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Not to be outdone by my leaving, my mother also decided to blow the Mission Viejo hatch and move to the neighboring town of Lake Forest, where they kept the lake, but lost the forest. Mom rented a small room in someone’s home. She scored a little car, kept her factory job and side hustled at a donut shop before landing, at age 57, the sweetest gig of all…rocking the deli bakery counter inside of an Alberstons grocery store.
Now, instead of inbounding ham or throwing birthday cakes, she was slicing ham and decorating birthday cakes. We were all quietly proud of my mom during this time and I remember driving down to see her in her starched blue apron and new nametag. She came outside the store with me to have a smoke, covered in flour, frosting and potato salad, and I remember her telling me lovingly that I looked “horribly thin.” I was starting to assume the unmistakable, frighteningly lean angular shape of the Kearin brothers. Imagine a scarecrow, if scarecrows worked out a little…just standing in a field, pumping corn.
Mom must have worked at Albertsons for about a year or so, when I came to visit once. I stayed for the weekend and swung by the deli bakery one more time before I headed north, but Mom wasn’t behind the counter. They told me she was shopping and so I started walking the grocery aisles, looking for her, and I found my mom “shopping” halfway down the medicine aisle, and as I walked up, I could see that she was looking at little boxes of pain reliever and dropping them into her purse one at a time. I approached with caution. “Hey, Mom…” I said, and she turned, freezing me with a look. “What are you do-“ and she cut me off and said under her breath. “STOP it, Stephen! They don't pay us nearly enough here.” I discreetly nodded to the row of two-way mirrors near the ceiling at the back of the store. “Mom” I whispered “…you see those mirrors up there?” and she looked upon me with pity, disgusted by my naivete. “Pffft. There's nobody up there, honey…that's what they want you to think. Now, go get some dishtowels for your sisters.” and I did.
I went and stole dishtowels for my sisters, because the head of our crime family told me to. I never asked my sisters what was going on during this time that they both were in such desperate need of dishtowels that we had to rob Albertsons for them, but it didn’t matter. I was just a low-level cutpurse in the operation, taking orders from The Don.
After I was back in San Francisco, we found out that mom was stealing pain reliever because she was having a lot of headaches that wouldn't go away, and she wouldn't go to the doctor, so she just kept taking more and more aspirin until, eventually, she did go to the doctor, and they found that my mom's head was filled with cancer, inoperable brain cancer that had started in her lungs from smoking. I remember they told her with cancer, “It’s a straight shot” from the lungs to the brain and I never looked at smoking the same way again.
Right after her diagnosis, Lisa, having recently received a peace offering of dishtowels in the mail, called Mom, and they officially began speaking again. Sheila called her, then I spoke to her on the phone and she said she was scheduled to start treatment immediately, both chemo and radiation. Mom had her own ideas about treatment. “When you get here…” she told me “…maybe you could take me down to the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant that’s on the beach, because there's gotta be a lot of radiation in that water, right? So, just take me down there and I can just swim around, and maybe that’ll help.” Mom, the only girl who jumped off the pier to swim with the boys, was always a very strong swimmer and I told her that sounded like a good plan.
I remember life felt like we were now living in some sort of dream. When my friend Wes got news of my mother’s cancer, he was a baggage handler for Alaska Airlines in Seattle. I will always remember him telling me that once your bag disappears behind that flap at the airport, “May God help your bag.” Wes said he wanted to see my mother, so he was going to fly to San Francisco and pick me up, allowing me to travel with him on a buddy pass. He told me to meet him at the gate and to wear a suit and tie. I only owned one mismatched suit and one tie, and I’ll always remember him being the last person off the flight, himself wearing a suit and tie, walking straight up to me with tears in his eyes. He showed the gate agent his employee pass, they issued us tickets and we walked right back onto the plane together, disguised as young Alaska Airlines executives, who flew for free. Wes no doubt requested two seats over the right wing of the aircraft as we flew the short leg down to John Wayne Republican Airport, deep behind the Orange Curtain. Wes had to go back the next day, but my mother was grateful to see him, the one she called “My other son.”
