I came to be with Mama after her first stroke. Her right side had been affected; when she tried to talk, her cheeks and lips were motionless, and the extreme effort exerted by the muscles on the left side pulled the words out of a corner of her mouth. I would watch her forming words, realizing they emanated from some foggy recess deep within her mind, would watch her rolling them around on her tongue until she could push them out. Although I had the annoying habit of finishing people's sentences, I would wait on Mama and feel her struggles as my own.
Mama's eyes were the brightest part about her in those days; when she would turn them on me, they searched into the shadow of my own, finding there pain and pity. Proud as Mama had been, she could not tolerate pity. The circle of her life was coming roundabout: she had traveled its circumference, enjoyed there the sweep of childhood, adulthood, motherhood; she had walked the radii, those fleshly outpokings of herself who chortled, babbled, then clothed themselves in thousands of words-words that hung on doubt, hunger, anger, fear, confusion, passion, despair, love-and she found herself now withdrawing into the circle of self, retreating silently into a shadowy and fragmented past, trying to piece it together into some whole that would reveal a meaning for it all. Sitting there on the old sofa, huddled up inside herself, she became more and more oblivious to the meaningless chatter and gestures around her. She refused petty squabbles and the childish call to take sides. Only once did I see her really jarred into response, "Y' all are makin' me so nervous I can't stand it," this occasioned by a religious discussion between Daddy and my older brother Arlon. Arlon had been an itinerant Church of God of Prophecy preacher, or "holiness preach'r" as Daddy and his church of relatives dubbed him. Together, Daddy and Arlon would point, counterpoint in continually rising voices. It was probably the raised voices and not the subject matter that had bothered Mama. Anyway, after she spoke, the room became suddenly, guiltily quiet.
In time, therapy restored some muscles tone, and Mama's words no longer slurred or hissed, her tongue turning them loose more easily, less wind being required to push them out. She still chose to stay housed up inside herself, reading facial expressions, listening, hearing more than she indicated, but continuing an active withdrawal. When she spoke, it was without any special profundity, a nod of the head to some question, a request for medicine, an indication she needed help getting to the chamber pot in a back bedroom. This dependence more than anything else bothered her now. She would apologize to whoever helped her settle onto the pot or helped her clean herself and pull her pants up afterward, "Nev'r thought I'd hav' t' hav' somebody pull up my pants." I sensed how hard it must be for her. Shed always maintained a body-privacy and meticulous cleanliness. On those times when Mama did talk, she reassure us kids, "Yo're t' best kids a mama could hav'." Her conversation became a staccato punctuation of an endless quiet.
On this particular afternoon, I had been watching Mama for some time reading a Reader's Digest article, its large print held in her trembling hands a few inches from her eyes. I had peeped at the title and knew the article was about some man who had suffered a cardiac arrest, had been clinically dead for several minutes, and then had revived. Familiar with the type, I knew it would discuss the spirit hovering outside the body and observing it as a stranger, that there would be shadowy tunnels or halls, that a light or some divine presence would be perceived at the end of the journey. Mama remained quiet after she had finished the article, the book laid carefully at her side. Slowly, painfully, she pulled her feet onto the couch, curled up fetal-like in her favorite resting position, and fell asleep, her mouth dropping open as her head tilted down and forward.
As a child, Laura I'd heard my brother Arlon preach once or twice. His Bible was dog-eared and scribbled on in entirety. Laura had often observed him reading it for two or three hours at a time. And once, walking in an early twilight, she had heard his voice plaintively, rising almost into a wail, addressing God; walking away from it, the drone followed Laura hauntingly. He was still at it when she returned from her own communion.
Preaching, Arlon pulled his neck out-turtle fashion-of a stiffly starched white shirt that in the church's dim lights didn't show the soft yellow stains of bleached-out perspiration. His Bible in one outstretched hand would be pulled to him as he read a verse, pushed out as he expounded upon its significance. "I know som' o' ya don't believe in God; you go out fightin', drinkin', runnin' 'round-'horing in t' ol' devil's world. Let me tell ya," a stubby forefinger pointing out the most remiss in the back pews, "a day of judgment is comin'-an' only them that's bin saved, sanctified, and fill'd with t' Holy Ghost are gonna stand by t' Lamb of God, Amen, brothers, Amen?" A chorus of amens resounded. By the end of the service, usually 10:30 or 11:00 that night, the fervored zeal of the sanctified would be spinning itself out in a dizzying dance around the pews, on the pews, and in the floor. Teenagers found this a regular Friday night entertainment and would sit on the back pews, the bolder girls wearing lipstick, sporting some forbidden jewelry, and cuddling up in a favored boy's arms as far as propriety would allow. If it became too hot in church, the teenagers would slip out the side door and loiter in the shadows of their cars, there discussing how they'd seen Sister Moore's panties when she lay in the floor, convulsed by the Holy Spirit. The boys would snicker, "Giv' 'er more of the Spirit, Lord; O set that woman free."
Mama, stirring and pulling slowly out of sleep, broke into my reveries. "I jest can't help fallin' 'sleep. I feel so tard sometimes."
"You probably need the rest, Mama," I replied.
"Ain't ever'day ya git here t' visit. Seems t' least I can do is stay awake."
In minutes, Mama was fully awake and staring at the television screen. Daddy stretched sleepily in the recliner; I resumed rocking, flipping through an old TV Guide.
"Laura, ya believe in life aft'r death?"
Startled at being addressed when I thought Mama was deeply into Edge of Night, I caught her eyes looking out at me almost pleadingly.
"I don't know, Mama. I'm not sure what I believe," then more thoughtfully, "I guess I believe there's something. I just don't think we can understand or explain it."
