A Different Kind of Normal

  “Yesterday I was in so much pain I had to get help getting off the can. I can’t walk anymore. I used to run strategy sessions, now I’m inhaling medicine like they’re peppermint candies and trying not to wet fart in my diaper. I can hardly breathe and I know this is gonna get worse. Do you want to experience air being slowly sucked out of your lungs while you flop around, a human fish on land?”

  “No.”

  “That’s what is happening to me. Can you help me?”

  “No. As a hospice nurse, that isn’t my role. But you can talk to your doctor, your wife and kids, and they’ll handle it from there. You’re sure about this?”

  “I’m perfectly sure. My life was my own business and my death is my own business, too. It’s not anyone else’s and I’ll do what I think is right for me, no interference, damn it.”

  I squeezed General Ross’s hand, he squeezed back.

  “I’ve had a blessed life, Jaden. I want to end it blessed, too. On my terms, not helpless and hopeless and riding out one humiliation after another as I decay further, a living corpse.”

  “I understand.” I tried not to cry.

  “I knew you would. So, let’s change the subject. Let’s talk about the craziest things you’ve ever done, Jaden. . . .”

  We chatted about the craziest things we’d ever done and laughed and laughed. I leaned down to hug him before I left.

  “I smell cinnamon on you, Jaden, as usual.”

  “That’s because before I came to see you I ate eleven red cinnamon Gummi Bears and I smell nutmeg on you.”

  It was our usual parting good-bye.

  It would be our last good-bye.

  Assisted death is a newish sort of term.

  It is not a newish sort of . . . concept.

  It’s been going on since man began.

  Think people haven’t suffocated, poisoned, or shot dying family and friends, dying buddies on the battlefield, to put them out of their misery over the centuries? Ha.

  People sometimes suffer terribly when they die. The process can be minutes, hours, weeks, or months long. Sometimes people are suffering greatly for years.

  It is an understatement to say that it’s hard to watch.

  It was hard for my parents and Grandma Violet to watch. It was hard for Caden, Brooke, and me to watch, too.

  My grandpa Pete broke his back when his tractor rolled over him one summer when I was thirteen. He was sixty-eight and in the hospital for weeks. When he came home, he was still in grave pain and could hardly move. He was struck with double pneumonia, which came back again and again like repeat hurricanes. In the last eighteen months of his life he was diagnosed with two malignant, untreatable, metastasizing tumors on his back, with several shattered vertebrae. It turned each inch of his world into an ocean of pain.

  Pain management wasn’t what it is today, and his suffering was almost unspeakable. I remember as a child listening to his raspy screaming.

  Grandpa Pete was a quiet, kind man.

  He and Grandma Violet were in love from the moment they met, Grandma Violet topless in that forest, until the moment she killed him. For months, my spices and herbs at our house in the Hollywood Hills had smelled threatening—rotting, molding, decaying. I didn’t know what it was. I told my mother. She told me it meant death. She wrapped me in her arms and said, “I bet I know whose death it is.”

  “Sweetheart,” Grandpa Pete groaned to Grandma Violet one night from bed, with me sitting in the hundred-year-old rocking chair nearby, his voice hoarse from agony, “it’s time.”

  And that was it.

  Two words. “It’s time.”

  My mother, Brooke, Caden, and I were already here, and the next night my father flew in from the hacienda house in the Hollywood Hills, his handsome face miserable, tears streaming down. He had been in the midst of a movie script, but family came first and I hugged that teddy bear of a father tight. “I love you, Aquamarine. I’m sorry about Grandpa Pete.”

  We all sat around Grandpa Pete’s bed and sang songs and laughed and talked that summer night, when the wind was soft and the sunset particularly bright, streaked with red. We had steak, sweet potatoes, and key lime pie, his favorites. He couldn’t eat, but said, “I’m enjoying the meal through you.”

  Caden had Grandpa Pete’s steak, I ate his sweet potatoes, and Brooke ate his key lime pie.

  My parents cried, as did Grandma Violet.

