The way I saw it, I had two choices before me the morning I came downstairs to find Stella firmly tethered to her oxygen tank \u2013 and defiantly waving a zippo and a Parliament. Run like hell or stand and fight. Even with cancer, my 82-year-old mother was a force to be reckoned with. Wrapped in her ratty afghan, with her defiant thatch of white hair, stained sweatshirt and watery blue eyes, she looked like an elderly Andy Warhol in hausfrau drag. As frail as she was, I knew better than to underestimate her craving. She was as dangerous as a crackhead on the first day of rehab.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t even want to smoke,\u201d she said, pulling back as if I were a stranger in a raincoat determined to snatch her candy. \u201cI just want to take one hit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Smoking was Stella\u2019s one true religion. She was the Mother Teresa of the Temple of Lucky Strikes. When I was a little girl lost in Woolworth\u2019s all I had to do was stop and listen. Once I heard the coughing, I\u2019d just follow the sound to mother. I did the math once. At three packs a day, for 73 years, Stella had smoked an astonishing 1.6 million cigarettes. She got hooked on nicotine, on that long lovely pull, when she was 9, a fatherless little girl living in Waterbury, Conn. Her mother, a Lithuanian immigrant whose English was pretty much limited to \u201cHow much?\u201d \u201cToo much\u201d and \u201cWhere\u2019s the toilet?\u201d handed cigarettes out like candy to keep her brood quiet. I guess she figured if they were coughing, they couldn\u2019t cry so much. <\/span><\/p>\n Now, Stella was all grown up — and I was at home and in charge. I\u2019d been living the high life in New York City, an executive with a corner office and a neck-craning view of the Hudson. My mother\u2019s cancer gave me the opportunity to change all that, to come home — to the fabulous Jersey Shore. Cloaked by a chilly late winter, trapped inside with a crotchety old woman lugging around an oxygen tank and a bad attitude. I did the only thing possible: I started smoking.<\/p>\n Until then, I\u2019d been an adamant non-smoker, the kind who gleefully threw away other people\u2019s cigarettes and gave hell to smokers who dared puff in my presence. I knew all the statistics, and willingly imparted them to anyone dangling a death-stick. But when it came my turn, I embraced my new habit with gusto. Cigarettes became my new best friend. I needed something. Drugs and alcohol were out. I couldn\u2019t handle her, and a woozy, boozy disposition at the same time. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n One of my earliest memories from childhood was my mother\u2019s morning routine: a cigarette and a cup of coffee to greet the day. Now, it belonged to me. But in the strangest of ways, it made me closer to my mother than anything else ever could. At last, after years of trying, I finally understood something about Stella.<\/p>\n Growing up, I was the absence of Stella. We weren\u2019t just night and day \u2013 we were Haagen-Dazs to Turkey Hill Frozen Delights, Rachmaninov to Liberace. Every kid wanted June Cleaver. I got Lucille Ball \u2013 with attitude. Stella got these urges. And when she did, god help us. If Sears had a sale on gray paint, she\u2019d buy six cans and proceed to paint every white surface in the house, including the kitchen cabinets, the kitchen sink \u2013 and the bathtub. For months after, I\u2019d sit in the tub with my little yellow ducky, now slick with gray, bobbing in the oily surface that comes only when you paint enamel with a non-enamel substance.<\/p>\n Once, she bought me a pony. Every little girl\u2019s dream, right? I\u2019ll never forget the sight of my poor dad\u2019s face the night he came home after a hard day at the chemical plant to find Baby the pony tied to the oak tree in the front yard. There was no hay, of course. No grain to feed it. No stable. Just poor Baby, tied to that tree. He was cute enough, but with a watery digestive problem and a rapacious bite. Unfortunately for me, little girls were his favorite dish. Stella had bought him from a drunk in the bar where she worked. He had a hard-luck story. She had $50. That was Stella, all heart and inspiration \u2013 and to hell with the consequences. <\/span><\/p>\n Cancer, though, has consequences. If she smoked again, she\u2019d die even sooner than the doctor predicted. This latest predicament was my own fault. <\/span>I knew enough to keep my cigarettes well hidden. Somehow, Stella had sniffed out a stray. <\/span>I looked at her, and felt my heart swell and break. She was begging her baby daughter for the one thing left that gave her any real pleasure. Could I really deny a dying woman a last wish? <\/span><\/p>\n Yes. Yes, I could. Growing up, the specter of death had rung our doorbell and gleefully run away, giggling into his bony paw, more times than I could count. <\/span>Dying was Stella\u2019s attention-getter and bargaining chip, one she shamefully used to lure her four children home at any opportunity.