By BJ Hollars

One night as I wandered my empty house, I took to the typewriter in my basement to compose my first and last letter to my mother-in-law.

“Just a brief note to wish you well,” I typed, “as you begin the next round of challenges that lay ahead.”

The “challenges” had a name, but I didn’t want to burden her with the language the doctor’s used.  I doled out platitudes and promises instead, the kinds of things no one ever expects anyone to make good on.

I began by mentioning future visits, future plans, the activities we would one day do.  Next, I thanked her for the birdfeeder she’d gotten me for Christmas, told her I’d come to calling it Caryl’s Bird Sanctuary (even though my most dedicated visitors were squirrels).

It was a difficult letter to write, mainly because while those near to her in Indiana knew she was dying, from my vantage point 500 miles away in Wisconsin, all I knew was that she was still alive.

***

From her place on the front lines my wife kept me abreast of the situation, though the news she shared was always bad news, and the bad news just got worse.

“She’s still here,” my wife whispered one night from her place in her childhood bedroom.  “She’s like 20 feet away from me right now, but…it’s like she’s already gone.”

It was all the motivation I needed to return to my typewriter, hopeful that in my second attempt I’d muster the courage to move beyond filler and type what I’d never said aloud.

“Thank you,” I wrote, “for raising your daughter.  I see parts of you in all the best parts of her.”

My words weren’t much, but they were all I had to convey to her what I felt she most needed to hear: that her legacy would live on in her progeny, and that her job—now done—had been done well. They were a small kindness, one I offered because I feared I wouldn’t have another chance; but also because the words allowed me to be there without being there, thereby sparing me the worst of it.

The typewriter offered no backspace, no correction fluid, no way for me to grow shy and take it back.

As I wrapped up that second draft, my wife called yet again.

“We’re trying to move her downstairs,” she whispered.  “But she doesn’t want to go.  She knows once she does, she’ll never come upstairs again.”

I said nothing.

“I mean, we’ll have to move her tomorrow regardless,” my wife continued.  “Which means this is the last night she and my dad will ever sleep in that bed together.”

I folded the letter and stuffed it into the envelope.

***

A week or so prior, our lives had been quite different.  I was in my office at the university prepping for classes when I received the text from my wife who was home with the kids.

bad news, she wrote—no further explanation required.

For a few days we’d been awaiting Caryl’s test results, and though she’d already beaten back cancer twice, we feared the odds would be against her on a third bout.

I picked up the phone, asked my wife what exactly her mother had said.

“That it’s not good,” my wife repeated.  “That there are tumors all over her body.”

“Like…benign?”

“No.  Not like benign.”

An interminable silence, followed by my wife’s voice:

“Go to class,” she directed.  “You have to teach.”

Five minutes later I entered a classroom.

“Good afternoon,” I said.  “Today we’ll learn about academic register.”

***

Today we’ll learn about stage IV pancreatic cancer.

Which, as I soon learned myself, is the cancer and the stage you want the least.  It’s the one that leaves little room for treatment, and even less room for a son-in-law’s assurances that everything will be okay.

Because statistically speaking, if you are diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer, only 6% of you will be okay.  The rest of you will not be.  Pancreatic is often considered to be one of the deadliest cancers, not because it claims the most lives, but because the lives it claims it claims quickly, generally within the first year and often much sooner than that.

Caryl was proof. She was diagnosed on January 28 and died 17 days later.

Hours after receiving my wife’s text message, I walked home in the cold in perfect silence—up a hill, across a bridge, and finally, onto my street.  I passed the elementary school, the outdoor ice-skating rink, then slipped inside my house.

I worked my way down the dark hall—bypassing the dog and my infant daughter, Ellie, until arriving at my three-year-old son Henry’s room. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I noticed my wife’s silhouette alongside him, her body filling in the space where his Berenstain Bears books weren’t.

 

It was all the motivation I needed to return to my typewriter, hopeful that in my second attempt I’d muster the courage to move beyond filler and type what I’d never said aloud.

 

“Hey,” I whispered.  “You up?”

We met at the kitchen table moments later, opening wide the bottle of emergency wine and retrieving a pair of glasses.

