Packages in the Mail

The journey home at the end of a long day of productive work is always a reward in itself. Thankfully, I lived close enough to the school where I taught, that I could walk home every day. After a stressful day of making a thousand instant decisions for a hundred and sixty hormonal teenagers, trust me, physical activity is a welcome relief.

It was a nice spring day as I made my way down the sidewalk of my neighborhood. It was still early, so most people were still at work, meaning I had a quiet and peaceful walk most days. I passed the mailman, a typical occurrence on my daily routine. That meant he had already dropped off my mail, so I started to wonder if I would have anything beyond the typical junk mail flyers and ads that simply ended up in the recycling bin these days. Sure enough, as I turned the corner, I could see my front porch and sitting upon it was a small stack of packages.

You could see the signature smiles on the side of the boxes even from here. My order had come in, and I tried to remember what I had ordered. It was funny, I ordered so many items based on the free two-day delivery, that I often forgot what was coming on any particular day. As I was attempting to recall everything I had ordered, I got closer and realized one box was different.

There was a small package, not much larger than a box of breakfast bars, and it was wrapped in plain brown packing paper. The image of that package instantly sent me into a state of nostalgia. It was almost my birthday, and I remembered watching the mail every year from as early as I could remember for a package just like that.

My grandmother, bless her soul, always sent me a gift each and every birthday and it was always wrapped in similar plain brown paper with my name and address hand-written in her flowing, signature handwriting. Grams had amazing handwriting! As I picked up the box, my heart skipped a beat. It wasn’t for me… it was for my mother!

My eyes teared up as I was suddenly thrown back in time almost two months to that fateful day. I had been walking home, much like today, when my phone rang. I picked it up to see a mysterious number and I almost ignored it. But as I was simply walking home with nothing particular on my mind, I decided to answer it.

“Is this Dana Lee?” It was a man’s voice, calm, professional.

“Yes, who is this?”

“This is officer Barnes, from the police department. I’m at the county hospital. There’s been an accident. You should get here as soon as you can. Your mother’s been injured.”

My heart raced instantly, “Oh Jesus!” I started running to my house and my car, “I’m coming. What happened?”

“She’s hurt, badly. I think you will want to see her.”

I could tell by the way he said it, the words he had chosen, she might not make it. I don’t remember anything else from that conversation, nor even when I ended the call and put my phone away. But I do remember jumping in my car and fumbling to get it started as I dropped the keys twice. I took a calming breath and looked at myself in the rear-view mirror, “Relax Dana. You can’t do anything if you panic.”

I somehow managed to make it safely to the hospital. I don’t remember parking, but I do remember walking into the emergency room. A friendly Hispanic nurse greeted me, “Can I help you?”

“I need to see Rachel Lee. I’m her daughter.”

The look that washed over her face, I will never forget it. She quickly set down her clipboard and motioned to the door. “Come with me!” She was walking rapidly, and I found I had to focus on my feet just to keep up with her. She was in a hurry. When she walked into the patient room and motioned to my mother, I knew why.

At first, all I saw was bandages. My mother’s head was almost completely wrapped in bandages, her neck was in a brace, and her arms were all wrapped and immobilized by her sides. I closed the distance rapidly and looked between the bandages to find her eyes. They were closed. I found one hand and clenched it as I leaned in close to see her, “Mom?”

Her eyes opened and conveyed to me in an instant the shocking truth – she knew. She was in misery. Her eyes full of tears told me she was in pain. But beyond the pain, I saw something else – acceptance. There was a calm stoicism to her demeanor that spoke to me. She knew she was dying.

And then I saw something else. Her eyes couldn’t focus on me. I knew that look, I had seen it too many times before. I took a deep breath and sighed. Then I turned to the nurse. “How did it happen?”

“The officer who accompanied the ambulance said she hit a tree. They think she was drunk.”

I nodded, confirming the suspicion. “She is. Was anyone else hurt?”

“No, just her, just the tree and her car.”

“Thank God,” I whispered, and turned back to look at my mother as the nurse continued talking.

“We gave her something for the pain.”

“Thank you. I’ll stay with her as long as I can. She has a DNR on file.”

