Jaci Dawn

Bittersweet.

Memories of my mom swim beneath the tense surface where memories of my father float, more vivid because they are more recent. Mentally, I am planning for the drive to Ely to help put the estate in order and set my nephew up with permanent housing. Emotionally, I am quiet, waiting for the black clouds to roil overhead with their load of rain and hail and sorrow.

I didn’t cry much when my mom died, either. There was an air of sadness around the three of us who were present, but we spent our time trying to make the others laugh. We leaned on each other as we had never done before in our lives.

Mom died June 17, the day before Father’s Day, 1995. I was in Reno because my brother called me and said, “Get down here, now.” My dad said I should wait.

We were not at the hospital when Mom died. Dad couldn’t sit by her bedside and watch her die. He’d been there before, waiting through the death-watch, and he couldn’t do it again. I think my mother understood that of him and they had probably discussed it many times. It was not her first trip to the hospital with the emphysema and complications.

We were there within minutes when the hospital staff alerted my brother. I still remember my dad slamming his fist against a wall and crying out, “No, no no!”

An hour earlier, I leaned over my mom and whispered, “It’s OK. You’re going to do what you want to do. I understand that. I love you.” She was high on morphine but her eyes stopped to look deep into mine. She no longer could talk: the tubes had ruined her vocal cords. She squeezed my hand and I knew I would never see her alive again.

But what is death? A passing from here to there, a momentary exit. Heaven isn’t so far away: it is right next to us, hidden by a veil. The shell that remained was not my mother any more than the shell my dad left behind was him.

I wear the diamond she had in her wedding band. It was a gift to her from my dad’s grandfather: the diamond he gave his bride in 1896. It’s a half-carat diamond with an obvious flaw. I have it set in the wedding band that Don picked out for me.

The night my mom died, my dad and I played Ninja undercover cops. Terry was on call for Washoe County Sheriff’s Department and he got a page that there was a fatal wreck on the road north of Gerlach, NV. Dad said he’d never been to Gerlach in all his years as a Nevadan. Terry said we could come along.

So we fetched the light trailer and the police truck, and off we headed in the dark to Gerlach. We passed through town in the dark. It snowed some. In the heart of the desert, Terry turned on the sirens and lights just for us. When we came to the wreck, Dad and I sat in the truck and waited, our sweatshirt hoods up over our heads because we were ninja undercover cops. We were sad for the truck driver who died.

On Father’s Day we took a drive. Dad wanted to go to a place in California where an old friend of his lived: the old friend being a retired mortician who had once lived in Winnemucca and gone square dancing with my folks. Dad wanted to ask Skip what to do. Despite the fact we dropped in on them, Skip and Edna took care of my dad in his grief and gave him advice on how to proceed. When we left, my dad’s heart was at ease more than it had been.

We stopped at Donner Lake and watched a house go up in flames (a roof fire). There was a water spout on the lake in the blustery winds. Terry looked down and said, “What’s the blue stuff?”

I leaned out of my window looking for the wildflower I knew I could identify.

They both started laughing: the blue stuff was the water of Donner Lake. Nevadans don’t usually see that much water.

I was the butt of several more jokes that day. We laughed so hard. We stopped in Truckee and ate at some pub. Terry took us on a tour of Incline Village. We saw a coyote standing in the middle of the road in the middle of  the day. Even when we honked our horn and yelled at it, it did not run away. My dad predicted it was a coyote inured of humans and therefore very dangerous.

A few months later, a four year old girl in Incline Village was badly mauled by an urban coyote. I think it was the same creature.

Now it is Mother’s Day, 2011. I am mostly packed. I’ll load up some food and water before I head out. I remind myself that I will have to pump my own gasoline. I haven’t pumped gas since 1979. Dang, I hate driving out of state. The oil is changed in my car, I’ve checked the air pressure. I’m trying to remember what it is at the house that I want. I can’t leave until later this week.

Mostly, I am sitting here feeling about as useful as a ninja undercover cop on a midnight drive through Gerlach.

One thing I have on my dad: I have been through Gerlach in the daylight. We didn’t miss anything when we went through in the dark.