For those of us who weren’t going through it, one of the hardest parts of Mom’s early treatment was watching her lose her thick red hair, because you know, like me, it was a big part of her brand, even if she did have to color it now. She couldn’t really rock a bandana like Rhoda, so it was decided that my mother was going to get a wig, and I’m pretty sure that whoever escorted her wig shopping, took her to the “boutique” at the hospital and purchased for my mother a hair piece from what we called, The Zira Collection. As some of you may remember, Cornelius' wife in the original, Planet of the Apes, was the brilliant, long-suffering chimp psychologist, Zira, whose robust side panels of hair framed her curious face, then rose up into a discreet dome, finally descending into a modest widow’s peak just above her brow line, and being a chimpanzee, naturally, Zira was also a brunette, and now, to our collective horror, so was our mother.
In between one of her rounds of chemo and radiation, when she was strong enough, we flew my mother up to San Francisco so she could get away for a couple of days. I met her at the gate, and I remember her walking off the plane, looking a little thin, not “horribly thin” like myself, but thin-ner than usual. Mom was clutching her purse, a little leather cigarette case and a lighter. As she got closer, I could see that whatever she was wearing on her head, was pushed up and way back, exposing a little red tag at her former natural hairline. We hugged and I asked Mom how the flight was and if she was in a rush to make it to the airport. She said yes, she was running around like crazy before her ride got there. How did I know? In my opinion, if you can't tell if you’ve put a wig on forward or backwards, you’re not only in a very big rush, but that's also a very bad wig, man. Thanks for nothing person who helped her get ready.
We were standing near a small coffee cart, and I told her not to move. She froze as I grabbed two fistfuls of synthetic hair near her temples, and gave the whole rig a violent 180-degree turn. “What the HELL?” she said. “That thing was on backwards? This whole time? Why didn’t anyone tell me?” Fair question, so called flight “attendants.”
I molded the wig to her head the best I could and we headed outside so she could light up. I pointed to her hair and told her “We're gonna fix that thing” so I took her to my haircutter, and God bless Michelle, but it got away from her, so what started out looking like Zira, now became a matted, bullet shaped, yeti scalp, skull cap, without the luxury of that comforting old standby: “Don’t worry, it will grow back.”
Mom stayed with my girlfriend Diane and me for the weekend in our flat at 25th & Anza out in the fog belt. I don’t think my sisters thought I was up to the task. One of them discreetly asked if we had sheets and blankets for our mother and I remember answering that our plan was to just wedge her between two pieces of plywood up on the roof at night and hope for the best. My glib repartee was not received well.
The weeks went by. Mom continued her treatment and the doctors told her it wasn't working, but they suggested she continue. Lisa was married with kids by this time. Sheila was married too and her first-born Cory was going to be christened, so we gathered up our mother and took her down to Mission San Luis Rey, near Oceanside. She opted to wear a peach-colored calf length dress with a matching floppy oversized bridesmaid hat. Dad was going to be at the ceremony, and Mom joked that this was her last best chance to finally win him back. I remember one of the older women saying: “You already have…” and everyone went “Hmmmm” and nodded at the wisdom of this, but upon reflection, not only did this not make any sense, but the very idea of our parents being reunited made our blood run cold. Lest we forget, Mom’s doctors had allegedly equated “winning my father back” with a literal death sentence, and we all had had quite enough of that term lately, thank you.
It was an unbearably hot day and we were waiting outside the chapel for God to finish with another family. We sat in the courtyard on a wood planter that encircled the base of a giant olive tree, and it was so hot that Mom just said, “You know what?” and she took off not only her big floppy hat, but her wig as well and said she could give a damn what she looked like. All of us were nervous, because our parents hadn't seen each other in a long time, and they certainly hadn't seen each other in the presence of my Aunt Mom Helen. It wasn’t long before Dad's white Ford Granada pulled into the Mission. We watched as Dad got out and walked around to open the door for Helen. Dad never had to open the car door for Mom, because it was usually already open, and her shoe was smoldering. They started out across the broiling parking lot and when they got close to the olive tree, Dad said something to Helen, and we all watched as he cut alone through the small crowd, walked right over to our mother, leaned over, and kissed her right on the top of her bald little head. Sheila was close enough to hear him whisper “Hi Sweets.” He then sat down and held her hand, and they talked, and none of us could believe what we were seeing. Eventually, Dad got up and walked back over to Helen, and as he did, Mom said, a little too loud, “Jesus Christ, your father looks old.”
Later, at the reception, I remember looking over and seeing my father, Helen, and my mom, all seated together at a little cocktail table, just talking and sipping coffee.