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019d better come home for Easter,\u201d she\u2019d say during her weekly call to my Wisconsin dorm. \u201cI\u2019m sure I won\u2019t see another spring.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf I were you, I\u2019d skip that trip to the Dells. I doubt I can hold out till Christmas.\u201d <\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSure you can always go to your friend\u2019s wedding. But don\u2019t expect me to be here past Hanukah.\u201d When I\u2019d remind her we were Catholic, she\u2019d say, \u201cThose Jews get more holidays than all the other religions rolled together. They even get two Halloweens.\u201d \u201cStella,\u201d I\u2019d say, \u201cit\u2019s called Purim, and I don\u2019t think candy is the point.\u201d Even through the phone, I could see her batting her hand and muttering \u201cpfffffft.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite a rheumy cough and a steady diet of nicotine, caffeine and booze (rum, coke, 2 cubes, short glass) Stella was never actually sick. Like many Children of the Depression, Stella was a survivor, a 5-foot-8 sinew, bone, bouffant and pot belly survivor. She never took vitamins or exercised in a gym. <\/span>She worked, spending half her life in one smoke-filled tavern after another, hefting 32-pound cases of beer from the cellar to the bar with the ease of a mother cradling a newborn. Well into her 60s, she walked her dog, a scruffy mutt named Frenchy, five miles a day \u2013 confidently predicting her pending death even as she laced up her New Balance sneakers. Up until the last year of her life, the only time she ever spent in a hospital was to give birth to her kids \u2013 and that she did with a shot and a cigarette every time. <\/span><\/p>\n So when an actual doctor finally told my siblings and I Stella\u2019s cancer would most certainly kill her, we all said, \u201cIt\u2019s about god-damned time.\u201d By then, she\u2019d been \u201cdying\u201d for 25 years. <\/span><\/p>\n Stella didn\u2019t fear death, especially now. She happily invited him in for coffee and a light. Every morning since we\u2019d arrived at the Jersey Shore for her recuperation from surgery, she\u2019d wake up and say the exact same thing: \u201cAm I dead yet?\u201d And every morning I answered the same way: \u201cYeah, you old broad. Welcome to heaven. Jesus is in the can. Make sure you take the air freshener when you go in.\u201d<\/p>\n Whenever I could, I\u2019d sneak outside like a guilty teenager, prop my feet on the porch railing and watch the waves pound the shore, one cigarette in my hand and another smoldering in the ashtray. Instead of Prozac, I had Parliament Lights. That sweet inhale was the only thing that got me through a day spent with Stella, wrapped tight in her ratty afghan, her only source of amusement Regis and Kelly, Rosie and Oprah. And me.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n The day she came home from the hospital was the day it finally hit me. <\/span>For the first time in my life, another human being was completely dependent on me. Me, the single one with the still-empty fish tank in her apartment, the one who used her oven to store shoes. My mother was helpless as a newborn, confused and in pain. Any thoughts that this would be a lark were erased the first time I changed her diaper. <\/span><\/p>\n Holding onto your own mother, naked in the tub, as afraid of the warm water as she once was of running outa cigarettes, is a sobering moment for a daughter. As I carefully washed her wounds and awkwardly maneuvered her bird-like body out of the tub, I thought, \u201cThis is what my body will look like. This is my future.\u201d My second thought? \u201cWho will be there to take care of me?\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019d always considered myself capable. Strong, even. After all, I ran a department in one of the world\u2019s largest media companies. But it didn\u2019t take but a day for me to admit that housewives and mothers had the most grueling jobs in the world. <\/span>Back in the city, I\u2019d take a cappuccino break at 10 am, to chat with my co-workers about the latest exhibit at the Met. Now, by mid-morning, I\u2019d already gotten my mother roused from a fitful sleep, figured out which medicines to sneak into her oatmeal, dressed her, done the dishes, gone food shopping \u2013 and started planning for lunch.