Eileen Succumbs to Complications of the Virus, Covid-19
by Christopher Emerson
For nearly fifty years, since boyhood, I’d thought about how my mother would pass from this world—a morbid rumination, wondering what force of nature would have the power, finally, to take her down. When it happened last year in early April, she wasn’t prepared. I’d heard fear in her voice in a phone call two nights before—unfamiliar fear, a luxury she’d never allowed herself, or perhaps, the world never accorded her.
The virus swept through my mother’s assisted living complex just as a late-night fall sent her to hospital, where she tested positive for Covid. After Eileen was admitted, I received regular phone updates from the shift nurses a thousand miles away. I imagine she was not an easy patient. She rejected hospice care, although it would have eased her pain, helped prepare a smooth transition.
Eileen preferred to stick around and fight. She didn’t know any other way.
Then, after two or three “bad nights,” my mother simply vanished. Such a hurried departure, certain to bring complications.
*
April 6th, the date of my mother’s death. April 7th, 8th, as if on cue, once evening settled in, my hands, held in a vice grip, the fingers splayed, curled into claws, bone-crushed, down to the wrist—too fast, too wild for an arthritis flare-up, too quick to abate, after just ninety minutes—my mother’s pain, her essence, being drawn from me.
This new absence from the physical plane, more than a wind shear, or tropical depression: Hurricane Eileen, left swirling between worlds.
I could feel her presence, as if to distract me from the pain, this girl from the frozen upstate who dipped her snowballs in cold water, let them stand—then launched the iced projectiles at innocent strangers from behind a snowy berm. Chased, sometimes caught by furious men, she’d laugh in their faces as though they were boys. All in a good day’s play.
Later, from behind the veil of marriage, my mother continued to live this way: stirring pots, stalking prey—maintaining absolute control, causing chaos, then walking away, blameless, unscathed.
*
Days before the virus takes her, an older, more dangerous version of my mother comes to me in a dream. She suggests that I conjure one good memory of the two of us together, to remind you, she says, that I wasn’t all bad.
The familiar bugle call, the call to the post—then, the voice of the announcer echoing through the grandstand. Eileen and I look up from our racing forms, snap our gum, flick our ash. The horses are entering the track for the running of the Canandaigua Classic. My mother smooths her skirt, slips her stilettos back on, walks to the betting window, wheels the 7 horse, then places my two-dollar bet to show. She hands me my ticket, a slip of cheap pink paper, the ink nearly dry.
Every year, I get to skip school for the first day of racing at Finger Lakes. The memory—this day, every year, ours alone, my mother’s and mine—redemptive.
*
Near the end of the dream, she asks for my forgiveness. Unthinking, I turn away. I want, just once, to hear her say: I’m sorry. I turn back to respond to her request. But she has vanished.
There is nothing but the aftertaste of Chesterfield smoke, its bitter ash, the afternoon sun on my bare neck. Sharp spikes of sunlight slicing through the perfectly manicured, curry-combed sienna terre of the oval track.