one teensy little lie

I lied today. I have said for a long time, and this by way of literary bio: I'm a liar, not a writer. Truth be told in these few pages....

But there I was, hard at work among the dyin'. I was in Ardith's room, asking the "20 stupid questions." They range from, "Have you had any hospitalizations in a psychiatric facility," which almost no one answers ambigously; and "Are your bowels regular?" But my favorite by far is this: "What is your lifetime occupation?" My favorite answer to this question so far is this: "Oh, honey. Get a chair. This is going to take awhile." And it did. It took me awhile to find a chair, because I was in a hurry, and I only had 12 spaces to fill in and I tried to pry the one fact out of her. Just one word. Sum it up. Snap it up. I have work to do. And then, as the moment settled around me, as I saw the longing of her unexpressed story, the madness of not being able to say it outloud, of having to play it over and over again in the waning light of a vanishing mind, I sat. Impertinent. Stupid. And she told me of her husbands, and her life as a model. A model. As her body spread around her like shade. And just a little about her children. And this is the lie of it all.

Ardith died this morning.

You can't judge families. I know this. If there is one thing I've learned about dyin' is that there is no right way and no wrong way. Everybody does it different. Some teach us how to live, some how to die. Ardith's daughter hadn't visited her very often at all and the staff judged her for it. They had a tough relationship, from what I hear. And I don't know anything. But she showed up this morning--the daugher--and she was the way daughters are upon the death of a mother: Orphaned. Lost. It doesn't matter what went on before. The gaping wound of childbirth and all the years between lay exposed to the neon halflight of the hospital room, her mother's trinkets lining the shelves above the single colonial maple dresser she had hung onto, stautes of dancing dolphins and stuffed valentine bears, precious trash, dollar-store bingo prizes, all packed and moved in an instant. And the staff was mad at her. She was desperate to know if her mother had asked for her, if she was mad at her, if she loved her. She asked that: "Did she say she loved me?" No one could answer the question. What can you say? They are all good Christians, and I'm the kind of Christian you'll find in Anne Lamott's book Travelling Mercies. Barely Christian. Just barely.

So I made up a story. It wasn't a whole lie. I had let Ardith tell me the story of her life. I just made it a little bigger, a little sweeter, a little more of what she was looking for. A little more about her.

She thanked me. It was that easy. Then it was over. And I let the rest of them think I made the whole thing easier on her, but really, as always, I was just making it easier for me.