Our conversation toggled between stunned silence and logistics, the latter involving who needed whom where and when.  The answer was obvious: my wife’s mother needed her daughter and grandchildren there and preferably now.

I sat helpless at that table as my language skills reverted to a Neanderthal state:

“So…this is bad news,” I said, repeating the text message.

My wife reached once more for the wine.

***

On Valentine’s Day, just days after my family’s most recent return home to Wisconsin, my wife was woken by a phone call from her father.

“You’d better start driving,” he said, “if you want to say goodbye.”

Later, I’d learn the facts surrounding that phone call.  How throughout the night Caryl had repeatedly tried to pull herself up from the bed, her anxiety growing along with her fitfulness.  This went on for much of the night, prompting my father-in-law to sleep with his feet propped on the edge of her bed, a cautionary measure to ensure he’d wake if she did.

There is a name for it—terminal restlessness—but none of us knew that then.

All we knew was what the nurse had told my father-in-law: that it was time to rally the troops.

My wife and daughter made up the first wave, while Henry and I stayed behind to perform all Berenstain Bear-related duties.  By which I mean we distracted ourselves in the books’ colored pages, taking refuge in a wonderland of tree houses, talking bears, and problems that always resolved by the last page.  There was a tidiness to their narratives, an inevitable answer, and no matter what the problem (a dentist’s visit, a messy room), the Bear family always endured.

Throughout that day, Henry and I took one trip after another down that sunny dirt road deep into Bear Country.  We were momentarily bachelors, and since there was no one to tell us enough was enough, we overindulged in the saccharine tales.  Henry sat rapt on my lap until the books ran out, at which point we drove to the library for more.

Since it was Valentine’s Day, we celebrated with a post-library visit to the record store.  There, we searched for records to make us feel good, his small hands flipping expertly through the dollar bins, a perfect imitation of me.

Eventually, he settled on a Broadway production of Peter Pan, while, I—after much deliberation—snagged a Stevie Nicks’ solo album.

My wife called as I walked our loot toward the register.

“Hey,” I said.  “How’s it going?”

“Okay,” she said.  “I guess my mom’s been asleep all day.  They don’t think she’s going to wake up again.”

I steadied myself by placing a hand in Henry’s curly hair.

“What are you guys doing?” she asked.

I told her about the record store, about our adventures deep into Bear Country.

“Sounds pretty cooooooool,” she said, her voice offering me a flash of our lives before the night of the emergency wine.  “Well, I better go.  It’s super windy out here.  I love you.”

“Happy Valentine’s,” I said.

***

Last Thanksgiving my wife’s family piled into cars to purchase an obscenely large Christmas tree from the lot just a few blocks away.

“This is our last one, Beej,” said my father-in-law as he slipped on shoes and cap.  “One last real, live tree.”

For the decade I’d known them, my in-laws had never wavered in their commitment to the real, live tree.  Year after year, my father-in-law was burdened with the work that it entailed: hauling it into the living room, screwing it into the stand, then rigging a network of wires to the wall to ensure that it stayed upright.  For those of us who simply enjoyed its pine-scented yuletide cheer, there was no question that the work was surely worth it.  Though I imagine this answer wasn’t so obvious to the man charged with carrying it out.

The rest of my in-laws were out the door when I realized my mother-in-law wasn’t among them.  She had never been one to miss anything, least of all a family tradition.

“I’ll stay back with Ellie,” I called to my wife, nodding to our dozing daughter snoring in my arms.  She nodded, and as I watched the headlights from those cars fade into the night, Ellie and I made our way upstairs to Caryl’s room.

She was huddled in her chair, her space heater just inches from her legs as she stared into the glow of her iPad.

“How’s Dr. Sleep?” I asked, nodding to the Stephen King book stationed at her bedside.

“Oh…it’s fine,” she shrugged.  “I don’t know how much I like it.”

I nodded, continued on with the small talk.

We chatted for twenty minutes or so until the family returned with their tree.

“Well,” I sighed, starting toward the stairs, “I guess we better go check on the damage.”

She didn’t follow me.

That was the moment I knew she was sick; that it wasn’t “our” last tree, but hers.

