A Day Off

It was today, 50 years ago, Saturday, July 14. I was supposed to spend the day with my girlfriend, and arranging a Saturday off from the grocery store was not easy to accomplish. I had just finished my first year of college plus a summer school session and was ready for something different than all the stress that I had gone through that year. Mother was still in the nursing home recovering from another nervous breakdown; she was schizophrenic, they said. 

I arranged for my uncle to pick up Mother while I was gone and bring her over to our house, she was having regular visits then, to stay with my grandmother, Mom, and look after her. Mom had been in the hospital, as well that spring for her heart and was not feeling all that great.

I had it all figured out. Mom wouldn’t be alone and Mother would get another incremental visit and I would get a day off. It was planned and it would work and I would get a day off from working at the grocery store, and from taking care of my grandmother and from looking after my mother. I’d have a day to just me and my girlfriend. It was a good plan. I thought it through a lot.

That Friday night I told Mom all about the plan and how it would work. She didn’t agree.

“I need you”.

Mother wasn’t good enough, it had to be me, she said. I explained the plan. 

She didn’t care. 

“I need you”. 

I told her how much I needed this break, how important the plan was to me. 

“I need you”. 

I told her no, her children could look after her just this once. I was going ahead with the plan. 

She didn’t need me. 

We disagreed, we argued. I had never argued with her quite like that before. We went to our rooms that night upset with each other. I was so tired of being responsible for the adults in my life. I was 19, how much longer would this have to go on? 

I wanted my day off.

Saturday morning I got up early, made my breakfast and got ready to go. Mom always slept in. I was about to leave for my day off and decided it would be good to go check on her. 

I found her lying back on the bed. It looked like she had been sitting on the side of the bed trying to get dressed and fell back. Maybe she knew she was dying, maybe she knew she was having a heart attack, maybe she just felt bad like she often did and was getting up to fetch me.

I stood in the doorway and stared for what seemed like a really long time. I think I said her name. I couldn’t be sure. It didn’t occur to me to take her pulse. It only occurred to me to go for a neighbor to help me confirm what I knew to be true.

I went across the street to the welding workshop my neighbor had behind his house. He was always up early fixing things. He had watched me grow up. Of course he would come over and help me.

He did. He checked for a pulse. He found none. He helped me make the call. He stayed until they got there. They pronounced her dead. I told them to take her to the funeral home she and I had been to so many times to pay respects and sign the book.

I called my girlfriend to let her know that the plan had changed.

Then everybody left. 

I was alone, really alone, for the first time in my life.