Mother, Can You Hear Me? Read online

  No, Loretta, it wasn’t you. Nor you, Julia. And if I were still guessing today, I’d still be light years away from the right answer.

  Palm Sunday was a landmark day for my mother. After a year’s absence, she attended church. Now, going to church is not usually something that will fill a person with dread. But remember, I’ve been going to church with my mother for years, and I can tell you that what happens once she steps in the door is always unpredictable.

  Since she can’t hear well, her voice is unusually loud, and she gets distracted easily. Peggy, our friend and helper, agreed to bring Mother in her car so that my son Clint and I could go a little early.

  Palm Sunday services begin outside at Trinity Episcopal with the reading of the Passion, but on this Sunday, a heavy downpour forced us inside. I wondered if the worsening weather would make Mother change her mind about coming.

  The small congregation gathered in the entry way of the narthex to begin. As is our tradition, each of us received a small hand-fashioned cross and palm branch. Our new priest, Father Bush, began with a prayer. Then, the rest of us joined in with a gospel reading.

  We had said only a few phrases when the large wooden door flew open. Rain spattered inside. My mother appeared and announced in a loud voice, “Hey there, y’all. I’m Elsa Frawley, Joy’s mother. I’m not gonna stand here, though. I’m gonna go sit down while y’all do your thing.”

  I glanced at Clint then at our dear friend, Jay Howton. Both were stifling laughs. But Father Bush seemed unaffected. He gently tried to pin a cross on my mother’s blouse. She brushed his hand away.

  “Move so I can go sit down!” she said.

  He complied and waited for Peggy and Mother to take their seats before he began again. About halfway through the gospel reading, my mother’s voice rose above that of Father Bush’s and drifted all the way to the narthex.

  “Isn’t this a pretty church, Peggy? It’s been here for a hundred years.”

  The priest continued. I’m sure I saw him smile as he read.

  He finished the gospel. Then, he led the processional down the centre aisle of the sanctuary. Behind him, Jay carried the ornate gospel book. Clint carried the large golden cross on a staff behind Jay.

  As Clint walked by, my mother shouted, “Hey honey! You look like a doll!”

  I’m absolutely certain that he cringed as he made his way to his seat near the altar.

  During the homily, my mother got restless. Just as we began the Lord’s Prayer, she said loud enough for all to hear.

  “Hey, Peggy, you got any gum?”

  Peggy whispered something to Mother. Clint’s shoulders shook as he tried not to laugh out loud.

  About midway through the service, I was certain that Mother would want to leave, just as she’d done years ago in a rather infamous event. After listening to a sermon for a little over twenty minutes, my mother got up, glared at the priest, and stuck out her arm. With her index finger, she tapped several times on her watch, turned around, and walked out.

  But this Sunday, she sat through the whole service, and I thought we were home free until it came time for Holy Eucharist. When Mother saw the altar being prepared, she nudged Peggy.

  “Come on,” she said in a voice that rang throughout the sanctuary. “It’s just Communion. I’m hungry. Let’s go get a hamburger.”

  So, as Father Bush was reciting the Holy Eucharist prayer, my mother and Peggy walked down the aisle and out the door. It banged behind them.

  At the service’s end, I shook hands with Father Bush.

  “Joy, how’s your mother getting along these days?” he asked.

  Before I could answer, he laughed out loud and added, “She’s quite a character!”

  Amen.

  My mother suffered from dementia, and along with that, acute hearing loss. As her full time caregiver, I received a great deal of help in the form of the Home Health Care workers who visited twice a week. We were scheduled to meet with a new member of the health care team who would do a routine evaluation, asking questions to determine my mom’s overall wellness.

  I knew from experience that I needed to be with her during the interview. Dementia and hearing loss do not lend themselves easily to answering questions.

  My mother and I sat on a little sofa in the den and listened as the new worker asked several questions. My mother did not respond to any of them. Instead, she sat and fidgeted with the buttons on her blouse. Finally, the health care worker asked, “Mrs. Frawley, do you have any trouble with incontinence?”

  Suddenly, my mother glanced at me, then smiled and straightened in her seat. She said in her loudest, most articulate voice, “North America!”

  I couldn’t help but laugh, and I nodded to my mom and did a little golf clap. She smiled for a long time afterwards, feeling that, at last, she’d done something right.

  There were not many days like that.

  During my time as caregiver, I needed some sort of release from the indescribable demands, demands that never seemed to stop. There was no sleeping through the night. There was no turning over the reins to someone else. I’ve heard from others that a sort of “battle fatigue” sets in. I’d agree with that. There were days when I put one foot in front of the other, performed my tasks like rituals, and have little to no memory of the time. Battle fatigue.

