This trip she blew up at my sister causing her to feel very bad. Mom accused my sister of tricking her into going to a store to purchase an aid to help her in and out of the bathtub--a chore that's become unmanagemable by any of us "lay" daughters. Mom's too heavy and tippy for us to navigate her 170 lbs. in and out of the bathtub, anymore.
So Bonnie took Mom to a store to see about having bars attached to the side of her tub. But Mom felt Bonnie tricked her, somehow. It didn't make sense. Irrational comments often spilled from Mom's mouth, anchored in fear or humiliation or regret. But it wasn't even this that caused my sister to take serious offense. Rather, it was when Mom called her a liar. That did it. My ordinarily super-calm, collected and congenial sister lost it at that remark. Of course, later, Mom denied even saying it but say it she did, causing my sister great heartache and distress.
So, to you, my sister, my friend and to all the sisters and friends and caregivers out there who do so much and reap so little. Who try and understand and empathize and do their best---for old folks and everyone:
Waving Goodbye
by Wesley McNair
Why, when we say goodbye
at the end of an evening, do we deny
we are saying it at all, as in We'll
be seeing you, or I'll call, or Stop in,
somebody's always at home? Meanwhile, our friends,
telling us the same things, go on disappearing
beyond the porch light into the space
which except for a moment here or there
is always between us, no matter what we do.
Waving goodbye, of course, is what happens
when the space gets too large
for words – a gesture so innocent
and lonely, it could make a person weep
for days. Think of the hundreds of unknown
voyagers in the old, fluttering newsreel
patting and stroking the growing distance
between their nameless ship and the port
they are leaving, as if to promise I'll always
remember, and just as urgently, Always
remember me. It is loneliness, too,
that makes the neighbor down the road lift
two fingers up from his steering wheel as he passes
day after day on his way to work in the hello
that turns into goodbye? What can our own raised
fingers to for him, locked in his masculine
purposes and speeding away inside the glass?
How can our waving wipe away the reflex
so deep in the woman next door to smile
and wave on her way into her house with the mail,
we'll never know if she is happy
or sad or lost? It can't. Yet in that moment
before she and all the others and we ourselves
turn back to our disparate lives, how
extraordinary it is that we make this small flag
with our hands to show the closeness we wish for
in spite of what pulls us apart again
and again: the porch light snapping off,
the car picking its way down the road through the dark.
"Waving Goodbye" by Wesley McNair from Lovers of the
Lost: New & Selected Poems.
© David R. Godine, 2010
