There is no better cartoonist that Roz Chast, whose venue is The New Yorker Magazine. (Please make sure you click the blue links) Her book, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? is her pure genius chronicle of her elderly parents’ final year; what they went through, what she went through. I read it in a few hours and began to read it again, I just didn’t want the story to end; I laughed and then cried. There is no better illustration of comic tragedy or tragic comedy. It is the example in literature of making light in the face of tremendous pain. I get it, I get it all.

I have been going through the same thing for about four years with my mother.

I now realize how lucky I was when my father passed away suddenly in 1991. My father got up one (always) sunny morning in Florida, he was seventy-eight years old. He went to the bathroom and never came out. Or, I should say, he never came out on his own. He had a stroke and fell against the door. The last time I saw him was in the hospital when I flew down to help my mother pull the plug. My mother and I, along with my aunt and uncle, said our good-byes. My mother pulled the sheet over his shoulder and rubbed his back. Her tiny hands still giving. He lay there expanding and contracting to the rhythm of the machine that was inflating his lungs. He was no longer technically alive.

I told him what I needed to. The machine was stopped, the noise was stopped. I watched his back turn blue and left the room.

Death was that easy. It was sudden, shocking, a blessing.

My mother has continued on without him all these years. She lived independently until about a year ago. She lives nearby now. I have seen her more in the past year than I have in the last thirty. My mother has been in her current residence for eleven months. She has had several illnesses, difficulty adjusting to the change in climate–back to the climate she ran away from in the 1980’s. She had the Shingles recently and it took two months for her to recover. She no longer dines downstairs “restaurant-style.” She has her food delivered, for a fee, and eats in the apartment. She has no more patience for people who don’t chat at meals or who have memory problems. She is afraid she will “catch something.”

Roz Chast’s father “lost it” and her mother began to disintegrate at the end. My mother still has her stuff– an incredible memory, and she largely lives in the safety and joy of the past. She is a teller of history, of stories. In some way she is cursed. Many people who surround her have problems remembering and live in their own worlds, worlds that do not include warm friendships. Intact memories can lead to loneliness.

There are times that I visit and hear the tales of long ago. There is much repetition, mind you, but I can’t say “you’ve told me that five hundred times already.” She is repeating her memories like a parrot: it brings her comfort. Then of course there is the complaining about the aide; what she does, what she doesn’t do, that she can be wicked and vindictive. That she has been leaving her in the shower alone because she can’t take the heat. That the aide dressed herself inappropriately when she went out and rode the subway, that she leaves my mother alone for long periods of time. I wish I could find someone like Roz’s Goodie who took care of her mother at the end, who was so dedicated and loving. With Peaches, my mother’s aide, she has another daughter she feels she has to acculturate and raise. She makes her watch public television and old movies. Sometimes I think Peaches is getting a better deal than I did.

My mother is ninety-six. At times she says she is “ready to go,” but I see her fighting for her life, still in control, proud of her abilities to keep things together. She can be bossy and arrogant and she gets on my nerves, but she is still here and somehow the thought of her not here is hard to accept. As ornery as she can be, that’s how funny she is. And God help us if she uses up her eyebrow pencil or runs out of Nivea face cream.

My mother decided she had caught the Shingles in her building. She claims: It was that one coughing or this one sneezing. Germs were all over, lurking and laughing, just waiting to get you. My mother decided that she was seated in the dining room where there was some kind of schmutz on a chair that was surely the cause of her Shingles. No matter how many times I told her about the chicken pox and that the Shingles are not contagious, she wouldn’t buy it. She knew, her mind was made up. My mother knows EVERYTHING. And as you can see it is universal among the elderly. Please read Roz Chast’s book. You’ll have the best laugh-cry.

PS my mother will not kiss anyone “hello” or “goodbye.” Germs.

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