited so long to notify her of her best friend's passing. We were all feeling guilty and chastened by her disapproving look. She listened to my father's explanation first, then to my oldest sister and niece. My younger sister and I stood quietly in the background and said nothing. After an awkward silence following the explanations, HM finally spoke stating that we were to let her know when the rosary and funeral mass were to be held and then ensure that we came by and drove her to both. It was not a request and my father assured her we would. We left, ran a few errands and then returned home to await the arrival of our youngest sister, DD. Her plane was landing around 2:00 PM and LC volunteered to pick her up at the airport.