table talk / By Joseph Byrd

Last Suppers

Lamb stew and Roquefort … they gave her the strength to die

(May 14, 2009) Editor’s note: This column/confession, submitted some months ago, was supposed to run in our Mother’s Day edition, but unfortunately was mislaid. We think it’s fine for a week later, and hope you agree.

In the early summer of 1998, my brother called from Tucson. Our mother, who was in her mid-90s, had gotten worse. For a year she’d been confined to bed, and she hoped to die at home. But with penurious Arizona schoolteachers pension and health insurance, she couldn’t afford a caregiver. The few family members left were cousins and nieces who had never been very close. Some friends and church members helped, but were not enough. So my brother, a family-care physician, had taken to staying every night at her house, rising every couple of hours to bring a bedpan and give her medicine. This had been going on for several weeks, as I knew, and he was concerned that his own lack of sleep was affecting his work. “She’s stopped eating,” he told me. “I don’t think she’ll last long.”

GALLERY >

I made reservations and packed a bag, planning to stay for a week — to be with my mother, and to give my brother a break. As an afterthought, I brought my knives. As a second afterthought I smuggled in a few things I thought I might need; I would be doing the cooking for everyone involved in support, and I figured to have lots of free time.

I had been prepared to see her ill, but not for the dark gloomy room. It was like a medieval version of Hospice. Slowly I opened curtains and pulled up shades. Mama cringed from the light, but brightened, pleased that I was there.

We’d never been close. Nothing I did as a child was good enough. At some level, I knew she was proud of me (she’d saved all my record albums), but we’d never communicated; we always fought. I was the rebellious son who moved out at 17, a political radical who became an avant garde (read: starving) musician. My younger brother, blessed with a saintly disposition, a beloved doctor in private practice, was forced out of business by the vise of HMOs in the ′90s, and was at a clinic. He was the loving son Mama had wanted, one who was active in our church, who’d become a respectable professional. He and I have long been friends, based on mutual appreciation, though we are emotional opposites. But every time I came home, Mama and I found something to argue about. Would this encounter be different?

Emptying bedpans and cleaning up an incontinent parent is what Jews call a mitzvah — it’s a blessing, an opportunity to symbolically repay part of the huge debt we owe them. But I thought that a week would give me some time, the time we’d never had together, to talk. To talk without pushing each other’s buttons, without arguing. I called a local music store, and arranged to rent an accordion for a week: That was the one thing Mama had liked, and whenever things were dicey for me professionally, she’d ask “Are you still practicing the accordion?” I could imagine her image of me on a street corner with a tin cup.

The first morning home I said, “Well, Mama, we have country ham, grits and fresh eggs for breakfast!” And she said, “No, I’m not hungry, I’ll just have some coffee.” I complied. I was already thinking.

The refrigerator was jammed with useless accumulations. I said, “Mom, we need food, and I’m going shopping — would you like a lamb chop for dinner?” (Lamb chops used to be her favorite.) She was, weakly, horrified: “Oh no, we can’t afford anything like that. And I’m not really hungry anyway.” But I had a hunch (correct) that drop-ins would be more frequent once it was known I was doing the cooking. I said, “OK, but what about lamb stew? There’s a special on lamb shoulder.”

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