Searching for the Words

Seventeen chapters. It went so fast.

I finished Stoner last night after a quick three-day read of John Williams’ classic novel and wept. I don’t know if Stoner is a novel that’s made other people weep for a prolonged period of time after finishing its last page, despite the fact that protagonist William Stoner dies at the end. I have not spoiled anything here because the novel begins with what is more or less an obituary of the character — a college professor in the Midwest — that almost defies you to care about Stoner as a person. And yet by the final pages I was so intimately connected to Stoner and the swiftly drawn arc of his life I couldn’t bear to watch him go.

The other part of the reason, of course, was that Stoner died of colon cancer, the first hints of which in the novel so closely mirrored my mother’s final months that I recognized the symptoms of this fictional character with a creeping dread.

Stoner’s final days were much like Mom’s; the description of the pain he kept at bay with pills that caused it to “recede into a darkness, as if it were a cautious animal” reminded me of doling out Mom’s meds in a fruitless effort to tame the beast inside of her. Stoner’s final thoughts in his final days, a window into which was only possible through the small allowances of the author, were as scattered and formless as Mom’s voiced thoughts seemed to be. The only misstep, I thought, was the artistic flourish of Stoner dying in bed as he reached for the one book he managed to write during his entire academic career. By the end, Mom was so weak she couldn’t even close her own mouth, let alone lift an arm to grasp for a book.

I flung Stoner down and cried without realizing it was happening. It just came over me. My husband, reading his own novel next to me in bed, laid down The Pillars of the Earth with a soft shock. He touched my arm. “Are you okay?”

“Why did you tell me I should read this?” I finally managed to choke out past the sobs.

“What do you mean?”

“The cancer. The way he died.”

“Oh.”

“He was the same age as Mom.” I dissolved again. And then finally: “His life was so short. Seventeen chapters. That’s nothing. It went so fast.”

“I forgot Stoner died of cancer,” John said after a long silence.

“It’s not just that, it’s…” I searched for the words to explain. I recognized some of Stoner in myself, struggling to explain what Shakespeare's Sonnet 73 meant to Archer Sloane. The words are there, nebulous, buried inside a place difficult to mine because you’ve never had the right tools, never had to mine this vein. And when you finally dig them out, they’re not quite right, prized out of dark places, forgotten places, unknown places, where they made more sense before they were dug out and polished up as if to be presented instead of simply felt, existing as they were.

At the Gumbo Diner in Galveston with Mom on her birthday weekend, 2023.

May is coming so soon. The azaleas are in bloom all over campus. Pollen from the oak trees is coating everything with a chartreuse haze that would be cheerful if not for the allergies it brings with it, the bulky gunk it leaves behind. May will be Mother’s Day. And then it will be Mom’s birthday.

Last May, Mom and I were in Galveston. This had been her favorite place to go with me since I was a child. When I was young and she was alone and we had next to no money, we could always find some spare change for a tank of gas to drive down 45 to the ocean, which was endlessly free. The Gulf of Mexico charges no entrance fee. There is no hourly rate for digging in the sand or diving into the warm, salty waves. At the end of a long day, Mom would grab the gallon milk jugs she saved, washed out, filled with water and stored in the trunk of our little Toyota Camry to wash the sand off our feet before we got into the car and headed back north, the setting sun lighting her face in pinkish-gold from the west as she drove. I was usually asleep by the time we got home.

As I got older, and we were able to afford hotel rooms, we’d make a weekend out of the trip. Mom loved to walk the Strand and poke into the same places each time: Col. Bubbie's, a massive warehouse that trafficked in military surplus gear like Russian gas masks and Bundeswehr tank tops; the Peanut Butter Warehouse, a rambling antique mall that also sold dense squares of fudge from a little sweet shop at the front; Hendley Market, a tall-ceilinged eclectic emporium that was as if a vast cabinet of curiosities had reluctantly decided to go into commerce. I occasionally managed to convince her to stop at La King’s for fresh-pulled saltwater taffy or a cone of Blue Bell ice cream, but this was almost as rare as a square of peanut butter fudge from the Warehouse. Mom never liked any of us eating much sugar.

