Once Mike and Erin were up and going, they bought some cinnamon rolls at the small bakery in town and let themselves into the cottage. Delores wasn’t around, but Marge was there, using the suction machine to clear Jack’s throat. Erin was used to the routine and went to her dad’s side, slipping her hand into his. He was patiently enduring the assistance of the machine the way a dental patient opens up for a squirt of water and suction from the curved tube.
“You have some surprise visitors coming to see you today, Dad.”
His left eyebrow rose. Two days earlier, Erin had arranged for Sylvia and three other pals of his to come see him, but Delores had intercepted them at the door and sent them away. Jack had been sleeping at the time and didn’t know the guests were there. Erin didn’t see how Delores could object to the guests this time. Jordan and Sierra were family.
“Jordan and Sierra are coming, Dad.”
The announcement sent Jack into one of his tearful wails. Erin was becoming acquainted with what his different sounds meant. She found it easy to interpret this one: he hated being in such a distressing condition.
Erin leaned closer and patted his chest as he quieted. “You’re still the same you, Dad. And that’s who they’re coming to see. All you have to do is give Sierra one of those half grins of yours and one of your charming winks, and you’ll capture her heart for sure. She’s an incredibly sweet young woman. She wants to meet you. And I want you to meet her.”
Jack’s chest gave a tremor the way it did when he was trying to rumble up some words and push them through his lopsided mouth. All that came out was “Whann?”
Erin took that to mean “When?” so she answered with “Sometime this afternoon, I should think. Marge will dandy you up nice and fresh to see them. Does that sound good to you?”
His lopsided grin went up on the left side followed by a wink. She grinned back. His limitations no longer frightened or repulsed her. He was still her father, locked up in the prison of his failing frame.
Erin went to the kitchen. “I’m going to make some coffee. You guys want some?”
“I wouldn’t mind a cup,” Marge said.
“Sure,” Mike agreed.
“Yaaaah.” Jack raised his good arm.
The three of them looked at one another as if they weren’t sure it was okay to laugh. All of Jack’s fluids and nutrition now came to him through tubes. Only the smallest tastes of liquid went into his mouth or down his throat since his gag reflex often made him choke. All three of them chose to ignore his request.
Erin set about brewing a fresh pot of ground Italian roast she had purchased at the grocery store a few days earlier. Ever since the “why not” espresso she had enjoyed from the drive-through in Springfield, she had craved dark Italian roast, fully caffeinated coffee. As the fragrant morning offering wafted through the close quarters, she opened the window above the sink a few inches to let in the morning air.
It was foggy outside. A thin, faint sort of hazy fog was clearing just as it had the past few mornings. Through the open window came the ocean’s constant rumble. The tides had become a sort of metronome inside Erin’s head, swinging evenly back and forth, marking off the moments, helping her keep in rhythm with the cacophony of life around her.
Erin turned and noticed her dad across the room. His nose was up, sniffing the air like a bear.
“You love the smell of this coffee, don’t you?”
“Yaaaaa.”
Her father closed his eyes and yawned. This, too, was a familiar rhythm of the past few days. He seemed to dip in and out of the reality going on around him. With a close of his eyes, he would turn back inside himself. To Erin it seemed like a coping mechanism incorporated in his system. Whenever he didn’t have the strength to stay in the moment and process the emotions or thoughts, he would shut off.
Mike was working alongside Erin in the kitchen and had started making some instant oatmeal, as had become their simple morning routine the past few days. “Marge, do you know if Delores is up yet?”
“She left right after I arrived at about seven thirty.”
“Did she say where she was going or how long she would be gone?” Mike was holding the box of instant oatmeal. The last two mornings he had made a small bowl of oatmeal for Delores, and she had eaten it. They were down to three packets left so Erin guessed Mike was trying to parcel out the supplies.
“She didn’t say. She had a suitcase with her.”
Mike and Erin exchanged puzzled glances. No one said anything for a few minutes. The coffeemaker sputtered. The teakettle whistled, and Mike poured the boiling water into the two bowls, stirring in the instant oatmeal. Both Mike and Erin stood as they held their bowls and spooned the oatmeal into their mouths, their eyes darting back and forth.
Before Mike finished his oatmeal, he placed the bowl on the counter and motioned for Erin to come with him. They slipped through the rearranged living room, and Mike politely tapped on the closed bedroom door even though they had been told Delores wasn’t in there.
Mike turned the knob and opened the door to reveal the neatly made bed. Erin held her breath. She knew what Mike must have known when he motioned for her to follow him. The empty closet and the sealed envelope on the end of the bed confirmed the biting reality.
Delores was gone.
All week she had been busy packing boxes, organizing and sorting, separating out everything that was hers. On Friday Delores had loaded the car with six storage boxes that were sealed with packing tape. Mike and Erin had assumed she was going to take them to the Salvation Army drop-off as she had done with two other boxes earlier that week. Erin had noticed that one of the boxes was sealed and addressed as if it were prepared to be mailed. She didn’t think about where Delores might be sending that box until this moment. Perhaps it had been mailed to Dolores’s new residence.
