Yom Kippur as Manifest in an Approaching Dorsal Fin (10 page)

rain, laughter, the harmony in the broken

glass.

111

Fifty Years

Had I been born fifty years earlier

I would sit in a café in Paris,

Trade wit, find work writing copy

And critique, adventure in the arts

and love,

Drink dark coffee and absinthe.

I would meet people in occluded rooms,

Crowded stations, and hush

Listen carefully, I will only say this once,
Pass small slips with single names,

Hide men in my attic,

Wonder about tomorrow.

Had I been born fifty years earlier

I would say the proper
brucha

Each morning, listen to my papa,

Go to yeshiva, study Talmud,

Marry whom I was told.

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I would look toward the steppes

And one day see the horses,

My small town in smoke,

My footprints and cart tracks behind

me,

Hope for a ticket of passage,

Wonder about tomorrow.

Had I been born fifty years earlier

I would go to school

In the town with everyone else,

Shop in the markets,

Consider myself a citizen.

I would one day hear the crashing

windows,

See the walls built, the paint flow,

The armbands and the army trucks,

Wonder what we had done,

Avoid the uniforms,

Wonder about tomorrow.

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Yahrzeit

This, today, August 29th, 2010, is the

one-year anniversary of my mother’s

death.
Yahrzeit
.

I could not write this. But I could say this.

I dictated it and a friend, a good friend, for

who else would do such a thing, typed it while

I talked. He also made what edits and proofs

were needed. He did this to save me the pain

of a careful reading. Thanks, Craig.

I read it anyway.

I do not say this is what happened. What

is here is truth but may not be fact. It is what I remember from two days that are hard to

remember. I have added things as I recall

them. Still, maybe I got something wrong.

Maybe I got something backward. Maybe I

made a mistake. Maybe someone will be mad.

Maybe they’ll get over it. Maybe they won’t.

It doesn’t matter.

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•

My brother called me that Thursday and told

me my mother was in the hospital, or that

she was going into the hospital, I actually

don’t quite remember which one. I said I

would try to get down the next week or so,

and he said he thought it was important I get

down there in the next day and so. I left the

next morning.

My mother had Parkinson’s Disease, had it

for about fifteen years. For the last two years

she’d had trouble speaking, and she seemed

more and more trapped. She had brain sur-

gery, which really didn’t work for much more

than two or three weeks at a time. I think she

hadn’t walked in probably a good year.

So I called my daughter and asked Sef if I

could stay with overnight at her place. She

was living in Deerfield Beach and my mother

was in the hospital in Coral Springs, about

twenty minutes away. I also asked if she

would meet me at the hospital. And she said

of course she would. So I drive down and I

got there around 11, and Sef met me outside

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the hospital. And we walk in together. I think

we met my brother on the way up to the

room, or perhaps outside the room. Appar-

ently my mother was not able to swallow any-

more. I hadn’t seen her in, I think, about two

months. I had called from time to time, but

because she was unable to speak, she would

try to speak on the phone but end up crying,

so I alternately thought I should just call and

not have her talk, or I should not call so as to not make her cry. So I probably didn’t call her

as often as I might have. I certainly didn’t call her as often as I wanted to, because the crying was hard for both of us. She was such a

dynamic person, it was harder to hear her not

be able to speak than it was to see her not able to move.

So we went in to see her. My father had

called the night before my brother did, and

he said she had not been eating, and I forget

what else he said, but he was considering tak-

ing her to the hospital. I suggested he take her right away—from his description she needed

to be there—but he was wondering, vacillat-

ing. I believe it was my brother who finally

convinced him to get her to the hospital.

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Went in. She really looked very “shell-ish,”

nearly unable to move, unable to eat because

she couldn’t swallow. I went in, gave her a

hug, Sef gave her a hug, I did my best to not

cry and I didn’t. My father, of course, takes

me outside immediately to talk to me “in

secret”—he was always telling secrets, always

took me aside to whisper things—“Your

mother’s not doing well, you’re mother’s not

this or that,” as if my father still thought she was 40 and playing croquet, as if it were to

be a surprise to him that she’s sick. When he’d

call and say she’s not getting better, I’d say,

“What did you expect, this is what happens

with Parkinson’s.” I think he was trying to hold on to her, but I found it frustrating. He would

whisper it because he didn’t want her to hear.

So I sat with her, held her hand, Sef was on

the other side, held her hand, talked to her.

She made a few sounds here and there, she

could move her eyes a little bit. Apparently a

Swallow Test had been ordered—I’m not sure

what the logistics of a Swallow Test are, I

really don’t need to know—but they came

and got her, wheeled her down, and before

they wheeled her back up, I spoke with the

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nurse and asked what the plan was, what the

possibilities were. If the Swallow Test came

out well, she would be able to eat. If the test

did not come out well, she would be unable

to eat, and the only way she would be able to

receive nutrition would be through a tube

going through her side and into her stomach.

But the Parkinson’s medications can only be

administered orally. So it means the Parkin-

son’s would get worse and worse. So even that

was not the best option. If she didn’t get the

tube, she also wouldn’t get the medication.

So IV feeding would be useless.