Daddy pulled his feet to the recliner, pushed into a more erect position, "I jest can't help believin' there's life somehow. You kill a squirrel and eat it, and it becomes part of you. You carry it around inside you."
I didn't say to Daddy what I was thinking&ldots; that the squirrel got shit out, too.
Mama held out the Reader's Digest to me, "Have ya read this?"	 I had not read that particular article, but I nodded yes anyway.
"What 'y' think?"
I ran my hand slowly through my hair, perplexed, hesitant, wondering what it was Mama wanted to hear. What should I say? Then it came, Mama wanted to know what she really thought.
"Well, Mama, I guess I feel it takes a while to die. What's he's talking about may just be part of the process. I can't really trust that kind of report. He didn't die-not fully, completely-anyway..." I hesitated, hoping Mama would say something, anything.
Whatever she had wanted, she had already retreated, or at least partially. Daddy came to the rescue, "Somehow or another, I jest believe t' Bible's right. There really is a heaven."
That didn't sound like Daddy's usual dogma. "There may be," she conceded. "I just find it difficult to talk about. We know so little about what life means, and what goes on after life is even harder to understand." I joined Mama watching the last minutes of Edge of Night. Daddy slumped back into a half-awake posture. I found myself thinking about a story I had read, about Ivan Illych and how he had screamed for three days prior to his death, had seen a light and uttered his final words, "Death is finished." I thought, too, of other accounts of dying people, of the many stories and legends I'd heard here in the hills and of all the times Mama had read to me from the Bible.
Some years ago, Mama joined the Church of Christ where Daddy went, had gone for years. She'd asked me then, haltingly, "What' d' ya think, Laura, 'bout my joinin' your daddy's church?"
I shrugged, "It's what's in your heart that counts, Mama. I think you can find God in any church."
She finished, "I guess I jest wanted yo're daddy and me going t' church together."
Mama is buried at that church now. Mama and Daddy picked out a rock and placed it at their plot some months after Mama had asked me about joining his church. Daddy didn't want to pick out a rock, said "it seemed like rushin' Death a little bit" but he relented in the face of Mama's continuing insistence. He told me after Mama was buried, "I'm glad now we did it; I was glad t' hav' it in place wit' 'er name on it." He didn't mention that the gray, polished granite, adorned with interlocked wedding bands and marriage dates, also had his name on it.
Mama had started thinking about death some time after that first stroke, and buying a rock and putting it in place was just one of the finishing-up details. She would tell the kids, "I don't hav' long left in this ol' world," then grow silent as she noticed our resistance. Still, we had to be prepared. As I look back, I wish I had been less afraid to talk to Mama about dying. What kept me from it was facing death in myself. As it was, Mama acquiesced to going quietly, passively, in the way that she had watched others before her die. Enough of Mama lives on in me, though, to make me realize that a pain, rage, and loneliness thundered inside Mama, and being unable to fend it off, she met it head-on, alone.
I remembered a sultry August night when I had attended a revival with Mama. In the face of Daddy's protests, Mama hurried through her chores, getting them done early, tidied up the house, set supper on the table. Then she made us kids eat early, scrubbed us into a rosy innocence, and dressed us in our Sunday best. I felt special that night sitting next to Mama, who smelled clean and perfumed. We kids would sometimes fall asleep in the long services only to be jarred awake with the singing, whooping, hand-clapping and praying that marked the end of the service. I looked up that night, with a child's comprehension, into Mama's tearful eyes. When a call to the altar was made, Mama asked us to wait on her and made her way down the aisle. I didn't understand why Mama was crying or what all the hands laid on her meant. Crying was something Mama didn't often do, and when she did, we girls would cuddle up to her, half comforting, half guilty. I thought maybe somebody had hurt Mama. When she returned to the pew, she was quiet, subdued. The preacher who had taken us to church drove is back up the dark, wooded road. I listened sleepily to him tell Mama to be sure and read her Bible and pray, and wondered why he was telling her that Mama always read her Bible, and she read it to us kids at night.
Daddy grumbled out sleepily when we pushed open the front door, "It's 'bout time y' git here. Don't see why them meetin's hav' t' go on all night."
We kids fell sleepily into bed.
The night Mama died, I couldn't sleep. A dialog kept going through my mind. I'd cry then hear Mama's voice, "Now, Laura, you made a promise."
"Yes, I know, Mama. I said this one was between you and God, that I would try to accept whatever you decided."
That stopped the tears for minutes, but they would well up again, and I would be reprimanded again by the same gentle tones.
After Mama's death, the dialog in my head went on for days, making me think at times I had become crazier than Aunt Elly. I talked with Mama, and Mama talked with me. Mama told me about death and dying-but mostly about living. She said she would always be there for me when I needed her, that with time I would need her less.
"T' dead are jest as close t' ya as ya let 'em be," Mama said. "Can't tell y' what it's really like, not in words. Ya'd jest hav' t' be here."
Mama's presence bathed me, ran through me-and I felt her more intimately and closely than I'd ever known her in life. I was shocked, startled, in the presence of death. It wasn't what I had expected. I was comforted. I was told to get back to living, "T' girls need ya." The words came slowly, sometimes haltingly, with a static, as if Mama was feeling her way through a strangeness. The more metaphysical or religious my questions to Mama, the more fumbling she would reply. She would remind me again quietly, "Ya can't understand it all now; words can't hold it."
In time, I grew more content in Mama's silent presence, learning not to probe or press, waiting for a gentle smile, some little nudge into the past, a reprimand for an impatient response to a child, a reminder to love more my life and the people around me. Words became less and less necessary. But in the long days of adjustment that followed Mama's death, I felt her absence cut into the space and time of my own body-as sharply as the whippoorwill's call cut through the hills at night--and I would quicken, quiver, and withdraw a little bit more into a silence both inside me and enveloping me.