Mike walked over to the bed, picked up the envelope, and let out a few raw words under his breath. “She addressed it to your dad. She knew we would have to read it to him.” He shook his head and added a few more ragged words to his evaluation of Delores’s character.
“How could she do this? I thought she had resigned herself to my dad’s situation.” Erin lowered herself to the edge of the bed. “She spent all week acting as if she supported the idea of moving back to Irvine just so we would do everything we did to prepare him for the move.”
“She had both of us fooled.” Mike, her steady, problem-solving husband, grew red in the face.
The reality of the responsibility that had now landed in their laps hit her with full force. Intense anger replaced her initial sense of numbness, rushing over Erin like a wave. She wanted to read the letter to her father right now so they could see what Delores had to say for herself. Mike hesitated and then convinced her they should go for a walk, try to calm down, and come up with the best way to frame the information. Jack was the real victim in this. He was dependent on them now for everything.
The bracing salt air and their brisk walk down to the tide pools did much to clarify their thoughts. The anger toward Delores was still there but a shared empathy for Jack redirected their emotional energy, and soon they had talked through their plan.
Even with their logic lined up, it took several hours before both of them were in a stable enough place to stand in front of Jack and present him with the envelope. They waited until Marge had stepped out to run an errand. She hadn’t asked Mike or Erin what had happened to Delores or why the two of them were so shaken. Certainly Marge figured out what was going on. To her professional credit and to Erin’s deep appreciation, Marge kept to herself and focused on her required tasks. It would make sense that she didn’t see the need to insert herself into this family crisis.
Jack was fully awake and seemed interactive when Mike sat beside him, looked Jack in the eye, and said, “We have something to tell you that, quite honestly, has really upset Erin and me.”
Jack’s left eyebrow went up. Mike showed him the envelope with Jack’s name on the front
. “Delores left this on the bed. Would you like me to read it to you?”
“Yaaaa.” A breathy sob echoed from his deflated chest before Mike had even opened the envelope.
Clearing his throat, Mike read the short note aloud.
My dear Jack,
Since I’ve already told you all this in person, this note is more for Mike and Erin’s benefit than for yours. I’ve put everything in order and made sure Erin knows where all the papers are. No one regrets more than I that things turned out for us the way they did. I know you’ll be well cared for, and that’s important to me. You are a very dear person, Jack. I love you. You know that.
Delores
The forthrightness of the note caught Erin off guard, even though she knew she should be used to Delores’s abrupt, self-first attitude by now. “She told you this, Dad? She told you she was leaving?”
Erin expected her father to wail. Instead he remained strangely still, blinking at them. He then drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes, shutting them out, folding up into his own reality. He seemed much more resigned to the situation than Erin expected.
But then, at this point, she didn’t know what to expect. Her sense of balance was off-kilter. Erin had to go outside again and let the sharp air expand her lungs. She reached for her fleece jacket and exited quietly.
Making her way through the carved path in the brambles, she walked out to the bench and took her seat on the edge of the world. The wind was still, and the waves were calm, cresting with small curls of white foam. The tide eased in and rolled out without sending shooting sprays of salt water into the air.
“Why? Why would you let my dad have this stroke and then just let Delores walk away? I don’t understand any of this.”
Erin had asked God enough “why” questions after her mother’s death to know that the continual asking resulted in an exercise in silence from the courts of heaven. She had come to understand that the asking was for her growth and her sanity and not necessarily for an answer. It was in the asking that Erin turned her heart toward listening. And in the listening came a humbling sense of awe at the all-encompassing majesty of Creator God.
As she stared out at the ocean, Erin remembered afresh some of the comforts that had come to her during stretches of quiet listening after her mother’s death. What Erin heard in the silence was that there were, indeed, specific answers to each earthly pain. Every “why” had a “so that” response handwritten by God himself. She believed that.
She also believed that those answers were carefully recorded and stored somewhere in heaven, out of mortals’ reach. It was only for her to believe that every time she sent a “why” into eternity that the answer was lovingly written beneath her question and tucked away, waiting for the day when the books were opened and she could read all that was recorded there.
A memory came to Erin as she sorted through her thoughts there on the bluff. It was a memory of her grandmother, sitting silently in her bedroom the day her grandfather passed away. Erin was only eight, but she never forgot the way her grandmother had looked. She was listening. Waiting. Quieting her spirit. There was such a sense of calm and peace on her face that Erin knew her grandmother wasn’t alone in that room. An invisible presence was there, sitting with her in silence, comforting her. Erin remembered quietly closing the door and wondering what it would be like to experience that otherworldly sort of calm.
Today was that day.
For nearly an hour Erin sat and listened. Only listened. She didn’t dwell on any of her anger or confusion. She just observed. In the quietness she heard the staccato call of the seagulls as they stretched out their long white wings and soared above the water. She heard the steady ebb and flow of the tides. She heard the delicate rustling sound the wind made in the woods that lined the far side of the cliff.
Two small brown birds hopped closer to the bench as she sat motionless. Cocking their heads, they looked at Erin, looked at the ground, pecked for a seed here and there, and then flew off, their simple needs fulfilled.
I will give you the treasures of darkness.