At night, we’d share a bed together in the Galvez, which had once been a grand hotel when it was built in 1911, but by the 1990s had seen far better days. Even at a young age, I had frequent panic attacks, especially when I was away from home overnight. When I had panic attacks in Galveston laying in our Gulf-dampened Galvez room at night, windows flung open to the roar of the ocean across the Seawall, Mom would blame them on the ghosts that she said haunted the island. You’re just sensitive to all these souls that died here during the Great Storm of 1900, she’d tell me. And don’t forget, the Karankawa lived here too, and they were mighty cannibals! You’re just so sensitive, that’s all.

I never believed in ghosts, but Mom believed in them her whole life. She often blamed things going missing in the house on the ghost of Pa, her grandfather, whom she said had been a notorious trickster. When her father was dying, Mom said she could see the ghosts of some of the church elders who’d gone on before him waiting around his bed. And when she herself was near death, Mom often saw Meemo, her mother. I can’t tell if it’s real or not, Katie. She looks young…pretty.

In the last few years once COVID had passed and things were relatively back to normal, Mom and I had been going to Galveston to celebrate her birthday weekend each year. In 2023, we stayed at a renovated Hotel Galvez and enjoyed what felt like a similar renewal in our relationship, which had become strained during the pandemic. We couldn’t sleep with the windows open in this newly redecorated room, but it still faced the Gulf and we could still spend the day browsing the shops on the Strand before retiring to the newly resplendent lobby of the grand old hotel, which had been repainted a bright, blushing pink to the deep horror of local Galveston residents. The night before her birthday dinner at a local surf-and-turf spot on the intercoastal waterway, I took a picture of her in front of the Galvez’s great fountain. It’s pure Mom: a long, gauzy, light blue dress covered in embroidery, matching flip-flops, her favorite blue purse. She looks carefree, as calm as the gently lapping Gulf behind her.

Last year, we stayed at a new hotel that had recently reopened and which I thought appealed to Mom’s interests: an old motor court renovated in colorful midcentury style, overlooking the ocean, with an attached restaurant from a chef in Houston that I knew she loved. Our room was on the second floor above the pool and by late May it was plenty warm enough to swim. I should have known then that something was wrong.

Mom struggled to walk up the single flight of stairs to our room. She declined to come and sit by the pool with me, let alone get in. After a short walk on the Strand — only Hendley Market is still open after all these years, and it was really the only place she wanted to visit — she needed a long nap back at our room. Mom and I were never nap-takers. When I asked her why she was having such a hard time walking up the stairs, she brushed me off. Oh, it’s just my leg muscles. I’m getting old.

You’re not old!, I protested. Certainly not so old that a flight of stairs should challenge her. You need to go to the doctor and find out what’s going on. Maybe sign up for some physical therapy. She looked at me with tired eyes. She was tired the entire trip, but I could tell she was trying to rally, especially for the long conversations we were having.

The evening after her birthday dinner at The Fancy, the little restaurant attached to Hotel Lucine, we sat on the second-floor deck of the hotel and watched the sun set over the Gulf of Mexico. We took selfies together against the expansive sunset; in them, she looks happy but exhausted, like a woman who’s just finished a marathon. I talked to her candidly about going to therapy and how helpful it had been for me — how dramatically fewer panic attacks I’d been experiencing in the past couple of years, how ghosts weren’t haunting me anymore — and about how hard her divorce from my father had been on me as a kid.

I didn’t know any better, she said. I’m so sorry. I didn’t understand. It never occurred to me — I thought I was doing the right thing.