  That night when I was in bed, I heard the floor creak outside my door and I spied on my mother and Grandma Violet. They were mixing something in the kitchen, carefully, quietly. It was a liquid.

  I ducked behind a door, then crept down the hallway to Grandma Violet and Grandpa Pete’s bedroom.

  My father was there, hugging Grandpa Pete, candles lit, Mozart in the background.

  Grandma Violet climbed into their four-poster bed with him and held him close, their tears mingling.

  “I love you, sweetheart,” Grandpa Pete said. “Love you forever.”

  “And I love you. You were my greatest joy.”

  My mother bent to kiss his cheeks.

  “I could not have had a better daughter, Rowan. Never.”

  And I watched, in the dim light, as Grandma Violet held the glass for Grandpa Pete with the mixture she and my mother had concocted for him. He drank most of it. He could not drink the rest because his eyes shut and he slumped down.

  I sat in the hallway and cried. I knew what had happened. I knew why they did it.

  I have never, even in all the years I’ve been a hospice nurse, seen anyone in the kind of sustained, excruciating pain Grandpa Pete had been in.

  When Grandma Violet and my mother finally limped out of the room, leaning heavily on each other, they hugged me close, after exchanging a shocked look. They had not known I was there. I could hear my father crying from the old rocking chair.

  “You understand, Jaden?” Grandma Violet said.

  I nodded. I understood. It had been time. “Yes, Grandma Violet.”

  “Sometimes healing is used to help dying people into heaven. The women in our family, even Faith herself, have always known this, and used it when they had to.” She kissed me. She was broken. She had lost her husband, her best friend, her life.

  Do I think my mother and Grandma Violet, at that time, with the medicines they didn’t have, did the right thing for my Grandpa Pete?

  Yes, I do.

  Absolutely. Immediately after Grandpa Pete died, the stench in my herbs and spices went away, but the grief for Grandpa Pete cut Grandma Violet in half.

  In a little over a year, on a fall day when the leaves were burnt orange, sunny yellow, and rose pink, Grandma Violet was gone, passing in her sleep, a serene smile on her face. In the three months before she died, I could hardly stand my herbs and spices because they smelled rancid, nauseatingly foul and, again, threatening. Now I knew what it meant. I told my mom what I smelled. I told her I thought it was for Grandma Violet.

  The death smell in my spices and herbs have never given me names.

  Sometimes that’s a blessing and sometimes it’s just another curse.

  14

  Tate’s next game was at home again and the gym was packed. We were people sardines. I was a people sardine with a heavy heart because of Ethan, but I was determined to stop thinking about him for two hours. Two hours, I told myself. Breathe, block out the throbbing pain.

  The team was practicing when my mother, Caden, Damini, the triplets, and I walked in. It had snowed earlier in the day, the snowflakes light, drifting down in a snowflake dance, but it had melted by game time.

  We were all wearing the team colors, orange and black, we simply wore them differently. I had on jeans, black knee-high boots with buckles, and a Mid Court Mob shirt. Caden had cut the sleeves off his Mid Court Mob shirt so his bulky shoulders and massive arms showed. Damini had French-braided his hair with an orange and black ribbon. She wore jeans and the Mid Court Mob shirt and a huge pile of ribbons around her ponytail.

  M
y mother wore a Mid Court Mob shirt, fashionable jeans, a black belt around her waist, and four-inch black stilettos. The triplets all wore Mid Court Mob shirts and a combination of these things: a black cape, orange wings, a Spider Man mask, bear feet, leopard claws, a unicorn horn.

  The whistle blew. Tate did not start.

  My guess is that Coach Boynton was giving him time to warm up—mentally speaking.

  Six minutes into the first quarter, we had two points. The opponent had sixteen.

  “Tate!” Coach Boynton called. Tate ran up from the end of the bench and stood by the coach.

  He seemed nervous. Before the game he’d told me that he was afraid he was going to be a disappointment. “I made all those points last time, Mom, but I don’t know if I can do it again.”

