jennings rampage

On my birthday, I coin a new word.

Yes, yes, it’s the 24th Annual Scott Jennings Day, and you should observe the day as your family’s tradition would dictate, but I’m stuck here at work trying to reflect on the past year and plot a course of some sort for the year to come. Reflecting is a mixed bag, and plotting is pointless. But I should report.

Despite my boredom with metafiction (metanonfiction?), I’m calling out this paragraph as the part where I marvel at what a strange year it’s been and how different everything is now and how much my perspective has changed and, oh yes, how much I’ve grown. You can read archives if you need to catch up.

Over the past few weeks, a man named Bob did just that. It took him awhile, because I’m very long-winded and there are remnants of my writing from the past two years scattered across the Web, but he slogged all the way through and dropped me an e-mail late last week. Bob was close friends with my mom — they met online, played spades and cribbage together, IMed, chatted on the phone, stuff like that. I’m sure it was adorable, and of course my mom was so magnetic that she could make people love her without actually meeting her.

Bob knew about the brain tumor, he supported her while she coped with her worthless common-law husband Rod, and he listened to all of her stories. She was so proud of her two sons, she talked about us constantly. They shared a lot with each other after her diagnosis. Eventually, mom wasn’t able to get on the computer any more, but they still talked on the phone until Rod checked her into a nursing home and moved several local drunks (”roommates” to me, “his girlfriend” to Bob) in with him. Bob lost touch, assumed the worst, and found me recently by googling a few names and places.

So Bob wrote me an e-mail last Thursday to say hello and to offer himself to talk about the things my mom shared with him. And since my life is being written by Aaron Sorkin, I had an appointment with my psychiatrist that afternoon. After talking about the medication for awhile, we got down to the root of why I came crawling for Zoloft: the guilt I feel about how I handled my mom’s illness and death.

I told my shrink about it linearly: the diagnosis came in March, everyone flew down to be together, Rod demonstrated his worthlessness and I kicked his ass, I went back to New York in early April, I began feeling horrible, I freaked out every time the phone rang, the drunken calls from Rod telling me he couldn’t handle this, I began feeling passive-suicidal, I lost touch for weeks at a time, I called her one year ago today and all she could say was “I’m lonely,” Jeff and I went down over Labor Day and I lost my shit sitting at her bedside in that newsmagazine-expose nursing home, I went back to New York for no good reason and stayed in my room and picked fights with Joe, I decided to move home at the end of September, I arrived in Cape Canaveral on October 2nd (her 60th birthday), moved her out of the nursing home on October 8th, and she was dead on October 29th. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to identify the major regret in that mess.

I told my doctor that I planned to call Bob when I got home, and he suggest that I “go fishing” for some details that might help me determine if my mom resented me for not moving home. Seemed like a plan.

Bob and I chatted for about an hour, basically comparing our perspectives on what happened that summer. We swapped a few stories, had a nice chat. I asked oblique questions about how she felt about Jeff and I, if she had expressed any wish that we had been there more, or that we be more attentive. He said no, no, a thousand times no, that she loved us and was proud of us and knew that Jeff was in the Navy and had to do what he had to do, and that I was trying to be a writer and make it in New York, and she didn’t want to take that away from me. Since the conversation had clearly moved in this direction, Bob was direct: from his perspective, I have no reason to feel any guilt at all. I did what I could do. She was a nurse, she knew what she was up against, and she accepted her fate early in the process. She didn’t want to be a burden.

Bob followed up with another e-mail thanking me for calling, that we both needed some form of closure. I’m glad I could help him, but for me, that phone call represented — what’s the opposite of closure? — openture. Big time openture.

My mom loved me and was proud of me and wanted me to pursue my dreams and didn’t want to be a burden and that was characteristically selfless and generous of her. I can’t begin to catalogue the sacrifices she made for Jeff and I, but let’s say for now that it includes a felony conviction. I loved her more than I’ll ever love anyone. But I’m not here to beatify her; she had tragic flaws in her character that led directly to the problems she had at the end of her life. Her remarkable confidence and poise was cracker-coating for a remarkable lack of self esteem and a sense of hopelessness that drew her exclusively into abusive and explotative relationships with men. Rod was so odious that he drove away practically every friend she had — and when faced with choosing between the people who honestly loved her and the man who loved her Social Security check, she magnified some shred of virtue in an alcoholic failure and chose a burdened life of superficial companionship and spiritual isolation. I don’t know why. She was every superlative adjective you’d want to use to tell yourself that good people don’t do things like that, but she did.

I want to say that Rod drove me away from my mother, it was an unfortunate choice that she made but she made it, I did the best I could at every point in time, there was nothing that was going to keep her alive anyway, she loved me and she raised me right, end of analysis, two of the blue pills every morning until your RNA is altered to the point that you’re all better. It’s as much bullshit as my glib cadence would suggest.

No one drove me away from my mother. I’m responsible for that. As much as we adored each other and saw each ourselves in each other, we weren’t close — not in the way you’d expect for a mother and a son who so clearly shared so much. This is what I’m having trouble articulating: I’d like to know why I only called maybe once a month, I’d like to know why I never IMed her or played spades or cribbage with her online, I’d like to know why I didn’t visit nearly as often as I could have, I’d like to know why I was content with our spiritual connection but chose not to share more of my life with her.

I’d like to know why I sat in my room in Brooklyn when the time came for my mother to share her life’s experiences and pass her wisdom on to someone. I’d like to know why a man named Bob was there for her and was there to receive her, and I was sitting in my room in Brooklyn.

Goddamnit.

I’d like to know how I’d feel today if I had been there, looking into her eyes and hearing all of this for myself before her eyes clouded over and her speech was taken. I made the right decision far too late, and it feels like some sort of cosmic justice that I came home to find out exactly how unforgivable that was. When I moved home, she was already gone. Her mind died alone in a nursing home — her final memories are of that place and final feelings are lonliness and despair. I am responsible for that. It’s something I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

The days leading up to the first anniversary are supposed to be difficult, and here I am. The fact that I failed my mother, that I let a long list of bad excuses keep me from her at the end, and that there are no words that can absolve me of any of it just make it that much more intense.