Turn, Turn, Turn

I was amazed at the furor that arose when Michael Jackson died. After decades of reviling him, the US media took to his death like flies on a whale carcass. I’m just Alaskan enough to have seen one whale carcass, and it was over twenty years ago. What I remember is the smell of such a large mass of melting flesh and the equally impressive tornado of flies that rose fifty feet above it. The Jackson Tornado circled the headlines for ten full days, sweeping aside deadly bombings and political sex scandals. I just didn’t get it.

Then it came to me that I was too old to appreciate the emotional significance -- all those Gen X kids who sang along with that young boy soprano as they passed through puberty knew the words to his songs. “Thriller” was a marker of their time, and so was his passing. By the time Michael Jackson arrived, I was too wrapped up in motherhood and trying to make my way through life to memorize lyrics like "you are not alone..." My time for that was with poems of the Sixties, like "Turn, Turn, Turn" by the Byrds.

To everything there is a season,

and a time for every purpose, under heaven.

I was thinking of this song, and others, while I sat beside my mother’s bed in the Special Care Home in Cut Knife, Saskatchewan. It is the second day of my visit and unlike the first when she never opened her eyes, she at times seems somewhat aware of my presence. Mom played the piano and we kids all sang so I also know the lyrics to songs of the forties like the Patti Page’s Tennessee Waltz and Doris Day’s Sentimental Journey.

A time to be born, a time to die

A time to plant, a time to reap

A time to kill, a time to heal

A time to laugh, a time to weep

Most of the time, her eyes are tightly closed and I can’t tell if she’s awake or dreaming, perhaps somewhere between. This may sound heartbreaking, but I am more relaxed in her presence than I have been during the past three years. I can finally ‘hear’ that she is not asking for my help or even having a conversation with me. Her brain’s in the grip of a noisy illness with a song and a voice of its own. "No more worries for you," I say smoothing her forehead with my fingers, "nothing but smooth sailing from here on."

A time to dance, a time to mourn

I’ve watched enough others journey through this Special Care Home to know there’s no turning back for Lois Esther. She’s headed down a road to Heaven, as beautiful as the canola-lined road into this town, and beyond my reach. She no longer expects a response when she speaks, and it’s hard to hear what she says. She is evolving into memory.

A time to rend, a time to sew

I am stitching blue cloth on white while I sit here -- a crib quilt top for my soon-to-be born grandson. She will not meet him even if she does live to the day he is born. But I am embracing this hope of the future. At this moment, I feel that even my time with him will be too short. There is nothing like facing a parent’s demise to acquaint one with their own mortality.

A time to build up, a time to break down

I don’t cry when I leave her but there is a moment when tears suddenly flood my closed eyes as I am flying home. I look out the blurry window just in time to see the most easterly ridges of Rocky Mountains jut toward the rising sun with shocking urgency.

I can’t help but smile at this scene. I find comfort in knowing that the ups and downs of my life will be un-noticeable within the context of eternity. Not just individuals, but even species come and go quite regularly. Those mountain layers are like books in a library. One thin page describes humans, another the oreodont and other mammals from millions of years ago, a few volumes about dinosaurs, and maybe a small folio about the ungulates, including the white-tailed doe and two fawns that looked down on me while I drove to the airport this morning. The past doesn’t leave us. It returns to the earth and is held firm. It really is ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

You can’t have it both ways Linda, I say to myself. If you love the idea of being part of millions of years of change, then you have to accept its moments. Births, deaths, risk, and heartbreak touch each of us, because we are part of this wonder.

A time to love, a time to hate

A time for peace, I swear its not too late.

In the end, even Michael Jackson could be redeemed. “He was the best Daddy ever,” his daughter Paris said at this memorial, “and I loved him very much.” Did this mean he really was just a normal ‘dad’ who wanted privacy, and not the ‘thriller’ we’d read about in the news? Rather than pursue this mystery, the tornado of flies leaves, in search of another carcass.

“I love you Mom,” I said, pressing my cheek to hers, as I rose to leave. “I love you too,” she answered. Perhaps it was just an automatic response, but I savored the sweetness of our final words.

Love is all we bring to this earth. It’s all we really need while we’re here. And it’s all we leave behind.

Turn, Turn, Turn.