Exit Laughing (9 page)

We three, an unlikely congregation, continued crying and laughing, and Nancy was getting tipsy and loose and free without even tasting the stuff. Her clear eyes and wide smile, the rasping sounds of glee (and Goose) coming from her
nose, throat, and mouth, and our free-flowing tears affirmed once again that we were inextricably connected to each other … and something much greater.

A few weeks later, Nancy was in the hospital and near death, and I was no closer to convincing her that she was headed to heaven. When we were alone in the room, which was most of the time, her ice blue eyes communicated frozen dread. If anything, Nancy seemed
more
afraid of dying than when we started our odyssey toward the light.

Days passed while I carried her impending death in my bones. I could see it, smell it, and hear it in her shallow breathing. I needed backup, so I put the photo of my dad on her bedside table. By then, her eyes had partially closed, leaving mucus-filled cloudy slits, but I believed she knew it was there.

Wedging myself next to her on the hospital bed and stroking her hair, I promised, “You are not alone; you are loved beyond measure.” She groaned. “There’s nothing to fear, Nancy.” She squeezed my hand and didn’t let go. “You’re moving toward the light, Nancy. Angels, like Sister Alicia, will guide you. Once you’re there, my dad’s going to take your hand and ask for the first dance.”

Nancy slowly tipped her head in the direction of the photo and smiled. A few days later, she died.

Not long after Nancy passed away, my ninety-four-year-old friend Marcy—the woman who had done our cooking, laundry, and babysitting from the time I was two until I got married—began her own journey toward the light. I told myself
that another dying loved one provided me with another opportunity to do my life’s work. I was tired, though, and maybe a little scared, so I decided to call the Servants of Mary and request their services for her as well.

Mother Superior summarily rejected my pleas, telling me that Marcy was ineligible. I begged. I offered to donate my Land Cruiser in return. I went to their convent, admitted I was Jewish, and prayed for their help. No way. There were too many others in line who were completely alone, and Marcy was not. She had Jocelyn, a live-in caregiver whom I’d hired a year earlier to help with shopping and cleaning. Marcy was a stickler for a spotless home and never wanted to be taken to an assisted-living facility. After her serving my family for thirty years, I figured I owed her those things.

I can’t remember a day when Marcy didn’t love and tend to me, my cats, and my dogs as if we were her own. She was the most honest person I’d ever known, not hesitating to tell me when I was acting spoiled or being messy. I appreciated her. I loved her. When homegrown chaos ensued, Marcy was always in the next room dusting furniture. Or cleaning windows. Bringing order. Bearing witness.

When she retired at age eighty-five, assisted by a generous parting gift from my father, Marcy settled comfortably into her studio apartment, filling it with new Ethan Allen furniture and covering the walls and tabletops with dozens of framed photographs of me, depicting every milestone from my third birthday through my wedding and my children’s births. Every square inch of her floral couch displayed a needlepoint pillow designed from photos of my childhood pets: Fluffy the cat,
Lady the silky terrier, Anastasia the husky. Whenever I entered her apartment, I was warmly greeted by the Ivory soap smell of Marcy and the memories she held for safekeeping.

Marcy was finally able to live a life of complete independence, which she did with great enjoyment. This diminutive rock of a woman took weekly buses to either the Santa Anita racetrack, Hollywood Park, or Del Mar. She loved to watch the horses. In her free time, she’d study the odds, knit a sweater, needlepoint a pet pillow, or do a crossword puzzle with a ferocity matched only by her cleaning and laundry skills.

After Marcy became too unsteady to navigate the city on her own, I’d visit every few weeks, often bringing my kids. Over McDonald’s Happy Meals of cheeseburgers, French fries, and diet cokes, with Lifetime movies blaring in the background, we’d pore over the stacks of photos I’d brought, removing the old ones from her corkboard and replacing them with the new. My daughter, Alex, would sit on the floor and lean against Marcy’s legs, so Marcy could brush and brush and brush her messy brown hair into smooth flowing strands of golden silk, just as she’d done when I was Alex’s age.

