All Things Must Pass pt.1

 Week Fifteen: All Things Must Pass pt.1

Now the darkness only stays at nighttime

In the morning it will fade away

Daylight is good at arriving at the right time

It’s not always gonna be this gray.

All things must pass

All things must pass away

–George Harrison, All Things Must Pass from the album All Things Must Pass

When my mother died in 1999 I was not ready.

On that day my brother’s wife called me, which was unprecedented. I remember her telling me to report to the local hospital as soon as possible, and “It’s not good.”

My mother had been a registered nurse, and although she was retired she never stopped being one. She could handle trauma. I guess while working as an industrial nurse at ARMCO Steel Corporation in Baltimore City for a very long time she had seen it all. In fact, I worked there one summer. I think working there encouraged me to finish my college education. It was May of 1973. My young wife and I had only been married for four months. I had just finished my second semester at Salisbury State College, which had not gone well at all. I considered dropping out and getting a real job to support a family that was about to increase by one-third in August. 

My mother got me a position as a grinder in the steel mill. In case you don’t know what that is, allow me to briefly describe it. An experienced grinder was expected to maneuver one ton bars of steel onto a huge workbench with the assistance of a crane operator, who responded to hand signals (as it was incredibly loud in the shop.) The grinder would use a massive grinding wheel, which was suspended from a cable as he (they were all men) removed layers of slag from the four sides of the bar. As the wheel got smaller, the workbench had to be raised up by placing wood planks under it. Again the crane operator would respond to hand signals then lift the bench while the grinder pushed wood under the bench.

On the night my hand was crushed under the massive weight of the bench, it was more than clear that I was as bad at hand signals as I was at grinding. (An experienced grinder could finish 40+ bars in one eight hour shift. I averaged six.) The crane operator, Arthur, easily understood my wild protestations when the bench was lowered onto my hand. He immediately freed me. The only thing worse than getting my hand smashed was finding my own mother on duty in the infirmary. 

She examined it, told me to learn the hand signals, and declared me fit to return. Oh, and she added, “Don’t say anything about it to anyone. Do you hear me?”

“Yes ma’am,” I answered. “Why?”

“Because Arthur will lose his job.” That was my mother. I needed a Catholic priest to administer last rites in order to miss school. I would have needed a partial amputation for her to allow me to stay in the house in the summer. Her favorite expression was: You’ll be alright by the time you’re married. But the idea that my stupidity could cost Arthur his job, well, I went back to work.

Before she moved to a retirement village much later in life, she and I lived a few houses apart on the same street. We lived along a river near Baltimore. One day I heard then saw a number of emergency vehicles at her house. I can remember saying to Deb, “I’m not running down there. If she’s gone there’s no reason to hurry.”

It turned out that a man fell overboard and was mauled by the outboard motor. They went to the first house they saw, which was my mother’s. While the EMT came she attended to that poor man’s wounds.

On the day my brother’s wife called me, I said the same thing except this time I knew there was no boating accident. I knew like sometimes you know without knowing. You’re sure to the point that confirmation doesn’t even make things that much worse.

That was December 24, 1999. Much earlier that day I called her. Her answering machine picked up. She had been invited to a Christmas Eve party at my cousin’s house, and I was calling to arrange the time I would pick her and take her.

“You better watch out,” I told her machine. “You better not cry, you better not pout. I’m telling you why…”

If the timeline proposed by the coroner was correct, she was already gone by the time I called. They found her on the floor of her kitchen along with a frying pan and the egg she was cooking when her heart stopped.

“Knowing” she was gone and seeing proof were not the same.

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9RapVptT1k