Who Put the Fire Out?

A shrine for Bev and Les so she doesn’t have to be alone.

High on a hill in San Francisco, my second mother waited in a hospital bed to be discharged from UCSF-Parnassus. She had been there for 12 days, and the ride home to the Central Valley would be by ambulance because the pain of sitting upright in a car for four hours was something she could no longer tolerate.

On my way!

I sat on the Bay Bridge, inching along the 14 miles from Oakland to San Francisco. I could have walked there faster. The tires of my 2014 2-door Yaris rolled along like a flat foot, heel to toe, heel to toe, one car length at a time. I call my tiny car the “baby shoe,” and some would call it silver, but I call it invisible, so I drove with the lights on. Stuck in this tin can suspended over the bay, a gravitational force pulled me. Balance would not be restored until I stood beside Bev, holding my mother-in-law’s hand as we waited for the discharge.

“Who put the fire out? Who put the fire out?” S G Goodman’s voice sang from the speakers. The song was too obvious. That question ends in a pant.

In mid-August, Beverly Mello had been taken to the ER because of unbearable pain in her ribs and back. Before that, the pain had been intermittent and annoying, attributed to a few cracked ribs from a bad cough earlier in the summer. On the night an ambulance had taken her to Kaweah Delta’s Emergency Room, she’d been peckish, wanting a small bowl of cereal before bed. But just the act of picking up a half gallon of milk wrenched her back, and she rolled on the kitchen floor in pain. An MRI taken in the ER would reveal a growth on her spine. A specialist was required to determine treatment, and Brian and I lucked out when they sent her to San Francisco instead of LA. An Apple Watch she’d never wear was delivered the day after they transported her.

The source of Bev’s pain was multiple myeloma. It had metastasized into her spine between her shoulder blades. Vicodin, Dilaudid, Tylenol, then ultimately Fentanyl patches and liquid Oxycodone managed the pain. We all wanted Bev to be able to go home to the beloved recliner that had fit her like a shell. But I feared that hermit crab had outgrown the recliner and her new shell would be a hospital bed. That would work as long as it was in her living room, looking out her picture window.

THE HOSPITAL STAY

I’ve known Brian’s mother for 28 years. At 91, she was still sharp, playful, and creative, and begrudgingly willing to learn new apps and social media platforms. A good talker, she can shoot the shit with the best of ‘em. The nurses and doctors at UCSF fell in love with her, and she held their attention with her explanations to their many, many questions.

She said, “I married a farmer - I married a Portuguese man.” We all leaned in. Later, she told me and Brian this story.

“One day while working his fields, Les (the farmer) found a red balloon with a note inside, and brought it into the house. It was from some poor soul in the Tulare old folks’ home. Signed by a woman, the note asked for visitors. It had been typed, so it must have been a group activity. I visited the woman, who was as old as Methuselah, and baked her cookies. I would drop by to say hi anytime I visited family or friends at that nursing home.”

Is there anything worse than seeing your mother in pain? She’d yelp when we adjusted her pillow, and cry out when she had to cough, had to have a sling move her from the chair where she sat for physical therapy back into the hospital bed. Joined at the hip, just as Bev and her late husband, Les, had been, Brian and I stayed by her side most days. She had told several Doctors and family members she was ready to join her best friend. No heroic medical interventions were wanted.

“I feel like a big baby,” Bev said more than once.

But it was an honor to comb her soft white hair and put Chapstick on her dry lips. She knew what I was up to. She’d seen me taking notes. She’d read both of my books to my dismay and awe.

After a week of testing with no real exit plan in sight, Cindy, Brian’s sister, and her best friend, Shereen, were driven to San Francisco by our niece, Bryanna. They gave Brian and me a break. We needed to catch up at work and do laundry. After they left, there were three more days until an ambulance took her home.

I’d tell her that yet another friend or family member had texted or posted on Facebook, sending her love and wishing her a speedy recovery.

“I wish everyone’s kind wishes would make me feel well,” she sighed.

I asked, “Are you scared?”

“Not of dying, just of the pain. Never thought I’d die of cancer.”

Bev’s room had a million-dollar view of the City sprawling to the East Bay. Even though the teaching hospital is world-class, remarkably responsive, and service-oriented, it's a hospital, and hospitals are creepy. I’d walk down the overly waxed corridor past the nurses’ station and poopy-smelling rooms toward my favorite bathroom that was just past the photo of a doctor with curly red hair. That doctor looked young enough to have just had her braces taken off. Someone vaped regularly in this particular bathroom, and I preferred the faux-cigarette smell over the tang of urine on the linoleum.