The series of ministrokes arrived one afternoon while we were eating Kentucky Fried Chicken. Marcy’s head slumped forward, a drop of saliva ran down her chin. More ministrokes followed, finally landing her permanently in the hospital bed. She maintained her weight from drinking Ensure and eating popsicles, ice cream, and the infrequent French fry. She had become prone to singing “OK OK ok ok ok ok OK” in response to virtually any comment I made or question I asked. How are you feeling Marcy? “OK OK ok ok ok ok OK.” Do
you want to look at pictures or see a movie? “OK OK ok ok ok ok OK.” I interpreted her mantra as a constant assurance that she really was
OK
, willing and able to make the move into the next dimension.

Her doctor suggested we contact hospice when she stopped eating and drinking altogether. Marcy was moving in and out of consciousness and, according to hospice, was actively dying of old age. Every day a different hospice volunteer told me she had hours, if not minutes, to live. One of the volunteers checked daily to determine that I had the emergency morphine at the ready. If she experienced any pain or suffering, I was to put it under her tongue. I threw myself into shepherding Marcy, wanting and needing to be there for her.

Days passed. Then more.

Weeks passed. Then a month.

“Marcy? Are you in pain? Do you need morphine?” asked a volunteer, knowing full well its hastening effects.

Her eyes stayed shut, bony fingers stroking the satin edge of her blanket, “No!”

Each hospice volunteer was more surprised than the last to see her still alive. With my prodding, she finally agreed to speak to Solomon, the hospice chaplain. (Marcy never ignored a great deal, and his services were included in the total hospice package.)

Every Friday evening, stretched to the last fiber of my last nerve, I waited for Solomon in the hall, meeting him with tears, frustration, and the question, “How much longer?”

I started wondering if she were related to Giri Bala, the Bengali yogi who had given up eating and drinking and had
existed on sunlight alone for fifty-six years. I took home the sunlight lamp I’d given her for Christmas.

The only person who seemed to be benefitting from Marcy’s slow, active demise was Jocelyn, to whom I’d given a handsome raise when I thought the end was near.

On no particular Friday, deep into the second month of her “imminent” death, Solomon and I decided to offer Marcy a white light meditation. We were going to create an aura of calm and tranquility to help her relax into her transition and usher her toward the light with a tad more oomph. The three of us joined hands and the energy flowed through us. (Although, looking back, Marcy might have been sleeping.)

Solomon’s velvety voice transported us to a beach where vast oceans of love lapped at the shores of our consciousness. The moon shone full and bright, creating a broad shimmering reflection of the path her spirit would take as it floated into the light.

“It’s nowwww tiiiime to go toward the lighttt, Marcy,” Solomon whispered.

“Yessss, Marcy, you can go toward the lightttttt,” I chimed in. “Your mother is waiting for you. My dad’s there too. Go ahead, Marcy, you have nothing to fear.” When I added, “Wait. Marcy, do you see any angels?” Solomon frowned, clearly disappointed in my timing. Nevertheless, we drifted on the gentle sea, and I sensed the presence of something infinite, beautiful, and just beyond my capacity to understand.

Marcy smacked her dry lips, and I offered her a sip of water, which, to my surprise, she accepted. Her eyes, now wide open windows to her soul, looked directly at me. “Oh Marcy!
I love you. I’m here,” I spoke into her ear, excited that we’d arrived at the pre-death-energy burst. “You’re not alone. Just let go and move toward the light.”

Marcy turned her head in my direction and stared. And then, with a voice as clear and huge as the starry midnight sky, she said, “
You
go toward the light!” With that, she closed her eyes and sang the most melodic “OK ok ok OK” I’d ever heard.

Solomon smiled, packed his bag, and made for the door, saying, “I’ll see you next week.”

Jocelyn brought out her rosary and worked it hard.

I kissed Marcy’s forehead and went home for the night. Trailing after me was her voice: “See you later, alligator, OK ok ok.”

She died the next week, on an afternoon when I’d left her side to take my kids to a movie. Jocelyn said she went quietly. That night, I tossed and turned and cried and wondered what, exactly, I’d been doing for the past two years, and how her transition had gone without me.

Per her instructions, Marcy was cremated. I chose a rosewood urn because it was sturdy and premium, just like she was. I kept the urn in my closet, however, and seeing it peek out from behind my clothes was unsettling. I moved it to the downstairs coat closet, but she deserved better.