  I saw the stark fear in his eyes and some lurking sadness caused by an awareness that he could take a lot of heat tonight. “Honey, do your best, that’s it.”

  “Mom, you don’t get it. Kids at school have been coming up to me and talking to me. In one way, it ticks me off because I’m the same person I was before I scored all those points, and now I’m getting all this attention, but in another way, I’m glad I’m not being made fun of, either, and people aren’t avoiding looking at me.

  “Plus, my making all those points gave people something to talk about with me. You know, it started the conversation. But now I’m afraid I’m going to blow it, then they’ll all hate me again, and avoid me, and I do think that’s pathetic, you know, that I want to make points to make friends, but it’s my reality in this galaxy. For once in my life, I want to have friends, people to say hi to in the hallways, to sit with at lunch, hang out with at PE, and be normal, you know what I mean?”

  “Yeah, I know, Tate.” How I had wished for, longed for, Tate to be “normal.”

  And yet.

  The truth is, Tate would not be Tate without the insight, compassion, and sensitivity that had come to him through this hardship. That’s the gift of not being normal. Let’s face it, you become a deeper person amidst adversity. You become a more perceptive, strong, resilient person when life is not handed to you on a silver platter held by a butler.

  “I don’t want to screw up in front of all those people, Boss Mom. I don’t want kids to say, ‘Why didn’t you do better? We lost because of you!’ ”

  I thought about what to say. I didn’t want to spurt out platitudes. I didn’t want to tell him that he’d do “great.” We didn’t know if he would do great. I didn’t want to roll over and dismiss his genuine and understandable concerns. Eventually, I said what I thought, off the tip of my tongue.

  “Tate, just throw the damn ball up.”

  I could tell he was surprised, then his face broke into a grin, that grin I love seeing. “Okay.”

  “Aim, throw. That’s it. Start there.”

  “Got it, Boss Mom.”

  But his nerves were still jangling, I could tell. “Come on, Tate,” I whispered, as he sprinted up the court after the opposing team scored yet another basket. “Come on, Tate.” Please don’t let Tate get hurt. Please don’t let Tate get hurt.

  His teammate, Kendrick the gecko kid, passed him the ball, three feet out of the three-point line.

  Tate aimed as a defender rushed him. He shot. It arched way, way up, then slammed into the backboard and swished.

  Oh yeeeaaahh! Three-pointer.

  We flew out of our seats, the players on the bench jumped up, Coach Boynton fisted both hands into the air and shouted, “Taaatttee! I felt it in my bones!”

  The opposing coach put a hand to his face.

  Caden yelled, “That’s my boy, Tate!”

  The triplets bopped up and down and growled. Damini hooted ’til she was hoarse.

  I thought my mother and Caden were going to die of ecstasy.

  “He is dancing with his rainbow!” my mother screamed. “He is dancing!”

  Water ran in a steady stream out of my eyes.

  Tate’s game was incredible.

  He made three three-pointers in the second quarter alone. The opposing team quickly started double-teaming him. That left a man on his team open. Tate passed it to that open player, that guy made the point, or passed it off.

  With one minute left in the third quarter, Coach Boynton pulled Tate out. He was way across the court, in the corner, and started running toward the bench.

  And for my Tate, the kid with the big head and the uneven bright blue eyes, my endearing Tate, who has endured taunts and relentless bullying and aloneness his whole life, there was a standing ovation.

  Even some of the parents and kids on the other side stood up and clapped for him.

  When Tate was almost to our end of the court, Coach Boynton met him, hugged him, and lifted him up high, then pointed at the parent section and the kid section, both standing and clapping for him, along with his teammates.

  Tate, sweet Tate, turned around, a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree circle, his face absolutely, positively stunned, then he broke into a huge smile, and cried. He wiped a hand across his face.

  His tears made all of us clap harder, stomp harder, cheer harder.

  He is his momma’s boy.

  “Yea, Tate! Yea, Tate!” I shouted.

  “Hip boom bah! You’re the crow’s caw!” my brother yelled.

  “You’re a ball breaker, Tate,” my mother boomed. “Ball breaker!”

