Tallulah - Robert Walton (mystery books to read TXT) 📗

Tallulah

Tallulah Bankhead – sassy, cigarette dangling from lazy fingers, jaded and worldly-wise – was my mother’s girlhood ideal. Mom never came close to becoming a Bohemian Tallulah, however. Tobacco? A bit of bourbon? Yes. But Mom possessed an adamantine sense of right and wrong, a diamond clear sense of propriety.
In August of 1987 my mother's affinity for Tallulah was very far in the back of my mind. The challenges of family camping in Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Park required my wife and me to stay on duty. Our sons Jeremy (9) and Jonathan (4) were endlessly active and always capable of instant disaster. The Cedar Grove campground is a fine, shady place on a hot afternoon. In that peaceful pause after lunch, a ranger approached our campsite and asked for me. Polite and official, he quickly told me that I there was a family emergency. He gave me a phone number. It was my Mom's.
When I got through, my brother Marty answered. He could offer few details except that our Mom was very ill and getting worse. He urged me to join him at Mom's home in Long Beach. I did.
I did - after hurried packing of camping gear, after a two hundred mile drive to our central California home, after a three hundred mile drive to Southern California. The front door of 5313 Rosebay opened as I approached it and my brother stepped out. Troubles clouded his normally cheerful face. We immediately went in to see Mom.
Tallulah greeted me with her shining smile and a hug, but she was in bed and could not rise. An hour or so later, the ambulance arrived to transport her to Long Beach Memorial Hospital. As we negotiated the check-in procedures, I was amazed at the decline in Mom's condition between home and the hospital. It was as if her house had supported and nurtured her. Without it, her body surrendered.
The fine doctors and nurses at Long Beach Memorial soon gently apprised us of the fact that our mother was dying. They assessed her condition and found that she suffered from two life-threatening conditions: advanced arteriosclerosis and end-stage lung cancer. My brother and I felt shocked and betrayed. Mom's personal doctor had examined her less than two weeks before and found neither problem. She had initiated the visit and complained of foot pain and swelling. Her doctor treated her for gout.
The doctors at Long Beach Memorial spoke with us outside our Mom's room and offered us grim options. Her circulation was so impaired that she faced death within hours if nothing was done. They could attempt a risky angioplasty on the blocked artery in Mom's left leg or they could amputate her leg at the hip. Marty and I were in instant agreement. We asked them to try the angioplasty. They did. It worked. She would keep her leg and live for a while longer.
Mom was not casual about her health care. However, her personal physician of thirty years had retired in 1984. She'd taken friends' recommendations and begun visiting a new doctor. She was old-fashioned and trusted any doctor next to God almighty. This time, her trust was misplaced.
Mom was much more comfortable once her leg's circulation was restored. The terminal cancer caused her no pain. We had quiet, enjoyable bedside conversations of shared friends, shared good times. I was surprised and humbled as Mom came to terms with her life. Her personal learning curve in her last days was significant, though forgiving and wise. Her final days enriched us all.
I saw her for the last time early on a Sunday afternoon. I planned to drive home, take care of family and professional obligations and then return in a few days. She was supportive of this move and cheerful when I left her.
I drove up Highway 5 and turned left on Highway 146. Among the clouds of brown dust, the oil fields and dead weeds, I suddenly broke into tears. I pulled to the side of the rode and cried. Mom had died. A later phone call only confirmed what I already knew.
As my tears dried in that hot, bleak place, I felt the weight and truth of an old saying: no man is grown until his mother dies.
Tallulah had thought it unladylike to pass on with her sons present. She waited to be alone to die.

Publication Date: 02-20-2010

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