One summer afternoon, I took Marcy’s remains and drove up the coast to a valley I knew and loved. Although she’d never been there, she would have appreciated the green grass, frolicking horses, orange groves, and long shadows. I hiked up a
hill and found the perfect place, where there were no people and the air smelled of orange blossoms.

“Goodbye, Marcy, I love you,” I said. “Thank you for taking such good care of me and my pets.” I opened the urn and flung its contents off the hill. A sudden wind blew, and Marcy was flung right back at me, her remains sticking on my toenails and leaving a chalky film on my legs. She even got on my teeth. This was not the inseparability I was hoping for.

I used my sweater to wipe Marcy off of me, but created an even creepier mess. And if there was one thing Marcy
hated
, it was a mess. I had to get out of there.

The ashes scrunched between my toes as I cried my way down the steep trail. I couldn’t remember feeling more alone.

“Up. Look up,” I heard or thought I heard. And when I did look up, I saw what I’d been missing. The mountains were awash with pinks, blues, and purples, and a single beam of sunlight stretched out from behind a hill, spreading across the entire valley of orange groves.

OK OK ok ok ok OK.

Molly is my grandmother. Her hair is tinted mauve, and she wears marble beads from Connemara over cashmere twinsets. At seventy-seven, she’s a tiny scrap of a woman, and this bothers her, so you’ll rarely see her out of heels made by Clarks or Bally. And you’ll never catch her at a wedding, a funeral, or Sunday mass without a toque, which makes up for the extra twelve inches she wishes she had.

The toque she wears for today’s occasion is much like an ice cream cone. It’s a complication of pleats, folds, and tucks, and calls for no sudden movement. It requires a calculated turn of the head, and a steady step of the foot, because if it fell off, Oona McNally would see it was stuffed to the gills with newspaper.

Oona is as tall as a rod, and as thin as a rail, and she is joining us for Sunday dinner. We’re in a room Molly calls the parlor, and Oona is busy admiring this and verifying that. “A bog oak table such as yours, Molly, is a rare commodity indeed,” she says.

She runs the flat of her hand over the tablecloth, seeing to any irregularities. “Is it made of linen?” she wants to know.

“It’s the purest damask,” says Molly, who is busy setting glasses the size of thimbles on a silver tray. “Would ye both like a drop of sherry?”

“Is it a Harvey’s Bristol Cream?” asks Oona.

“Of course it is,” says Molly. “Take your glass.”

We raise the pure Waterford crystal, and they welcome me to Cloonfree and Carrie looks well, says Oona, and isn’t she the spitting image of her Aunt Brona?

Molly shakes her head. “She’s more like her Aunt Josie.”

And so the debate goes on, until they both come to the conclusion there’s no resemblance to the Keagans at all. I’m more like my father.

My visits to Ireland are restricted to the vicinity of Cloonfree, because we rarely leave the house. I’m updated on the progress of the latest family feud, and made aware of all the atrocities, and scandals, and indignities involved. Then I must listen to tales from the past that are interwoven with rumor, belief, and suspicion, which have a tendency to meander and digress.

And then there are the visits from the neighbors, and the passersby, and the postmistress, and the bartender, and the priest, and the nun, and they all become a confusion of surnames in the end, but I must be reacquainted with them all. And I must meet new friends, and old friends, and those I missed last time, such as Oona McNally, who hails from Strokestown, only a short walk from Cloonfree.

“Well, it’s lovely to have Carrie home,” Molly tells her. “I wondered had she forgotten me.”

Oona accepts the offer of a second sherry.
“Sláinte,”
she says. Then she frowns. “Do you have a stiff neck, Molly? God, I hate a stiff neck. The pain can be desperate.”

“I have no stiff neck,” says Molly. Her head and toque
move as one as she turns to face me. “Help me carry in the dinner,” she says.

And so we make journeys to and fro, while Molly tells Oona to set out the Royal Doulton, and to mind she doesn’t chip any of it in the process.

And as we serve ourselves to roast beef, cabbage, carrots, and potatoes, I’m treated to a conversation heavy with nostalgia and melancholy, which soon evolves into a recollection of who died, and when, and what did they die of? And did they end up buried in Kildollogue or Kilglass? In Tulsk or Tarmonbarry? And whatever happened to the Cadogans, the Breens, or the Brogans? They moved to England, says Molly, and America, and County Antrim, and County Kildare.