  At that time, we were ahead by fifteen.

  We won, seventy-eight to fifty-four. Tate went back in in the fourth quarter and made twelve points, much to the delirium of our crowd. This was the first time, the first time, in years that this team has won games.

  Tate was not able to come home and shoot baskets after the game. He was invited out with his team for pizza and pop.

  When he came home he said, “Best night of my life, Mom. Best night. I squished pepperoni pizza, a hot dog, and chocolate pudding together with my Billy and Bob hands and ate it.”

  “And how did that culinary art taste?”

  “Not bad, not bad at all. I took a photo of it for my blog. I also ate eight pieces of pizza. Pretty impressive, if I do say so myself.”

  TATE’S AWESOME PIGSKIN BLOG

  Here is a photo of what pizza, a hot dog, and chocolate pudding look like together.

  What’s your favorite strange food?

  Have a nice night.

  I pulled on my red rain boots and a coat and headed outside into the dark, snowy night. I tipped my head back and caught snowflakes with my mouth, my arms straight out as I spun.

  I made a snow angel.

  I made a second snow angel by the first angel and had them holding hands.

  I thought of Ethan until I was soaked, lying there in the snow, alone.

  Alone.

  “Hey! There’s Dr. Robbins!”

  “What?”

  “Yup.” Tate ate half a maple bar with one bite, and through the doughnut mumbled, “That’s a yum yum doozer. I need another maple bar.” He checked his cell phone for the time. “I knew it. He’s on time. To the minute.”

  I dropped the wooden spoon I was using to make spice muffins with walnuts and blueberries. Tate calls them the Blue Nut Man Muffins. I had many cookbooks laid open on my kitchen table in my search for the perfect recipe, there was flour in my hair, nutmeg on my tattered college sweatshirt, and I had no makeup on. I stared out the window, past our brick path, covered in a cool winter rain, and there was Ethan coming on down in his truck.

  “What . . . why is . . .” I sucked in my breath, hard and raspy, even as I felt my heart heat up at the sight of him.

  Ethan smiled and waved at me through the windshield. I backed away from the window as if a grenade had zipped through it.

  “What is he doing here, Tate?” Part of me was whizzing with love and lust, the other with baffled confusion.

  Tate ate the other half of the maple bar, then mumbled something else through the dough and maple icing that I didn’t understand.

  “Tate!”
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  He chewed and chewed and I could tell he was laughing at me.

  “Why is he here?” I heard the door of Ethan’s truck slam.

  “I invited him.”

  “You what?”

  “I invited him. It was a polite invitation. Charming. I was charming.”

  “You didn’t.”

  He looked at me quizzically. “Yes, I did. There’s proof. He’s right there.”

  “But . . .” I started to sweat. “Why?”

  He winked at me. “Yeah. You need to ask why? Think, think, think!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Come on, Mom. You’re in love with him. He’s in love with you. Let’s get this show a rollin’.” He did a few dance steps, jiving his shoulders, wiggling his hips. “Love is in the air and you two won’t do anything about it, so General Noggin and I sat down and thought about things, and Billy and Bob made a phone call to Dr. Robbins, and Bert and Ernie listened, and now he’s here on a Saturday morning. Too bad Nana Bird’s not here. She would have loved to be here. I’ll call her later and give her the details and she’ll be cackling like a witch.” He grinned at me. “You know she’s a witch. You, too, Boss Mom. I need another maple bar and I think General Noggin does, too.”

  “You didn’t tell me he was coming, you didn’t tell me you were doing this, you should have asked—”

  “Yes, I did tell. I told you one minute ago.”

  “Tate, take a peek at your mother! I was up ’til two in the morning with a patient, I haven’t had a shower. I’m as gross as . . . as . . .”

  “As a sick witch, out dancing under the moonlight with her coven? I like that word, coven. Do witches like maple bars?”

  I sucked in my breath. “That bad?”

  “Yup.” He laughed. “Nah, Mom, I’m kidding. You’re cool.”