The Heart Has Its Reasons

A bare whisper and then nothing, like three dots at the end of a sentence..."Whatever happens to me..." my mother whispered to our miracle friend Lynn who is here to help us. The rest never came or was too faint, as if she were on the dark side of the moon.

A quieter day than yesterday as this dear, sweet woman who simply wanted to be kind to others is taking the long way home. She'd made up her mind early on that she was not going to prolong this but her heart has other ideas.

The heart has its reasons of which reason has no knowldge, said Pascal who was one Frenchman who knew what he was talking about.

Here's what I wonder: I wonder if my mother is trying to forgive my father. My mother had worked up a lifetime worth of anger at a man who in spite of endless attempts to get through, could not be made to understand. He couldn't understand that his wife was not his mother, his domestic, his chief cook and bottle washer. He could never understand that his wife was not only his equal, but in a lot of ways his better. His pride, that stupid male pride that has brought down many a better man, would never let that stand.

Our friend Lynn was talking to my mother today. Reassuring her, stroking her forehead, saying her name. My father came into the room and sternly told Lynn, "Her name is not Jean. Her name is Eva. She has never been called Jean."

His mother was Eva. Later he said to Lynn, "Have you figured out who your patient is yet?" And Lynn tells him, "George. Your wife is named Jean. Your mother was named Eva. But the woman in that bedroom is Jean and she is your wife."

Somehow the words found their way home. "Ohhh..." And then the capper. "I'm so sorry for arguing with you." George does not often apologize. But when he does, it is only to people outside the family.

Who can say what love is? You watch an old man crying, almost beside himself with grief at the suffering his wife is living with. But the world is full of men who break at these moments and grief is no indicator of virtue.

My father is not a bad man. My father is a man of his time, a complicated man who, in his own way loves his wife but was fastened too tight to the mast and held his course steady for the whole trip. No course changes allowed...

The tragedy here is that his wife knew they were badly off course - and that the cost would be high - and she was fighting for all she was worth to take a different route, but no...And she became angry and bitter and sick.

My mother had many aliases. She was Jean, Jeannine, Jerky Lucy, jlp620@peoplepc.com, and she was Mom. In more ways than I will ever understand, she was my muse.

I have this disturbing thought. I am afraid I did not fully appreciate and celebrate how profoundly unique and special my mother was.

As she lay dying, she told me I ought to give the 'too big' sweaters that my father got for Christmas to "Eugene." Eugene is a poor black homeless man in Baltimore that my wife and I help out sometimes. I told her, "Mom if we give the sweaters to Eugene, he will sell them."

"Oh," she said. "Ok."