Three memorials for mom
(... yes, I'm Irish-American)

It was laundry day, so I put on denim shorts, a baseball cap and a grey wife-beater shirt. Fortunately, no one from hospice was scheduled to check in on mom that day, so I could get away with the COPS look.

Some of the Hospice workers were scared of me, especially Big Nurse.

"So why won't you change your mother's diapers?" Big Nurse asked.

"Because she doesn't want me to," I said.

"Oh. So you won't change your mother's diapers then?"

"What did I just say?"

"You don't have to get hostile."

"I'm sorry if I came off hostile. I'll get some caregivers in here to change my mom, but I won't do it myself."

"I'm just trying to do what's best for your mother. We're all here to help, you need to understand that. She needs to be changed when she needs to be changed, so if you get caregivers to do it, they need to get here right away."

"I understand."

"Are you sure you won't change your mother's diapers?"

Heartless Hospice, I came to call them. They just didn't get it. In fairness, I don't think they often had to contend with heterosexual male caregivers. And they didn't understand my mother's innate prudishness or her skewed communication skills.

My mom, who suffered from either Alzheimer's or dementia (but what I came to call just plain batty) spoke in code. One day I asked her, "Would it bother you if I changed your diapers?"

"I don't play that game," she said.

Diaper changing was out of the question, but I didn't have any problem emptying her catheter bag. For those who don't know (and why should you?) the catheter was a tube connected to my mom's crotch so her urine could be collected in a plastic bag. When the plastic bag was half full, I'd unplug it and empty her urine in a coffee can, then dump the piss down the toilet.

I could change a catheter and drink a Budweiser at the same time. Why? Because my mom never knew what I was doing. Mom's wishes aside, I was more than happy not to have to change her diapers. After all, I might want to have sex again some day without screaming "Mommy!" in terror.

But I didn't have to worry about being harassed by Hospice for the time being, since Wednesday, August 29th, was shaping up to be a slow caregiver day. I could use the peace. Often my mom would babble 15 to 20 hours a day while loaded on morphine. Other days, she'd sleep for 20 hours and I'd get a much-needed break.

Around 2:15 p.m., my step-dad Al came to my office on the front porch of the trailer... I mean mobile home... and told me mom was unusually quiet. I went to check in on her, and he was right. Her breathing was slower than usual and she looked like she was on the way out.

"Why don't you stay with her awhile and if she doesn't improve in 15 minutes, I'll give Hospice a call." I figured the two of them should have some time alone.

I returned to the porch, where I smoked a cigarette and called up some friends in Austin. Al came out around 2:25 and said, "I think she's gone."

And she was. I called up the Hospice people, who sent an ambulance to remove the body. I grabbed a beer, then a guitar, and started singing songs on the trailer porch dressed in my COPS regalia.

The Hospice social worker seemed very concerned.

After several songs, I called up every caregiver who had ever worked with my mom, along with my sister Kelly, who said she was headed to Santa Rosa from San Leandro right away. By 8 p.m, the trailer was teeming with women, and although purely accidental, I think it was the best therapy I could have given Al.

He slept well that night. And I think he had wood.

"Mom's dead," Johnny the C. told his brother Tommy the C. After a pause he added, "Mike's mom, not ours." Which goes to prove that evil bastards tend to have evil bastard friends, I guess.

Johnny the C. and I planned to meet at Acapulco's in Santa Rosa for several rounds of margaritas along with Fred, Jim, Rachael, and Linda -- the usual crew of sardonic wits. I was looking to add one more player to the roster.

"I'm bringing my sister, Kelly," I told John over the phone.

"Does she understand our special brand of humor?" he asked. By which he meant, dark, irreverent, often sarcastic and generally unsocially-acceptable humor.

"I don't think she'll come up with anything herself, but she'll laugh at our jokes."

"It's your call," he said.

When Kelly and I approached the patio of Acapulco's, the boys (and girl) were already in full swing. I figured I'd better let them know that Kelly could swing with the big guys. After introductions, I solemnly took a seat, leaned over the table and asked for their attention.

"Look. Before we get on with this wake, I want to say one thing, " I began. "Yesterday, when I saw the life ebbing from my mother's body, the first thing I thought was, 'Am I ever going to have sex with a family member again?' And then miraculously Kelly showed up."

After a split second of looking at five horrified faces, Johnny the C. bellowed, "Okay. So the bar's been set pretty low."

But that wasn't the best line of the night.

Rachael arrived late (as always) with her friend Carol in tow. I had never met Carol, but I had heard she was... ahhhh... theatrical. She came up to me and without so much as an introduction said, "Jasper! How are you? And how's the family?"

Then Carol sat down at the table. "So John. How's your big dick?" You never know who's going to get one. That night, apparently, Carol did.

For the rest of the evening, margarita drinking ensued. At one point Fred went inside to promote the waitress, and I could see him making the moves on her through a window off the patio. I went up to the window and pounded on it shouting, "Fred! Fred! I want you." Both Fred and the waitress looked confused, so I went and sat down at the table.

"What were you saying?" Jim asked.

"I was pounding on the window and yelling 'Fred! Fred! Don't do it!' You know. Like Dustin Hoffman yelling 'Elaine!" in The Graduate."

Jim took a long sip from his drink. "It would have been funnier if you had yelled Elaine."

Fuck. He's right.

(...to be continued.)

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Link(s) Of The Week

Barry Donovan -- A British humor writer