My brother’s wife, Amy, worked at the hos-

pital as a pharmacist, so anything needing

clarification were made clear, She explained

that the Swallow Test indicated she couldn’t

swallow. That even ice chips would very eas-

ily be aspirated. She was wheeled back into

the room, put back in the bed, and my father

pulls the nurse outside and around the cor-

ner—and by then a friend arrived, this guy I

didn’t know—and my father asks the nurse

the results of her test.

“Why don’t you ask in front of mommy?”

I say.

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The nurse cuts him off and says, “She has a

right to know, and I will not discuss this with

you unless she’s present.”

I thanked her, and we walked back into the

room. The nurse addressed my mother

directly. She told her that the Swallow Test

indicated she was unable to swallow, would

aspirate anything she tried to eat, was at risk

for choking, that the Parkinson’s meds can

only be given orally, had to be digested, so the only possibility was a PEG tube. And that was

the only option.

So she asked, “Do you have a Living Will?”

And my father says, “No.” At that point my

father and my brother get into an argument

about why there is no Living Will. I don’t

remember if it was me or my brother who

asked him, “Did it never occur to you that

this day would ever come?” My father was

crying. Denial. This was no time to have an

argument about why; the fact remained that

they never discussed what she had wanted.

A long time ago, before she got sick—twenty

years ago—my mother told me that if she

ever got like my grandmother, unable to take

care of herself, she “wanted to be shot.” I had

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to repeat this to the nurse, saying we had dis-

cussed this in the past, and she looks at my

mother and says, “Is that true?”

And it’s the last whole word I can remem-

ber my mother saying: “Yes.”

And the nurse looked at me, and said,

“That’s very clear.” And so she continued to

ask her a few questions: “So that means you

do not want a PEG tube?”

And again: “Yes.”

“You understand that means no nutrition,

no food?”

“Yes.”

So I was standing behind the nurse at that

point, so she could talk as close to my mother

as possible, and my father asked what that

means, and she said, “It means your wife does

not want to be fed, and wants to allow this to

take its natural course.”

And I’m watching my mother, and I think

it was at that point that she realized she was

going to die, that all the days she had left could now be counted on the fingers of one hand,

and that was it. I saw her realization that she

was about to die. And she just started to cry.

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And she just cried for quite a while. And peo-

ple held her hand, and hugged her.

My brother kept saying to her, “It’s going

to be all right, it’s going to be all right.”

My father kept saying, “Don’t worry, Sheil,

don’t worry Sheil.”

I, on the other hand, went up to her, and

said, “I don’t know why they’re telling you

everything’s going to be all right. You know

and I know what the truth is. You’ll be fine,

but you won’t be here. Everybody loves you.

You did good. Rest.” And I kissed her on the

forehead. She stopped crying, and a few min-

utes later she closed her eyes and fell asleep.

My father had brought in a CD player, and

he was playing Johnny Cash, Nat King Cole,

John Denver. I think her hearing was perfect.

No TV, just music the entire time. The nurse

had left at some point to go get the social

worker to have her come up and talk about

her options. It was a small room. I guess there

were four of us in the room, Amy would pop

up from time to time, so five. And directly

above her, not four feet above her head, a

bank of fluorescent lights on the wall, and

fluorescent lights on the ceiling above, and

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bells were dinging and people calling on the

loudspeaker. It was not at all a restful room.

So the social worker comes up and we go

down the hall to talk—my mother was still

sleeping and we needed out of the room for

a while. I had Sef come with us because I actu-

ally depend on her sometimes to have a clear

head when I don’t. The social worker wants

to talk to us about hospice, which I think is a

great idea, and the sooner the better. She

couldn’t stay at the hospice in the hospital,

because you can only stay there for three days,

and starving to death can take up to two

weeks. My father keeps saying he can’t afford

hospice. The social workers keeps saying

Medicare would take care of it. “My insur-

ance won’t take care of it.” “Medicare will take care of it completely,” back and forth.

She told him of Hospice by the Sea, which

I have heard over and over is the best care

anyone could ever want. He wants to see it

first. He think it’s going to be dingy, old.

“Is it going to be worse than the room she’s

in now, with the fluorescent lights and the

loudspeaker?” I ask.

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“I don’t know,” he says. “Why don’t we go

see it tomorrow morning?” he asks.

And my daughter asks him, “Why don’t you

go see it
now
?”

“Well, everyone’s tired, maybe we should

rest, see it tomorrow morning.”

My daughter insisted: “Why don’t you

think of her? Get her out of that room, get

her somewhere comfortable?”

I ask the social worker: “Can we do it

tonight?”

“Yes.”

Father didn’t know if he’d like it, didn’t

know if he could afford it. Don’t remember

my brother saying much, but he probably did.

I asked my father, “What are your choices?

Look at your choices. She can’t stay here more

than three days. You cannot bring her home.

This is her only choice. If you like it when you see it, if you don’t like it when you see it, if it’s a palace or a dungeon, this is your only choice.

Why are you putting it off?”

I looked at the social worker and she said,

“He’s right, this is all you can do.”

And so arrangements were made to bring

her to Hospice by the Sea that evening. It was

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a Friday evening. So he wants to go there first