Interlude: Howling

When Walhydra’s mother Senior Witch was in her last year with Alzheimer’s dementia, Walhydra cried, “I can’t do this any more. How can I tell comical stories when it’s not funny any more?” This was when Walhydra’s gay twin brother Crippled Wolf stepped in to fill the gap.

Crippled Wolf knows how to practice what he calls “ruthless compassion.” It's not that he feels the sorrow and loss any less. It's just that, being closer to the animal reality of humankind, he can be more dispassionate, more assertive if necessary, in doing whatever practical caregiving needs to be given.

A profound example. When Senior Witch started having falls and wandering, the assisted living staff said she needed to be moved into skilled nursing care. Crippled Wolf made the arrangements, got her settled, and started to say goodbye for the day.

“You’re leaving me here?!” Senior Witch can have an eagle’s fierce eye when she wants to.

“For now.”

“I won’t stay!”

“What will you do?”

“I’ll walk the streets!”

Crippled Wolf and his hubby suppressed a laugh, gave her a hug, and said, “We’ll be back tomorrow.”

The story that follows picks up a few weeks later, once Senior Witch had forgotten that she’d only just changed housing.

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Walhydra’s Porch: Howling (11/7/2009, revised)

Crippled Wolf is sitting with his mother on a tree-shaded deck, beside the large pond behind the skilled nursing care center to which he moved her three weeks ago. A fountain sprays in the middle of the pond, and three large white Chinese geese float nearby, watching intently for handouts.

This is not a scene Crippled Wolf had ever wanted to play. No one ever wants it.

“Part of my problem,” he tells himself, “is that I’ve been reading scenes like this almost since I started reading on my own. Books are full of death and dying. More to the point, I’ve had close friends die. I’ve watched a friend release his last breath. I think all of that created the illusion that I am used to dealing with death.”

He glances over his right shoulder toward the gently fluttering maple leaves. Sparkles of sunlight dance through the shadows.

“Till now I could keep the concreteness of death at one remove. Reading and writing and watching have given me lots of scripts for such a scene…. But this is no scene. This is in my flesh, in my mother’s flesh.”

He looks back into his mother's dark, piercing eyes.

"I don't know if I can deal with my being here," she tells him.

"I know," he replies. "I don't know if I can either. None of us wanted this to happen."

They sit.

A blue jay calls their attention.

They sit.

The geese shriek out their horrible, grating hello.

"It's such an ugly voice," Senior Witch says, "but they're beautiful birds."

"Yes."

Crippled Wolf and Walhydra have been balancing this grief between them for two months now, pretending that they can stabilize it, when they know that in reality each next moment changes the outer and inner forces at work.

"How can you just sit there?" Walhydra demands.

"How can I not? My human self cries out to change what is happening, to turn back the clock. I curl into a ball at night, crying for my mother, and then I howl when I remember that she cannot come to comfort me. Yet nothing changes what is happening. My animal self knows just to watch and wait."

"I hate it!"

Crippled Wolf nuzzles up against Walhydra. "Grouchy old lady."

"Articulate grouchy old lady," she says, sadly.

"There is that."

“Timber wolf howling (cropped),” by Fool4myCanon (4/28/2019).

A knock-knock to Crippled Wolf's left.

"Oh, look!" he says to his mother. "A woodpecker! See?"

"Yes. I see him!"

They sit.

Then, after a long pause, Senior Witch says, “Look,” pointing behind him to the sparkle in the maple leaves.

He knows that, somehow, he needs to invite Death into the conversations he is having with his mother. He needs to do this while she is still lucid enough to talk about it…or at least to think about it.

It’s not a matter of what they should say to each other on the subject. It’s just that Death needs to be available in the conversation.

“I’m remembering…,” he begins. “I’m remembering when you used to have long distance calls with your mother during her last years.”

“Yes,” Senior Witch says, brightening a bit. “We used to talk on Sunday afternoons.”

“Yes, I remember.”

They sit.

She notices a spent yellow balloon, caught in the low branches over the pond.

“Grandma didn’t like moving to nursing care, either,” Crippled Wolf ventures.

“No.”

“She was angry about it.”

“Yes.”

They sit.

They notice other things. All of this time, they have been holding hands.

They hold each other’s eyes for a long time.

She doesn’t nod, but something flickers in her eyes, as if she were nodding.

And so it is.

Blessèd Be.

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Image source:

“Timber wolf howling (cropped),” by Fool4myCanon on Flickr (4/28/2019) [CC BY 2.0 – Attribution 2.0 Generic].