We were in a trance, getting to spend so much time with Bev. We made a joke about her San Francisco vacation. She loved it when we brought back treats from our walks, like Straus soft serve and Jamba Juice smoothies.

“Mind if I bug you while you eat?” asks Nurse Guillermo.

“Not at all, since I bug you all the time,” replies Bev.

“You haven’t bugged me once, ”says the nurse.

“Then I guess we’re even, replied Bev.

“I’d make a terrible druggy,” Beverly moaned as she got the spins from an intravenous injection of Dilaudid. It hit her so hard she felt like she couldn’t breathe. Pain management is tricky. Either the dose didn’t work all the way, or it was too much and made Bev nauseous, woozy, and scrambling inside herself trying to come back to us.

After the freefall, she said, “ I wish it had been more fun—the drugs.”

The picture window is a portal.

A few nights later, we drove to Visalia after work to say goodbye while we still could. She had taken a mighty downturn only days after getting home. It was late and dark, and we tried to be quiet. Cindy and her daughter, Bryanna, were sleeping on the living room couches, a three-generation slumber party. I watched Bev reach up in the dark to stroke Brian’s face and feel his hair. To kiss him. I had been watching her regard Brian since Les had died. I could tell it intrigued her — how much Brian looked like his father — and that she saw her husband in her son. She said, “You’re here?”

Then it was my turn to say hello and goodbye at the same time. Bev took my hand to her cheek and pulled my arm across her heart. We kissed on the lips, and she held on tightly for a good long time. I stared at her doughy age-splotched arms that looked just like my mom’s, that looked just like mine.

“It takes too much,” Bev mumbles.

“What takes too much?” I ask.

“I don’t know.”

Who is this woman slipping in and out of this world? Loss is loss is loss, and love spills over and gets on everything.

In the few days we hadn’t seen Bev, friends and family poured through the house to visit. Hospice came twice daily, making sure the family knew what to do. A printout of their phone number was taped to the fridge. Bev became unresponsive the day after we arrived. Then the next day, she rallied. The pamphlet the hospice nurse had left on the kitchen table explained this would happen close to the end. The happy, nonsensical words from Bev had all the mannerisms that connected her to us, without having to make sense. She was smiling and mirthful, mercifully absurd. She giggled at the stories we told each other about her. A few more hours without her in pain—we didn’t expect this gift! Then she lapsed back into that restless leaving state where the body is trying to let go of a lifetime of having its organs and limbs work. We stayed one more day, trying to be there for the last breath, then decided to go home. Brian’s brother and sister’s families were in the house or nearby and would let us know when she passed.

A day and a night later, we received a call from our nephew, Ryan. “She’s near the end.” We turned off the lights and TV. We lit a candle, sat in the quiet night together, and held hands. I transmitted, thank you, Bev. I love you, Bev. May the transition be smooth.

20 minutes later, he called back, “She’s gone.”

Who put the fire out? When the last bit of wick drowns in the tiniest puddle of wax, what happens to the flame? A week and a day after getting home, Bev’s fire went out. A good woman was delivered wherever we go.

The Funeral

It takes two days to bury a Catholic. Mascara is a fool’s game. God granted me dissociative prowess at the open casket and the unending yammer of helpless and sad friends and family. Rilynn, a great-granddaughter, cried, thinking that Bev had been cut in half when she saw her in the open casket. The next day, during mass, the six-year-old stayed sad. As she cried into her mama’s lap, despondent that her Vava was gone, I cried too. We buried Beverly Elaine Mello in early September, together again with her husband of 72 years.

Thank you, Bev Mello, for loving me as I am. Thank you, Bev Mello, for being a mother all the way till the end. Thank you for treating me like your daughter and friend. You showed me how to live a life with dignity and humility. Above all, thank you for making the most decent, soulful, intriguing, good-smelling man I’ve ever known. We’ll miss you until the end of our time.

The World I Live in

by Mary Oliver

I have refused to live

locked in the orderly house of

reasons and proofs.

The world I live in and believe in

is wider than that. And anyway,

what’s wrong with Maybe?

You wouldn’t believe what once or

twice I have seen. I’ll just

tell you this:

only if there are angels in your head will you

ever, possibly, see one.

American Woman *