I drove Mom back home that evening and as you come up the 5 Freeway, before you get to Lake Forest, you’ve got to pass Mission Viejo, and the clearest sign that you’re passing Mission Viejo are the big light stanchions of the football stadium of the Mission Viejo High School Diablos; because apparently, that's where Satan prefers his football team, next to a major Interstate highway. Mom was quiet and blowing her smoke out the passenger side window, which was all blowing directly back into the car, and as we were passing the town spread out on the hill behind the high school, she closed the window and turned to me, looking like Gollum in drag, and said, “I was crazy back then…wasn't I?”
And we sort of laughed and sort of didn’t all the way back to her little rented room in the house in Lake Forest.
A couple of weeks later, I lit my mother's last cigarette. She was in the hospital by then. We picked her up, put her in a wheelchair, and I rolled her down in between the buildings, and lit a Benson and Hedges Menthol and I held it up to her lips, but she was too weak to even keep the end glowing, and she could barely keep her head up, and we knew she was “rounding the corner” as they said. I rolled her back upstairs. It was getting late and my sisters were ready to go home. It was my turn to spend the night on the two chairs pushed together, and I slept next to my mother and when I woke up the next morning, she was in the fish breathing, just laboring to stay alive long enough for me to wake up I guess, and I was awake maybe five minutes when she breathed out one last time and didn't breathe in again, and I looked at the clock and it was 7:47, like she was getting on a plane to somewhere else, and I got up on the edge of the bed and I had to fight the urge to hit the button to call the nurse, but there was nothing to do for her, so I leaned over my mother, and her eyes were still open just a little bit, and I watched her green eyes turn gray, and whatever that was my mother, seemed to travel up her body, and out the top of her head, up the wall, and out through the ceiling and all I was thinking was: “You'll never have to spend another stupid Christmas here again” Our mother, the tough and broken little box of nails, now in heaven…raising hell.
We held her funeral at Saint Kilian's Catholic Church in Mission Viejo, where I had been fired as an altar boy for not ringing the bells loud enough. “I’m sorry, you did not create a joyful noise for the Lord; you’re fired little boy!” My sisters and I were seated in the front pew. Lisa was on my left and Sheila was on my right. Friends and family were coming up one by one, and eulogizing my mother. One particular family friend, who knew her as a girl, was having the hardest time of it. He was holding both sides of the pulpit, and his head was down, unable to collect himself, but when he finally did raise his head, he looked up and asked, speaking of our mother, “Have you ever met an angel? I have.” And Lisa beat Sheila to the punch, when she leaned in and whispered: “Are we at the right funeral?”
When it came time for me to eulogize my mom, I remember looking out and seeing that no one was crying harder than our father. Helen appeared to be literally holding him upright in the pew.
As was her illegal wish, we spread my mother’s ashes off of Dana Point, and nearly died doing it.
Lisa McIntyre, Shelia's best friend, whose family had taken us in, had since married a merchant marine sea captain. I always thought this was badass, because if anyone ever asked who was taking us out to scatter Mom’s ashes, we could truthfully turn to them and say: “A sea captain; just some sea captain we know...he’s taking us out on his personal vessel.” He took us out on their small sailboat and when the winds suddenly come up and the waves are now washing over the stern and the skipper looks over his shoulder and with a salty edge in his voice says something to the effect of “We probably better do this!,” you do it. So, my brother-in-law grabbed the back of my pants and I leaned way out over the dark water and now I've opened this little wooden box, and the boat is pitching around and I'm off-loading as much of my mom as I can, and the water is soaking my head, and the wind is blowing big clouds of mom dust into my mouth and all over my wet face and I finally rinse the last of the ashes out of the little box in the ocean and my brother-in-law reels me in, and I turn around looking like a former citizen of Pompeii. And her little smoking ghost shakes me and says: “Toughen up” because we can’t seem to stop crying and we can’t stop looking at the ash slick that used to be our mother slowly floating away on the surface of the angry ocean.
Two weeks later, I was back home in San Francisco, and I had a dream where my mother appeared to me. She leaned right over the top of what looked like the edge of a giant box and looked inside at me, sitting at the bottom and her face filled the dream frame and she said: “Tell The Truth!” and the shade in our bedroom shot up and went—Shee-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga! and I woke up screaming, and Diane woke up screaming, and I pointed to the shade and said “My mom just did that!”
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