Erin knew the line was part of a verse. She tried to think of where she had heard it. Was it from one of the entries in her mom’s diary? Or was it one of the many Old Testament verses her grandmother had worked hard to get Erin to memorize when she was young?
As a child Erin had resisted her grandmother’s strict recitations of verses loaded with “thees” and “thous.” Erin valued the experience now, knowing that some of those verses had gone into her head, and many of them had sifted down and found their way to her heart, where they remained. Her grandmother’s efforts weren’t wasted.
Over the years, whenever Erin remembered one of the verses, she had made it a practice to look it up and write it in her journal. First she would write the verse in her grandmother’s King James Version. Then she would look it up in her Bible, a more modern translation. Tonight, when she returned to the Shamrock, she would make sure she looked up this verse and recorded it in her journal.
The hour of solace accomplished its work. Erin stood and realized she wasn’t chilled. The sun had warmed her. God’s abiding presence had calmed her. This was going to be a long journey with her dad. She knew she needed patience and peace—deep-down settled peace—to go the distance.
Strolling back through the cleared path in the brambles, Erin stopped when she reached the grassy area in front of the house. Marge’s car was parked to the side. That meant she was back from running her errand. Perhaps Mike had told her about the letter’s contents.
From the top of the long gravel driveway Erin heard a car approaching. It was a silver compact, just like Delores’s car.
Did she change her mind? Is she coming back?
Erin hurried toward the car as it came to a stop behind Mike’s BMW. It wasn’t Delores who crawled out from the driver’s side. Jordan emerged from the rental car that was uncannily similar to Delores’s.
Sierra popped out from the passenger’s side and immediately came to Erin with her arms open and ready to offer a warm, empathetic hug. The two women held each other a moment as Sierra whispered in Erin’s ear, “I’m so sorry this has happened to your dad.”
Erin’s love for Sierra grew deeper. Ever since Erin lost her mother no female relative responded to her with this kind of warmth. Sierra was now that woman, that relative. From the beginning Sierra had offered her friendship to Erin in daughterly ways, and Erin knew Sierra was a gift not only to her son but also to her.
Jordan now wrapped his arms around both the women and rested his forehead against the side of his mother’s head. “How are you doin’, Mom?”
“Better. Much better now that the two of you are here.” She pulled back and drew in a breath. “Delores left Grandpa this morning. She did it in secret. Packed her bags and left.”
Jordan and Sierra both pulled back and stared in disbelief.
“How did Grandpa take it?” Jordan asked.
Erin wasn’t sure how to answer. “He didn’t react much. When you see him you’ll know why. I don’t know what he thinks of her. I don’t understand their relationship.”
“Can we go in and see him?” Jordan asked.
“Sure. I don’t know if he’s awake. Dad’s with him. And listen—don’t let Grandpa’s appearance startle you. From everything we can tell after being with him all week, he’s still very much in tune with what’s going on around him, at least most of the time. The stroke took his ability to communicate, but mentally it seems he’s pretty much still all there.”
“How awful,” Sierra said.
“Can he talk at all?” Jordan asked.
“Not with full words. But you’ll see. He communicates in other ways.”
Clasping hands, Jordan and Sierra followed Erin to the persimmon red door.
“This cottage is darling,” Sierra said. “It’s like a fairy tale.”
“My dad did a lot of the restoration, so be sure to tell him that you like it. He probably would like for me t
o show you the pictures. I’ll try to remember to pull out the scrapbook.” Erin felt bittersweet as she remembered how Delores had put the scrapbook together. When she and her dad showed it to Erin during her February visit, she had felt a sincere appreciation for Delores and the way she was doing things for her dad that her mother had never done. But all the kindness she had felt toward Delores was gone.
11
Grant me a sense of humor, Lord,
The saving grace to see a joke,
To win some happiness from life
And pass it on to other folk.
Erin opened the front door a few inches and found that her dad was in the midst of routine hygiene procedures.
“Jordan and Sierra are here,” she told Mike quietly. “I think we’ll make a quick run to the grocery store while you finish up.”
“Good idea. Give us another twenty minutes.”
As they drove past the Shamrock Lodgettes, Sierra said, “Are those ‘lodgettes’ only for ‘leprechaun-ettes’?”
Jordan grinned at her joke, and Erin said, “Believe it or not, that’s where we’re staying. We reserved you guys a room for tonight, too.”
“Then I guess we’ll see if any ‘leprechaun-ettes’ are staying there,” Sierra said. “The hotel where we stayed last week on Maui had a notice about the menehune being at work doing repair on the pool. We found out that the menehune are more or less the Hawaiian equivalent of leprechauns.”
“How was Hawaii? I’m sorry, I haven’t even asked,” Erin said.
“It was perfect.” Sierra turned around in the front seat and gave Jordan a big smile.
“Mostly perfect,” Jordan added from his spot in the backseat. “There was one major problem.”
“What was it? The pool being repaired?” Erin glanced at him in the rearview mirror.
“No. The pool was only closed for an hour one of the nights. The problem was that we didn’t want to leave. We’re determined to save all our pennies so that next time we go, whenever that might be, we’ll be able to stay longer.”