Until I Say Good-Bye (13 page)

My toes had no muscles. Putting on shoes could curl them under my foot, causing considerable pain when I walked.

“No.”

Once again, John negotiated me into the long black coat, bum arm first. “Thumb bent backward!” I said. I didn't have the strength to push it through the sleeve myself.

And finally a black hat. “Flower not fully forward, please. Looks like I have a bunch of broccoli on my forehead.”

On the way to dinner, I tripped and fell, tearing a hole in my stockings.

“Wanna go back to the room and change?” John said.

“No. I just want to eat and enjoy.”

And there, in a quiet corner of the hotel restaurant, we did.

We feasted on five courses, each with its own wine, laughing at the English translations—“flap mushrooms”—looking back at the menu descriptions, tasting for every ingredient described.

The walnut polenta and ginger of the carrot soup.

The green mussel inside ravioli.

The
mangalica
pork, from a Hungarian pig with twice the flavor of regular pork.

The marzipan and raspberry gelatin of the dessert tray.

We savored each sip—red, white, pink, dry, sweet.

We talked of the things and people we had to be thankful for. We laughed at how on that same night twenty years ago, after we married, we both had said, “What the hell did we just do?”

We talked of how going abroad had catapulted us into life together and what good partners we had made.

The waiter asked if he could go ahead and bring the check, as the restaurant was closing.

We ended with a glass of fine champagne.

As we walked out, I leaned heavily on John, knowing there was no way I could make it back to the room on my own.

Finally there, he undressed me, piece by piece, and carried me to bed.

The Cruise

March

My Sister Steph

T
he cruise ship seesawed on the roiling ocean. Passengers tottered sideways, arms stretched to balance, stumbling to handrails.

I clung to my sister Steph like a koala on a tree.

It was less than three weeks since Hungary, a trip that both energized and tired me. At this point in my illness, I couldn't balance alone on terra firma. That ship, on that windy night, was like dancing on a hammock.

“What brain surgeon thought of a cruise?” Steph said.

“You, my dear.”

Sweet Steph. I think she saw my other trips and decided, Uh-uh, not for me. Steph is a homebody who doesn't like to fly.

Yukon? No. Hungary? No way. Cyprus, the trip I was planning next? That was my special thing. Steph has promised to take my children there one day, and I believe she will, white-knuckled the whole flight. But that's for after I'm gone.

For now, Stephanie and I didn't have a special thing, at least not travel-wise. We were close as kids, though rarely did our social lives intersect. And then, before ya know it, I was traveling the world, and she was married with two babies.

“I thought about what I was missing,” Stephanie says of those days when John and I were traveling in Europe and South America. She was living less than a mile from Mom's house, raising two kids. “But that's not me. I'm a nurturer. I like being a mom. And I'm good at it.”

She's right. Just ask her two fabulous boys, William and Stephen. Her second husband, Don, is the happiest man I know.

And her first husband, Bill, still adores her.

Ask my children. When I began struggling with walking after the Yukon, Aunt Stephanie started coming over every day after her job teaching respiratory therapy at a local college.

Sitting in the backyard, sipping some girlie drink. (But only sipping; Stephanie has the alcohol tolerance of a mosquito.) Watching my kids. Talking about Mom, which helped us love her more. That was our thing.

So for our journey together, Stephanie chose the simplest trip possible. She treated me to a cruise that left port a few miles from our home. It was our first trip together as adults.

I had no clue she had never been on a cruise.

“I envisioned umbrella drinks, sun, and smooth sailing,” Steph said, trying to hold us both upright. “This is a freaking nightmare!”

It was so rough, we beelined for the dining room well before dinner to minimize walking. We sat in the low leather chairs of the bar. “Let's have a drink. A brandy,” I said.

“Gosh no!” she said.

I looked over. Steph was sitting with her eyes closed, her chair bobbing with the sea.

“I'm just trying to go with it,” Steph said. “I keep telling myself it's like a hammock. Try to go with the rolls.”

“Do you get seasick?”

“I go green looking at boats.”

We sat silently awhile. An entertainer took to the mike, singing, playing guitar, joking with the audience.

“I'll go to the room for our dinner reservation card,” Steph said suddenly. And just as suddenly she staggered out, leaving me alone in the bar.