You did the best you could, I told her. I get that now. You were both just doing your best. I’m not mad about it. I hadn’t felt such a sense of peace around my mother in years, around the strong, defiant woman who never apologized to anyone for anything, the woman who’d told me on multiple occasions that there was no such thing as mental illness, just “mental weakness.” The next morning we talked for hours over an extended breakfast and she gave me the kind of advice she was always best at: career advice, which I find myself still using now, nearly a year later. Later, on the drive home — earlier than we’d usually leave the island — I somehow ended up apologizing in a fumbling, awkward sort of way for not being able to give her grandchildren.

You know, it’s more barren than the surface of Mars in here, I said, gesturing broadly to my midsection.

Mom sighed. I wish you had my constitution. It’s a shame you take so much after your father’s side of the family. If you’d taken after me, you’d never have all these health issues.

Mom in the lobby of the Galvez, May 2023.

I knew something was very wrong by November, when Mom canceled our plans for my birthday dinner, which she’d never miss under any other circumstances. The day before Thanksgiving, a couple of weeks later, she called to cancel Thanksgiving too. Her second-favorite holiday, the one that allowed her to get out all of her vintage Spode Woodland Thanksgiving dishes and make even fancier food than she already did on a regular basis.

Around a week later, I realized I hadn’t heard from her all day, which was an even more unusual occurrence. When she finally called me back that evening, it was to tell me she was in the hospital and had been for a couple of days. Very Stoner of her to not make a fuss, not tell anyone what was really going on. It’s cancer, she told me very matter-of-factly when I arrived. None of us realized the extent of the cancer until the next day, however, when the oncologist sat down and told us in equally matter-of-fact fashion that the mass in her colon was not operable, and that the cancer had spread to a distant organ — her liver — which meant that she had anywhere from six months to two-and-a-half years if she opted for treatment. Mom, always stoic, took the news as if she’d just been told her house would be permanently relocated to the Moon: a bit disbelieving of the possible mechanics of the situation, but willing to make a go of it. I guess we’re living on the Moon now!

In the hospital, Mom was optimistic. I’ve always wanted to go wig shopping! she told me as Ralph wept on the plastic couch next to her bed. When she was finally discharged on a Thursday, she told me she was ready to fight this thing and rebuild her strength. I want to go to the farmers market with you on Saturday, she said, one of our regular biweekly activities. But by Saturday it was clear her strength would not be returning.

I went alone to the market on a rainy December morning and brought an embarrassing amount of food over to the house for her: white kimchi and fermented radishes and ginger tonic and sourdough bread for her gut, fresh goat’s milk yogurt and red snapper and delicate brown eggs for protein, chicken feet and necks and carrots and ginger root to make her some broth to sip, strawberries and blueberries to snack on. She wasn’t able to eat any of it. The beast in her belly was already ravaging her.

By Christmas, Mom was no longer leaving the couch. She barely ate, barely drank anything but room temperature green tea. I brought her and Ralph armfuls of Christmas presents around the optimistic theme of “cancer treatment.” A birdhouse with a camera so Mom could watch her backyard creatures from bed (and a project for Ralph to assemble to occupy his hands and mind); a book about the Sopranos, their favorite show, for reading when chemo dragged on; a Bible trivia game for when friends came to visit so Mom could show off her skills; some cute matching loungewear sets that she could easily throw on ahead of doctor’s appointments. Ralph cried. We didn’t get you anything. We just haven’t been able to…

I don’t need anything! I told them. It was true. I only needed to be with them on Christmas, Mom’s favorite holiday. I cooked a chicken with oregano and cumin and a stick of butter shoved under the skin, Mom’s favorite way to roast a chicken. I cooked her favorite cabbage dish. I made Ralph a pie that tasted like Thin Mints, his favorite cookie. Mom nibbled as much as she could, then, exhausted, fell asleep on the couch.

