The Green Light Inn

Green Light Inn

Damn, it's still here. The namesake green light blinked to catch the attention of passing traffic, but with Interstate 81 carrying most of the North South traffic in the Shenandoah Valley, US 11, and the smaller state and county roads mostly served as feeders carrying local farmers and other residents to settlements and villages never heard of by the long haulers driving on the Interstate down in the valley. The Green Light Inn sat on one of those feeder roads leading to the village of Ingersol in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

We were several miles off the Interstate looking for the place Mom had spent her honeymoon over fifty years ago. Today was her anniversary, and weeks ago while visiting her in her memory loss facility in Winchester, during a period of lucidity, she had told me she wanted to return to the Green Light Inn as her anniversary present. So, here we were.

I expected to find an empty lot or a pile of crumbling termite riddled collapsed timber, but the Green Light Inn, though log cabinish looking, was lit up and open for business with their sign flashing “Vacancy.”

I looked over at my Mom in the passenger seat of my eleven year old Toyota Avalon.

Her eyes, which more and more often looked confused as Alzheimer's encroached further and further into her memories, looked as bright and excited as a child waking to a pile of presents under a Christmas tree. “Come on, let's see if they've got a room for us,” I said.

I was hoping for a double queen room, but the best they could do was give us a room with a queen and a single. They had no restaurant, but informed me that there were sandwiches at a gas station a mile further up the road at Ingersol. Luckily I had anticipated this and had picnic sandwiches and drinks in a Safeway bag in the backseat.

Our room opened to the gravel parking lot. A walkway ran from the office past all eight rooms, and in front of the walkway was a four foot wide flower bed filled with marigolds, primroses and low trimmed non-blooming azaleas. I parked in front of room 8, and we went inside with our overnight clothes, Mom’s in a small roll-on suitcase and mine in an old leather briefcase I use for overnight stops.

The room reminded me of the fifties, blonde furniture, an electric clock glued to a nightstand, a coffee pot, and an 18 inch TV. I was glad to see it wasn’t analog. A tubbed bathroom, and a radio which looked like it might still use vacuum tubes rounded out it’s amenities. But the best thing of all, it was really clean and had fresh fluffy towels and clean sheets covering new comfortable mattresses.

At Mom’s request, we sat in patio chairs in front of the window to our room, mostly silent as I ate a corn beef sandwich and mom ate an egg salad sandwich, accompanied by a bottle of Barefoot Rose wine, while we watched a herd of sheep on the hillside across the way and a lone bull in a fenced pasture next to the sheep. The bull was so large I first thought it was a buffalo. Mom reached over and took my hand in hers for the longest time, and I too was transported back in time, to a time when I was safely in the care of my mother.

When we both started nodding and the Inn was otherwise asleep, I helped her back into our room, and she lay, still fully clothed, across her bed, only her shoes removed. The last thing she said to me before succumbing to sleep, was, “Thank you, William. It was wonderful.”

I lay on my twin bed reflecting to myself, “She thinks I’m Dad. Good!”

The next morning I woke up. Mom didn’t. She lay fully clothed on the bed as if she were expecting company, a contented smile on her face.

After my tears stopped. I started calling family and making arrangements.