She didn't make it to the room. Her stomach bum-rushed her on the elevator. She had to pinch her lips together with her fingers to keep the rising tide down.

She made it out of the elevator, thank goodness. And ten steps away to an ashtray, where she erupted.

Some sympathetic soul handed a barf bag over her shoulder, avoiding the line of fire. Bag in hand, she stumbled down the hallway, the staff already heading toward the ashtray with vacuums and towels.

She heard a man upchucking and crying two cabins away. “Man up, will ya?” she muttered.

She crashed onto the bed and closed her eyes. Each time she opened them, she vomited.

She panicked at the thought of me stranded at the bar, knowing there was no way I could walk on my own, or even push myself out of the chair.

She crawled to the door. Opened it. Called out. Our steward, an Indonesian man named Budi, answered.

“Sister. Susan. Bar. Needs help,” Stephanie said, pausing to quell the queasiness. “Can't walk. Black pants. Poncho.”

“Poncho? What's a poncho?” a bewildered Budi said.

“Like a cape. Superman.”

Budi looked more bewildered.

“Ponytail. Go!”

She sent Budi with my dinner card and an antinausea pill.

By this time, I knew she was sick. For fifteen minutes, I had struggled to rise on my own from the low chair, stumbling back time and again.

“Cut her off!” hollered the entertainer.

Good thing I can't lift my middle fingers, I thought, else that entertainer would be getting a two-fisted bird. I had not had a drop to drink.

But the music was so loud, I couldn't project my voice enough to ask for help. I slumped back, accepting my fate. What will be, will be.

Eventually, an Asian ship employee approached and handed me a pill. Budi.

Budi gestured as if vomiting. I understood. Stephanie was down for the count.

This is gonna be interesting, I thought.

I placed Budi's hand on my shoulder, to signal I needed help standing. He fumbled with how to hold me, nearly knocking me over when he placed his hand across my lower back and pushed forward.

“Just get a wheelchair!” called out another employee.

At the cabin, Steph answered the door, hunched over, a green ghost. “Thank goodness you're here,” she said.

We both lay on the bottom bunk, neither able to climb the ladder to the top. Steph's legs quivered as she lay, eyes closed, trying not to vomit again.

“There is water here. Drink some,” I said.

“I can't keep it down. Want me to take your shoes and braces off?”

“No,” I said. “Just rest.”

We lay with our eyes closed, rocked back and forth by the ocean, listening to the waves crashing aside the ship, and fell asleep.

The next morning, we awoke to stillness—the ship had docked in Freeport, the Bahamas, a mere sixty-eight miles from home in West Palm Beach.

We stayed onboard the near-empty vessel, lingering over breakfast on white linen, the table overlooking an electric blue bay.

Steph was back to normal. She looked beautiful in the soft sunlight, the hazel of her large eyes glowing.

I was so happy with the tiny coffee cups I could easily hold. Each time the waiter poured more, Steph opened the cream and sugar for me. Oh, life's little pleasures.

She brought me waffles and eggs and fruit from the self-serve buffet. I eat at a glacial pace, the muscles of my mouth failing. Patiently, Steph waited.

The waiters finally asked us to leave. They had to prepare the table for lunch.

We changed into bathing suits and lounged around the ship. Under canopies on deck. At the pool.

We talked and talked, which is something Steph and I have rarely done before, just the two of us. No cell phones. No kids (five between us). No pets (six). No friends (hundreds). No distractions.

We cried together. Really cried.

The conversation turned to my birth mother.

Over the last couple years, as I have peeled back the layers of my own heritage, Steph has expressed nothing but support and happiness for me. And a few times, in the most tenuous way, she has said
maybe
she would look for her own birth mother.

“I so wish she would look for me,” Steph said, which broke my heart.

Now here is where you have to understand Steph's personality. You see, Steph is a hard-core addict. Her juice? Her buzz? The thing that gives her a glorious high, leaving her glowing inside?

Pleasing people.

All her life, Steph has made pleasing others more important than satisfying herself. I remember one Thanksgiving at her house, she invited a female friend who does little but annoy her and poke fun at her.

I am protective of my big sis. I could see how much the woman's nagging was hurting Steph. So I basically threw her out.

“Why the hell did you invite her?” I asked.