Next Christmas will be different, Mom said when she woke up later before I left. I’ll be better and we’ll have a real Christmas again. Later on, at home, I told John matter-of-factly that there wouldn’t be a next Christmas. I already knew it. I could feel the book coming to an end in my hands, the pages turning whether I wanted them to or not. Sixteen chapters in, one to go.

I still struggle to make sense of the pace. It all went so fast. Not just the journey from diagnosis to death, but her life. Stoner’s journey was equally rapid in the novel; like Mom, he ultimately decided against treatment in lieu of returning home, where death came for him as swiftly as if it had been waiting for him. As it waits for us all.

Last week I spent a few days in Dallas with my father, who was only married to my mother for a brief period of time and who, I realize now, barely knew her and rarely understood her. Growing up was like perpetually taking a long sea voyage between two distant islands, straddling two cultures, learning to make sense of all the drastic differences in between. Now retired, my father starts every morning sitting next to his backyard fire pit with a giant tumbler of coffee, ushering in each day with a fresh fire that sends plumes of cedar or piñon wood smoke up into the heavens. When I visit, I also become part of this morning ritual. The smoke saturates us both. We talk for hours, until the logs have burned away to embers.

“There was something real dignified in the way your mom chose to go,” Dad said. “She went out on her own terms. Not a lot of people get to do that. I hope that when it’s my time I get the chance to do the same thing.” As if her final act had finally made her understood.

There was so much clarity for her in those last two weeks. So much determination. No apologies (except for the single apology she gave me for never getting a colonoscopy, which I told her was an unnecessary apology at this rate). In a way, this has made things easier on me. It certainly seemed to make things easier on her.

As I finished Stoner, a passage struck me as uniquely Mom: “There was a sense of softness around him, and a languor crept upon his limbs. A sense of his own identity came upon him with a sudden force, and he felt the power of it. He was himself, and he knew what he had been.” His penultimate thoughts upon dying. Surely, I hoped, this is how Mom felt too. If anyone knew themselves, it was Mom.

And yet I keep turning back to Mom’s actual final words to me: Stay. I’m scared. Of what? Being alone.

I didn’t leave. I stayed. And I stayed. And I stayed. I stayed up with her that entire final night, our last sleepover, never making it to the next Galveston birthday weekend in a shared hotel room, never making it to another Thanksgiving, another Christmas. We both stayed as long as we could. Was it enough?

My therapist reframed this for me recently in a way I hadn’t ever considered. (This is why we pay for therapists, I suppose.) “Remember that time in Galveston when your Mom apologized to you?” she asked. “How vulnerable that was for her?” I nodded, vaguely astounded as always at the way she remembers my life as well as I do. “Weren’t you one of the only people she could be truly vulnerable with?” I nodded again. “Wasn’t that such a gift for you?”

“Yes.”

“What if those final words were also a gift? What if that was a final invitation to witness her at her most vulnerable? To ask to receive comfort in a moment that she needed it the most? For your mother, admitting that she was scared must have been a true sacrifice. Can you see this as a radical act of love?”

I suppose I can.

Today, I caught up with an old friend and her mother, Magda, whose own mom had died suddenly when Magda was only 27. “It was horrible,” she said. A few days after the funeral, Magda told me, they finally decided to eat the last of her mother’s meatloaf that was still waiting in the fridge, made before she’d passed away. “We couldn’t just let it go to waste, you know. It was mom’s meatloaf!” A fierce craving for Mom’s own meatloaf overcame me; a fierce craving to taste any of her food again welled up inside me of like a great yawning emptiness.

I can turn to Stoner again and again and again when I miss old William Stoner and the arc of his life. I probably will. I imagine it will feel like when I used to drop in to Mom’s house on Saturday mornings when I missed her. But I can never reread the book of my mother’s life again. No one has carved out her arc on pages for time immemorial. No one was privy to her innermost sentiments, her dying thoughts. No author can take artistic license with her life. It simply existed for a brief, wonderful time and now it does not.

And those, I guess, are the words I was trying to find.