  One night my mom fell in the bathroom and broke her elbow. She was taken to the hospital for a short stay and then was transferred for a twenty-day stay in a nursing facility, compliments of Medicare. Her Medicare benefits paid for her to receive round-the-clock care in a facility they chose for twenty days, free of charge.

  The writer in me thought that other people might want to know about this free stay since it isn’t common knowledge. So, I decided to document my experiences and hers by writing a series of articles called, “Mother, Can You Hear Me?” They were published in a local newspaper in Bessemer. Two of them, however, were published in a literary journal called Muscadine Lines.

  I intended to write only about these twenty days at the facility, and while most of the articles centered around those days, many of them did not. After I’d written the first one about our Day 1 at the nursing home, there was a two-week publishing schedule to deal with. So, our twenty days ended after I’d written only a few articles.

  But when my mom came home, I continued to write about my experiences. I heard from many people during that time, people who were going through the same kinds of things I was dealing with. I had no idea that so many could identify with what I was writing about. People would stop me on the street, in the post office, the grocery store to say they knew exactly how I felt. They were going through…or had gone through…the very same things. They knew what it felt like to watch a parent forget how to put on a blouse. They knew what it felt like to be so tired, so bone tired, that weariness seeped into every movement, every thought. I remember distinctly that one man said to me, “I cared for my mom for almost ten years, and I’d give anything to have her back for just one more day.”

  At the time, I couldn’t identify with what he’d said. The minute to minute responsibilities overwhelmed me. My only relief was laughter…and writing.

  And so, I tried to make my articles funny. I focused on the humorous things my mother did and said. One of my most popular articles was one that urged people who needed a vacation to trade places with me for a weekend. I said boldly that going to a tropical location wouldn’t afford them nearly the learning experiences that a weekend with my mother could. And because my mother was almost always cold and needed the heat turned up full blast, the house remained at a constant and sweltering 80 degrees. Otherwise, she’d yell, “Is that thermostat set on FREEZE?” as she huddled under her two electric blankets.

  The writing and the laughter became therapy for me and for those who read my articles. My mother often talked to her own mother and her brothers and sisters, so those people became a part of my writing, too. Without any intent at all, I was delving into my family’s
history as my mother “talked” to some of our relatives, all of them gone on to be with the Maker. But I learned things about my family that I’d never known.

  For example, I didn’t know that my distant cousin Hack had died at 19 when he was struck by lightning while climbing a telephone pole to repair damage from a storm. Hack was the proverbial golden child for his aging parents, and his loss was a horrific tragedy for them. His mother never recovered.

  I never knew that my grandmother was so horrified of snakes that she had a special hoe made specifically for killing any slithering beast that wandered into her yard. She killed her share and once, almost killed my uncle in the process.

  And, I didn’t know that my great grandmother was quite the entertaining socialite. She lived in the beautiful back hills of Tennessee in a small town called Tracy City. She kept a spotless home, part of which she often offered to travelers who needed a place to stay. She was meticulously clean, a marvelous cook and a very classy fashionista for her day. Her husband, known as Papa Arbuckle, was a Justice of the Peace and owned thousands of acres of land. The two of them were among the wealthiest people in the hills. Anna, my great-great-grandmother was also generous and believed in sharing her good fortune, so she entertained a large community of friends each week with elegant feasts. If there were leftovers, she and her friends went throughout the community with baskets of food for those who needed them. Even the baskets were lavish, decorated with ribbons and bright cloth so that they looked like gifts rather than handouts.

  Before I knew all of this, I used to own a gift shop, and my specialty was making gift baskets for people who could not afford them. Family ties.

  My great grandmother, Anna, had a routine for her home. Every morning she cooked a full breakfast for her husband, two children at home, and six brothers and sisters and set the table in an elegant manner with a white Irish linen tablecloth given to her by her own mother. She used her best china, silver, and crystal at every meal, and as soon as the meal was finished, she shooed the men out of her kitchen so that she could begin the clean-up.

  My mother—only five years old at the time—was among those living with Anna and Papa. After mealtime, my mother’s job was to scoot each of the twelve solid oak chairs away from the enormous table and wipe them down from top to bottom.

  When the kitchen duties were completed, my great grandmother then put on a clean white tablecloth, reset the table for the next meal, and covered the table and settings with another white tablecloth so that no particle of dust would find its way to her clean dishes. And on this day in particular there was to be a wedding at her house. Because of its size and elegance, her home was often chosen as the desired location for community weddings and parties. One of her claims to fame was that no one could throw a better party or put on a more beautiful wedding than she and Papa could. Everyone agreed.

