Dogpoet: Diagnosis

Friday, January 31, 2003

A month after the diagnosis she sends me an e-mail:

Dear Michael,

How are you? I am doing okay but have been sad lately. Mary Thornton is holding a healing service for me at Plymouth on December 23rd. It doesn’t change the fact that I am dying, but it will be nice to have friends and family there. I am so sorry lately. I’m so sorry that I won’t get to see you and David grow old together.

Love,
Mom

David and I don’t know yet that we won’t grow old together. Maybe we have our suspicions. And I don’t know what a healing service is, exactly. It sounds a little New Age-y and gross. But she’s my mother. David and I fly to Minneapolis.

We gather together on the evening of the 23rd in the small chapel at Plymouth Congregational Church, off of Franklin Avenue downtown. Family and friends; maybe thirty people altogether. I sit in the first wooden pew with David on one side, my brother Mark on the other. Mom next to him. Lee, her lover of twenty years, beside her.

The red carpet below our feet stretches up the aisle to the three small steps leading to the alter. A simple wooden cross hangs overhead. The walls are bare and white. There are stained glass windows set high around us, though at night they only appear dark.

Mary Thornton is a lesbian minister that my mother has been confiding in since her diagnosis. She’s a tiny woman; no more than 5 feet tall, with short dark hair shot through with grey strands, and green eyes that never leave yours during conversation. She wears a small gold cross on a chain around her neck. She stands before us at the front of the altar, and she smiles.

“Thank you all for coming, for joining us here today.”

I look over at my mother, who is gazing up at Mary with an almost childlike expression of trust. A stab of grief tears through me, and I look down at my legs. I run my finger along the crease in my pants; the only nice pair I own. David sits beside me, mute and withdrawn. He doesn’t like to talk about what’s happening to my mom, and for a second there in the chapel I hate him.

“We’re here to show our love and support for Susan McAllister, as she faces with courage the journey ahead. “

I look at Lee, who is fighting to keep her expression neutral. I know she’s not crazy about churches. “God is not my favorite person right now,” she had told me.

“We invite each of you, who care to participate, to come up here and say a few words to Susan. But first, I’d like to ask Susan if there’s anything she’d like to say. Susan, would you like to come up here?”

My mother shakes her head gently. The muscles that control her speech and swallowing have already weakened and it is often difficult to understand her. When she begins to speak we all lean forward, to catch every word. But she speaks slowly, and clearly.

“I just want my sons to know how sorry I am, for not being a better mother,”

My brother Mark bows his head beside me. My vision blurs, the chapel swims for a second, red and black. Tears boil up hotly and I blink them back. I suck air into my lungs. But my hold breaks on the Michael I was trying to be, the strong one, the man of the family. The tears rush forth and I lose it.