“I understand.” The nurse left the room after adjusting some of the equipment. I barely heard her footsteps when she walked away.

I pulled up a chair and sat down beside my broken mother. I clenched her hand warmly and tried my best to hide the tears. I wanted to be strong for her in her last moments, however long they lasted.

“Oh mom, what did you do?”

Her eyes teared up. She couldn’t speak, but she could look at me. Her eyes, at that moment, they conveyed the full truth. She knew she hurt me. She may not have hurt anyone else when she wrapped her car around that tree, but she always hurt me when she got drunk.

I can still remember the nightly ritual while I was growing up. Nearly every single night from the time I can remember, my mother got drunk at home. I knew well the smell of scotch even as a child. It was depressing to me to think back upon this part of my life, but it was how I grew up.

My mother was an amazing woman, she did crossword puzzles in ink and got them right the first time. She was a whiz with vocabulary, spelling, and her handwriting was as perfect as my grandmother’s. She was also a writer when she was young, always getting top marks on papers and essays. This she did pass on to me. But she gave all of that up when she focused on being a housewife and raised me while she took care of the house for my father. I always felt she sold herself short doing that, but she claimed to be happy.

A full drink in her hand every night by six o’clock told me otherwise.

Sadly, one of the strongest memories I have is of her sitting in the corner of the kitchen, bracing herself between two cabinets so she didn’t fall down. Her right hand tentatively bounced around the counter as her eyes couldn’t focus on the glass to find it on the first attempt. Eventually, she found her reward and lifted the scotch to her lips. I remember hearing the clink of the ice cubes as she slurped it down then practically slammed the glass down. Sometimes she broke the glass in her carelessness. She just got another glass, we had boxes of them ready to go for just that reason.

But, even if she didn’t break the glass, she stumbled and had to grasp the counter-top to just maintain her position. Often, no later than seven, she would miss the counter-top and fall to the floor. Eventually she would find herself unable to lift herself back up. So, I learned how to lift her and carry her to bed.

From my early teenage years, I got in the habit of carrying my own drunken mother into her bedroom and helping her get to sleep. That’s what I did. Other kids were at soccer or baseball practice, playing an instrument, growing their minds or muscles. Me, I was helping my drunk mother get safely to bed.

As I held her hand in that hospital bed and watched her prepare to leave the world, I was reminded of all those nights. I always helped her so she could rest. I was essentially doing that again that night. Only this time, she wouldn’t be waking up.

I cried.

I was there no more than an hour when her fingers finally lost their hold on my hand. I looked up to her eyes and simply saw nothing. No magic, no fear, nothing. I knew it instantly. “Goodbye mom,” I whispered.

I turned to the monitors and confirmed my conclusion. The normally bouncy ECG signal was just a line, sweeping left to right on the screen. The place where the pulse would display was simply blank. There was a silent but flashing alarm in the corner. I assume the nurse had silenced everything when I reminded them all of the DNR.

I turned back to face my mother and squeezed her hand once more, then I turned and left the room to find a nurse to take care of things.

That was two months ago.

As I held the package in my hands with her name on it, I wondered what it was. I had set her up on one of those crowdfunding apps where you can buy all kinds of new and unique things, so maybe she had purchased another phone stand, or something for her plants. I really had no idea what she could have purchased.

My fingers slid under the paper and peeled it off, “Let’s see what your last purchase was, mom.”

As I pulled the wrapping off, I felt a smooth and slick box that reminded me of the kind of box many of my games came in. Sure enough, when I opened it, it was just such a box, but this one was different. It wasn’t a game. In big, fancy letters across the top it proclaimed itself as “The Writers Deck of Inspiration.”

I opened it as fast as I could understanding what it was. Inside there were two decks of cards. One deck was a list of traits for characters in my stories. The other deck was for random places, weather, lighting, and other mood characteristics. The decks were designed to help aspiring writers, like myself, to create vivid people, places, and scenes.

I had been trying my hand at writing short stories and my mother knew. She had bought this for me for my upcoming birthday, and I loved it. I held the cards tight to my chest and looked up to the sky, “Thanks mom!”