  Another thing I didn’t know was that my mom was terrified of chickens. When she and my grandmother stayed with Anna, one of my mom’s jobs was to gather eggs. Gathering eggs doesn’t seem like such a daunting task, except that Papa owned some aggressive fighting hens. And on one particular day, the day my mom was to gather eggs, the fighting hens had escaped their pens and were mingling pleasantly with the others in the chicken coop.

  When my five-year-old mother went out to gather the eggs, she didn’t know that the “mean chickens” were out of their pen, so she opened the gate and went in. The fighting hens didn’t take kindly to the intrusion of a little red haired girl. So, they went for her, pecking her legs and feet and squawking (my mom said they were screaming at her). She was trapped inside the chicken coop with the ferocious fighting hens. When she began to scream and cry, my fifteen-year-old cousin Hack (her hero for most of her life) came inside the chicken coop, swooped my mom into his arms, and left…but in his haste, he’d forgotten to lock the gate.

  Chickens, chicks, and fighting hens barrelled out of the pen, the aggressive ones fast on Hack’s heels. They followed him into the house. With a wedding that afternoon, Anna had made sure that the house was spotless. All of that changed when the chickens poured in.

  When Papa heard Anna’s screams, the chickens’ squawking, and my mother’s wails, he came running in from outside to find total chaos. Anna stood in the dining room with a broom in her hand shooing the chickens off her table. My mother stood in a corner sobbing, and Hack was chasing chickens with a wooden cooking spoon.

  Thankfully, after a few minutes of bedlam, Papa snatched up the fighting hens by the legs. Anna stood in her kitchen and cried, her pristine house now covered in feathers and all manner of nastiness. Soon, though, her tears replaced by sheer rage and determination, Anna set about cleaning. By the time the wedding party arrived that afternoon, the house looked perfect.

  Inexplicably, the hen house was shy a good number of hens that afternoon. Papa Arbuckle, with the finesse of a good Justice of the Peace, said nothing about the sudden disappearance of his fighting hens.

  In writing the articles about my mother, a rich treasure came into my life: the treasure of family history, links with my past and my ancestors.

  It was this treasure that helped me begin my career as a novelist.

  My mom passed away a week later…suddenly, unexpectedly. She’d gone into the hospital overnight for a test. I was to pick her up at 7 in the morning. But, at 2:00 a.m., I received a phone call from the hospital. I rushed there as fast as I could. She was lying on the hospital bed, her eyes closed, her hands across her chest.

  Through my sobs, I said, “Mama, can you hear me? Can you hear me, Mama? Please, please be able to hear me.”

  She couldn’t hear me, and I never got a chance to say goodbye.

  As much as I thought I wanted to be free of my caregiving responsibilities, I grieved the loss of my mother so intensely that I could barely function. For over a month, all I wanted was to stay in bed and sleep because when I was awake, the pain of her loss was too great for me to cope with. I lost hope in the world, and I lost my faith in God to deliver me from such unbearable grief.

  And then, once again, in the night, I heard the word clearly: Write.

  I started writing that moment, and for the next eight months, I lived and breathed in this world I’d created in my mind. The characters became my family and my friends. I could hear them talking, I could see what they were doing, and I fell in love with each and every one of them. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I’d wake and hear a conversation between my characters. I delighted in the time I spent with them.

  When I neared the end of the book, I sobbed for days…another loss.

  But, what a blessing, as well! I’d had eight months of relief, eight months of being honored with the story of this cast of characters responsible for my sanity. After I’d finished, I set out to find a good editor, and I found a wonderful man named R.J. who worked with me for six months.

  When that was done, I found an agent, and fairly soon after that, I signed a publishing contract.

  Looking back on the experience, I lovingly refer to this as my divine intervention because it saved me from the crushing pain of my mother’s death. It was the miracle God sent into my life to enable me to survive, and not only to survive, but through His Grace and Mercy, to thrive.

  Writing a novel gave me hope that my grief would become bearable. It made me aware of the angels around me. It restored my faith in miracles. And that, my friends, is what I hope Mother, Can You Hear Me? will do for anyone who reads it.

  Hans Christian Andersen said that a life is a story told by God. When He told yours, He created such an amazing character. You stepped on toes, made waves, rocked boats…but you were our mother. We love you, and we will sorely miss you.

  May God hold you in His arms and delight in all your antics.

  Joy Ross Davis is of Irish descent and a student of the lore and magic found in the hills of Tennessee. After a twenty-five year career as a college English professor, she traveled to Ireland and worked as a writer and photograph
er, publishing numerous travel articles and photos for an Irish travel agency. She has been a contributing feature writer for a local newspaper and has published articles in Southern literary magazines. She lives in Alabama with her son and beloved dogs. She loves to speak at conferences, book club meetings, and events to share her connection with angels and the stories behind her books.

  Visit her at:

  www.joyrossdavis.com

  & www.bhcpress.com