“…the death of my mother was the thing that made me believe the most deeply in my safety: nothing bad could happen to me, I thought. The worst thing already had.”
― Wild
When I first read Cheryl Strayed’s memoir ten years ago, I thought it was the story of her hiking alone on the Pacific Crest Trail. Recently, I reread it and realized it’s about grieving her mother, who died at the age of forty-two. Of course, it is both.
I notice different things now because, as for Cheryl Strayed, my mother’s death has fundamentally shifted my world.
It’s been five months, and in that time I’ve traveled from my home state, Tennessee, to Arizona for Thanksgiving, and back again for Christmas with my dad, then finally home to England for the New Year. You’ll notice two uses of home in that sentence, and I’m not sure if both of them are accurate, or neither. This is what I mean: I have become, in some way, a different person. I’m still a traveler and a writer, but not the one I was before.
Mom spent the first nine nights of November in the hospital in Johnson City, where I was born, and left us precisely at sunset on the 10th. We took turns staying overnight with her, and for most of those days she was consciously with us: talking, laughing, even singing to the extent that high-flow oxygen allowed. A friend of mine who remembers well Gracie’s gift for song remarked that a lung disease seemed uniquely punishing for someone who was such a good singer.
When, periodically, a medic would come in to confirm Mom’s name and date of birth before some treatment, she would almost smile, before enunciating quietly: “Grace Knowles. June 12th, 1948.”
Groovy Gracie. Groove, as I called her. All the years after I left home, when I phoned or, more recently, e-mailed the two of them at Dad’s address, I always said “Hi, Groove.” Dear Groove 🎵
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| Bisbee, Arizona (Ben & Elizabeth's wedding), May 2011 |
A musical note was her symbol, because she was always singing. If you said “How does ‘Memphis, Tennessee’ go?” or “Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones…” Groovy Gracie could sing it all the way through, and would, at a moment’s notice. To her kindergarten students, she sang about colors and shapes. In the hospital, she sang along with an a cappella hymn the five of us used to sing together; but she also insisted I find, on my phone, a Sesame Street parody called “I Want to Hold Your Ear,” and went through it to the very last frame. In church, in the choir, she sang hymns.
Hymns were not the only songs we sang in church. There are a lot of folk songs, especially on the records Groove had listened to over and over in the 1960s (which I still have) that evoke biblical promises. It was one such song, “You Can Tell The World” by Bob Gibson and Hamilton Camp, that I specifically had in mind when I decided I wanted to learn the guitar. I wanted to play the guitar and I wanted to sing that song, with Groove:
“The Jordan River is chilly and wide,
I’ve got a home on the other side.”
This is the imagery of spirituals, also found in Gibson and Camp’s song “Well, Well, Well”; in “Go Tell It On The Mountain” and “I Wonder As I Wander”; even in Bob Dylan’s “When The Ship Comes In.” We sang them all, as anthems in front of the church.
We loosely followed the versions we heard on Groove’s records, or my tapes and CDs, and “just knew” them. When we played Peter, Paul and Mary’s version of “When The Ship Comes In,” a song with four verses and no chorus, I started the song, and on the second verse Groove joined in vocalizing in harmony. Halfway through the third verse she started singing the words with me, and came in on the last verse, which we sang all the way through together.
Groove would also, occasionally, find sheet music of songs she thought I’d like, and mail them to me: in Chicago, Oxford, Toronto. In my guitar case I have a version of the Sacred Harp hymn “Devotion.” This version is not written in shapes, but I love singing shape note music, and she knew that. I always wanted to take her and Dad to a Sacred Harp singing, but the closest we ever got was singing “Wondrous Love” in church.
The last weekend of this past October was the London All-Day singing, and I led “Devotion.” At an All-Day you are limited to one or two verses, because there are so many singers and songs to get through. “Devotion” has been a favorite since my Toronto days and I’d almost always led the first and last of the three verses, but this time I chose the first and second. The words, like so many in The Sacred Harp, are by the eighteenth-century hymn writer Isaac Watts:
Sweet is the day of sacred rest;
No mortal cares shall seize my breast.
Oh, may my heart in tune be found,
Like David’s harp of solemn sound.
Then shall I share a glorious part,
When grace hath well refined my heart,
And fresh supplies of joy are shed,
Like holy oil, to cheer my head.
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| Glacier National Park, Montana, July 2018. Photo by Trish |
I spent the weekend singing, but it was an uneasy one. E-mails with Dad on Saturday brought news that, as in the previous few weeks, things were getting more difficult for Mom at home. On Sunday night I exchanged WhatsApp messages with Groovy Gracie from the pub, where we were singing sea shanties and folk ballads in the basement. “You and your ’60s records are here in spirit!” I wrote.
It was our last text message exchange. Two days later, I Skyped them but Mom couldn’t even join in the call. We ended it and Dad took her to the hospital. It turned out her pain was due to a collapsed lung.
That was the 1st of November. On the 2nd, they finally got her symptoms under control, but recovery was proving more difficult. Mom’s sister came to the hospital, then my brother Ben and sister Rachel flew in from Phoenix. By the 3rd, I was there.
Over the coming days we gathered, reminisced, and basked in Groove’s smile. Her daughter-in-law and granddaughter came. Some of her dearest friends, some from decades ago. Such a steady flow of chaplains and other devout people were praying in the room that I didn’t pray at all, nor feel that I had to. I let their prayers buoy me up. And they did buoy us up. Those words helped every member of our family, whatever our degree of religiosity.
In my updates for Gracie’s friends and relations, I wrote that when you’ve practiced your faith as long and consistently as Mom has, it’s like anything else, muscle memory. When you come to the time when you really, really need that faith, you don’t have to think about it because it is just there. Like a reflex. She did not seem to be afraid of anything.
One of the songs I played for her on my phone was “Devotion.” I sang along, and what with all the repetition Ben joined in too by the end. I don’t even remember what day that was, sacred time all blurring together.
The night of the 8th, it was my turn to stay with Mom again. During the early hours, I tried to play a Messiah chorus for her, but she was too tired to keep listening. “We’ll sing more in the morning,” she told me.
Sometime the next day Mom slipped into unconsciousness. Rachel said she was aware of some of the praying that was going on around her, but I’d gone for a nap by then. Late that night Trish arrived from England, got to hug Mom and talk to her. I ended up staying that night also, because Trish didn’t want to leave her, and neither of us wanted to leave Ben there on his own.
Our Gracie left this earth the way I would want to leave it. She had no fear, and everywhere around her was her loving family. She’d often spoken about not wanting to lose her memory or her capacity to relate to people. It was a good death, but she was only seventy-four.
I suppose it is always too soon.
On Christmas Eve I was at Mom and Dad's house, going through a drawer with her jottings etc. in it. At the bottom of the drawer was a rubber mat. I noticed a small card (back of a business card) that had gotten tucked underneath the mat.
I pulled it out and Groove had written:
She had come in on the last verse.
