Pop 89: Momento Mori

By Madonna Hamel
madonnahamel@hotmail.com

As usual, my sister thought of everything: new underwear, disinfectant, chocolates for the nurses. She dressed my father in clothes she washed earlier at her home, helped him in to the hospital wheelchair, noting the significant loss of strength in our father’s once athletic, springy body. She gave him his mask, carried his meds, signed off on the nurse’s chart, then rolled him from the fourth floor to the car in which I sat, waiting for them in the loading zone outside the hospital.

We knew it was coming. We all know it’s coming; we just don’t like to think about it. And when you talk to others about it, you can instantly tell who understands ageing only as a concept and who realizes it as a reality. To fully and genuinely embrace age is to embrace death, just a little up the road.

The early Puritans carved skulls on their tombstones as momento mori, a reminder that death is inevitable, so behave if you don’t want to go to hell. Today we don’t, as a culture, believe in punishment after death. In fact, we don’t believe in anything after death. We act as if we are immortal.

My father made it through a dangerous time, and it took a toll on his body. It also took a toll on our souls – we saw quickly how a serious illness can knock an eighty-nine-year-old man off his feet. Dad was a farm boy. He plowed with horses. He grew up playing hockey. He skied. He golfed until the age of eighty-eight. He taught me how to drive a car. And later in life, I found myself using the nubs on the steering wheel as rosary beads, as he does.

When I was four years old, dad pulled me out of a freezing mud puddle, wrapped a blanket around me and drove me to emergency. I had pneumonia. One day we would drive him to emergency. One day we would wrap him in a blanket. One day we would tuck him in and watch over him while he slept. We knew that. We were ready for that. It just came so fast.

The history of art is rich with symbolism designed to address or encourage dialogue about the ephemeral quality of life. The skull is a predominant symbol, be it Georgia O’Keefe’s enormous bleached white, floating cow skulls or the sugar skulls made as offerings to the dearly beloved on the Mexican Day of the Dead, a celebration that stretches into All Saints Day and All Souls Day.

On my first trip to Paris, at the age of thirty-six, I discovered George de la Tour. In art school, I yearned to make paintings and photographs with the same haunting glow of a La Tour painting. His portraits are of figures struck dumb or still by an awareness of a deeper significance. St. Joseph, for example, holds a candle in front of his son Jesus, who hammers away at a crossbar, oblivious to the irony of his actions. Or Mary Magdalene, poised with hand on a skull, skull on a book, reflects on her life and death, staring into a mirror. Every La Tour picture is lit by one bright flame rising from a brief candle. Life is transient; what have you done with it? What will you make of it, each painting asks before the flame burns down to a pool of wax?

I wonder about people who put all their confidence and concentration on generating capital. When they grow old, does their money buy them peace of mind? The miracle of health care in Canada cannot be over-appreciated. Every day I visited the hospital, and every day new faces met me in the halls. Some of the patients were retired professors or business owners from resorts. Some got terrifying diagnoses and were sent home. Others were being weaned off drugs. Still, others were getting organs removed. Some walked away, dumbfounded, shocked, terrified. Others left feeling lucky, this time. And some prayed, for a miracle, for help, for courage and serenity to accept what they cannot change.

I hear myself wondering aloud: What do people who have no family do in times like these? Because I am here with my sister, we can muster, march and muddle through this together, to the best of our abilities. Waiting in the car for her and my father to descend from the fourth floor, I see people wandering out to the curb to waiting cabs, clutching their belongings to their chests. The poor may not be able to afford their new meds. The wealthier ones might be able to hire a long-term care nurse. But lonely is lonely; you cannot buy family or friends.

Back at my father’s residence, we open the three-pack of Stanfield’s underwear, the only kind my father will wear. My sister drove all over town looking for them. The photograph on the package is of a strapping young man with a six-pack chest, arms akimbo. Despite the fact that old, scarred, pot-bellied, world-weary men wear shorts too, we will never see a picture of a “real” man on any packaging. Who wants the momento mori?

We get dad into bed and turn out the light. We’re just out here in the living room, dad, says my sister.

We all need people to sit with us. We all need to sit with others. We all need to, when supper is over, help with the wheelchair or the bib or the socks and shoes. We might sit on the couch and watch game shows. And one day, we will be needing our own hair brushed and our dentures removed. One day we might not remember our own name, but we will recognize in our heart’s eye the sister who helps us. She will be our hero, and we will wish we were at least half the woman she is, lifting your shirt over your head, removing your glasses and setting them on the bedtable.

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