<\/p>\n Meals presented the greatest challenge. They were the Omaha Beach of my new life. <\/span>Before, I considered planning for dinner dialing the telephone to the nearest take-out joint. The first time I tried cooking a chicken I was so worried about salmonella poisoning I cooked it at 375 degrees for four hours. Needless to say, that chicken was as appetizing as laundry lint. Oh, yeah, my cooking improved, but it didn\u2019t matter. My mother complained about everything I made. A typical conversation went something like this:<\/p>\n Mom: What\u2019s this?<\/p>\n Me: It\u2019s bean and vegetable soup. I made it from scratch.<\/p>\n Mom: I hate soup.<\/p>\n Me: You love soup. I made it just the way you used to. Just taste it. You\u2019ll like it.<\/p>\n Mom: I want ice cream. And a cigarette.<\/p>\n Most days, we just talked, which, for us, was unusual. Before the cancer, our conversations were pretty much limited to: \u201cYou gotta eat more lasagna. The cheese will help your digestion.\u201d Now, she\u2019d remember a good day from my childhood or the way my dad liked to call me Lady Jane. I think it had something to do with those hard yellow candies they used to sell at our local Woolworths. One Sunday, she even made it to the ocean\u2019s edge. Still she protested all the way that she \u201cnever did much like the beach.\u201d But when she got home she called everyone in the family to tell them about sitting on the hot sand \u2013 and to complain about those dirty seagulls. Small victories, they were. As good, and as easy, as a slice of sweet pie. The kind she used to make, when summers meant sitting outside on our picnic table with chicken noodle soup and peanut butter sandwiches, under the oak that dominated our yard in Pine Beach.<\/p>\n After nearly 2 months, and despite my cooking, my mother was well enough to return to my older sister\u2019s care, freeing me to return to my life in the big city, to my own green field of denial. Before I left, she told me she loved me in the only way she knew how. She shrugged and said, \u201cI got used to you. But you have to go, right?\u201d <\/span>I did.<\/p>\n A few months later, we celebrated my mother\u2019s 83rd<\/sup> birthday. She was strong enough to beg me for a cigarette when she caught me outside, sneaking one for myself. I looked at her — like a gnarled, white-haired child she was — asking her baby daughter for the one thing left that gave her any real pleasure. I hesitated, and then shook one from the pack. That night, Stella went into the hospital. Three days before Christmas, I was called to her deathbed.<\/p>\n As it turned out, it was the longest night of the year — December 21. Outside at the nurse\u2019s station, they played an endless loop of Christmas carols. I tried to say all those things they say in the movies \u2013 all the while competing with \u201cRudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.\u201d It was a moment Stella would have appreciated. Just like I did when I was a child, I laid my head on her breast, close enough to hear her heart beat. It was as soft as the flutter of wings. Finally, she was still.<\/p>\n The nurse came and I asked for a moment. I wanted to peel off all the band-aids stuck to her skin — so thin it was, like crumbling parchment. I combed her hair. She never wore it neat. This was my own small triumph. Soon after, my brother came for me and after saying his goodbyes we went outside. Dawn was breaking, bathing everything in a steel gray. I thought of that tub she painted so many years ago, and I had to laugh. My brother understood. And then, we each lit a cigarette. For Stella.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The way I saw it, I had two choices before me the morning I came downstairs to find Stella firmly tethered to her oxygen tank \u2013 and defiantly waving a zippo and a Parliament. Run like hell or stand and fight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dawnshurmaitis.net\/works\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dawnshurmaitis.net\/works\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dawnshurmaitis.net\/works\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dawnshurmaitis.net\/works\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dawnshurmaitis.net\/works\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/dawnshurmaitis.net\/works\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dawnshurmaitis.net\/works\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dawnshurmaitis.net\/works\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dawnshurmaitis.net\/works\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}