“Because I was afraid she might get upset if I didn't,” Steph said.

To which I am certain I gave a major eye roll.

The next Thanksgiving, Steph got a hair bolder and did not invite her friend. Rather, she asked all us family members not to drive our cars to her house so no one would know she was having a gathering and be hurt they weren't invited.

Mind you, it was Thanks-effing-giving.

In our family, we are conditioned not to talk candidly of our most trenchant emotions. Or hurts. Or fears. But that day on the ship, Steph told me one of her fears: that even mentioning her birth mother would hurt Mom and Dad.

She worried the search would be disappointing. Would she even like the lady? Would the lady even want to meet her?

The only thing Steph knows is that the woman was seventeen years old when she gave birth at Good Samaritan Medical Center in December 1964.

“A baaaaby!” Steph said with empathy.

I wanted to drop the emotional hammer on Steph and tell her my thought: that I would very much like for her to try to find her birth mother before I die, so that I might meet her and say, “You brought to life an exceptional human being who God divined my sister. And it was indeed divine. Thank you.”

But on the ship, in a rare moment of self-restraint, I did not drop that hammer.

Rather I emphasized that it was a decision for her and her alone, independent of what anyone else thought, and that she must quiet her chattering mind to make it.

Which in Steph's case is akin to asking a dog to drive.

For she has another serious addiction: the phone.

You can see her every day zipping around town in her bright red Mazda hatchback, a pretty blonde—hair wet as she hurtles from one commitment to another—yammering away on her BlackBerry.

As Dad said: “That car must run on lithium batteries. The phone has to be on for it to go.”

When a profoundly emotional thing happens, Steph's style is to call scads of people and tell them about it. Which, I've witnessed firsthand, drives her crazy.

Last year, when Mom was near death, a distraught Steph would call several dozen people and tell them Mom was bleeding out after surgery and not likely to survive. Then Mom would rally, and Steph would have to call everyone back a day later.

Mom would have another near-death experience—a bowel obstruction—and Steph would burn up the minutes once again, then have to call everyone back when she rallied again.

“Steph, stop it! You're making yourself crazy. Let's just operate on a need-to-know basis.”

On the ship, as we discussed searching for her birth mother, I suggested that she not call a host of friends and talk, talk, talk about looking for her.

“It does not matter what other people think,” I told her. “Try weighing the pros and cons alone. In peace and quiet. Listen to what your soul is saying, and not the people around you.”

That's our thing, I realize now. Something special between the two of us. The thing fully realized on that trip.

Not traveling. Not adventure.

But being there for one another, so that we may unburden our hearts. Uncrowd our minds. And hear what our souls are saying.

I
n the six months since that trip, Steph and I have grown even closer. For months now, she has helped me dress, eat, brush, sit, stand, and walk.

She flew three hours with me recently to New York City, although she is panicked by flying and had not done so in years. She knew I could not manage a restroom without her.

I am kinda like having a two-year-old again. A two-year-old who smokes a lot. And God bless Stephanie—a respiratory therapist—for lighting me up without complaint.

“Just don't tell my students,” she always says.

Not that Steph is always the most calm person I know, especially under pressure. Recently, she drove Marina and me to an appointment in my BMW, a car I bought for its keyless entry and push-button start after I could no long turn the key in the ignition of my van.

Steph drives me now, for I am no longer able. Usually, that's fine. But this time, she and Marina got out and closed their doors, forgetting where the key fob was: inside the car with me.

It was high noon on a summer day, and I was locked inside my black car with a black interior dressed in black. I couldn't reach in my pocket for the key, and couldn't lift my arms to unlock the doors. Like I said: a two-year-old.

What did Steph do? She freaked out. Tugged on the handle again and again, trying to magically open the locked door. Yelled and banged on the window. Looked around frantically for, I don't know . . . a rock to throw through the glass?

”Pipe down, missy!” I mouthed through the closed window. “Calm down! Stop!”

Poor Marina was trying to calm Stephanie, to no avail. My sister was wilting in the heat. She was so panicked, she wanted to call 911.

“Just wait,” I said. “Calm down.”

Sweat dripped in my eyes. I could not wipe it away. I focused. Scooted left in my seat, closer to the unlock button in the center of the dashboard. I leaned forward and mashed the button with my head.