***

 

Throughout  the evening, my eyes focused not on the screen, but on my son’s fascination with those bears. I wanted to remember him that way: riveted, and not yet burdened by our burdens.

 

While driving home from the grocery store on Valentine’s night, my wife called to inform me of her mother’s death.

“She’s gone,” she said.  “It’s over.”

Stunned, I parked the car in the drive and then proceeded to preheat the oven.  Henry and I had spent the last half an hour or so ranking pizzas in the frozen food aisle, and given the extreme care he’d put into his selection, I felt I could hardly deny him his reward.

I stuffed Henry with supreme pizza, then had him wash it down with a 16-ounce can of peach iced-tea.

Comfort food, I told myself, even if he didn’t yet know he needed it.

That night, Henry and I ventured even deeper into Bear Country, watching a marathon’s worth of Berenstain Bears TV episodes from the DVD we’d checked out at the library that day.

We crowded into bed and wrapped the blankets tight around us, then watched as Too Tall and his gang peer-pressured Brother Bear into stealing a watermelon from Farmer Ben’s field.

Throughout much of the evening, my eyes focused not on the screen, but on my son’s fascination with those bears.  I wanted to remember him that way: riveted, and not yet burdened by our burdens.

Later that night, once the TV was muted and Henry was fast asleep, my wife would recount the details of her mother’s death.

How she, her dad, and her siblings had gathered for dinner around the living room bed, when, in the midst of their taco salad, she faded.

My wife stood to grab a napkin, glanced at the bed, asked: “Why isn’t Mom breathing?”

Life continued: calls were made and dishes placed in the drying rack.

An hour or so later, after the counter had been wiped of Doritos’ dust, the hospice nurse arrived to confirm what was already known.

Meanwhile, back in Bear Country, I guided Henry through his nightly prayers.

“…if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”

“Amen,” I said.

“Amen,” he said.

Then one of us fell asleep.

***

In the week’s that followed, grief’s pressure points hit hard and fast and often.  One day my wife diced an onion and began to cry, not for the usual onion-dicing reasons, but because her mother had simply loved onions.  Another day she stared at the toenail clippers and was overcome with the memory of clipping her mother’s nails the week before her death.

Today, while driving, my wife asked:

“Do you want to know the saddest thing?”

“Not really.”

“She just renewed her passport.”

***

There was a time before the cancer—or between the cancers—when everything was fine.  It’s hard to remember that now, even though we have the pictures to prove it. All those photos of all those smiles; we had no reason not to.

At the funeral home, these pictures scrolled past on several screens, giving family and friends a place to rest their eyes.  The pictures had no chronology.  There was young Caryl alongside old Caryl alongside Caryl and her kids.  There was happy-go-lucky Caryl alongside first-bout-of-cancer Caryl alongside Caryl in the front porch family photo.

I’m in that one, too, smiling with a newborn on my lap.

Seven months after that photo was snapped, my wife asked her mother if her life had gone as she’d hoped.

“Sure,” her mother replied from her deathbed, “up until now.”

***

I won’t say much about the funeral, except that I can’t remember the last time I’ve had a front row seat reserved for anything.

I didn’t want it, and thanks to Ellie’s wailing, I didn’t even need it.

Two days later—after the house was filled with flowers and the ashes were placed on the shelf—my entire family was brought down by the flu.

My children puked in unison, my wife following soon after.  For a while, I was our only hope, and in an effort to give my wife a rest, I transported the sick kids to my parent’s house just a few miles away.

That’s when I, too, became sick.

My mom helped out the best she could, but Ellie would have nothing to do with her.  She insisted I hold her continuously—no exceptions—which meant I soon found myself cradling my daughter in my left arm while wrapping my right arm around the toilet rim.

As my body heaved its insides out, it was all I could do to hold tight to her.  I trembled, wiped away my spit, tried hard to block out the smell of stomach acid.  Ellie watched curiously, gave me a grin, then gripped my arm as I gagged awhile longer.

Eventually, my mom swooped in to snag my daughter.

“Don’t worry,” she shouted over Ellie’s wails, ” it’ll be fine.”

She was right; it would be fine for me.  I still had my mom.

***

For weeks, Henry and I sought solace in every Berenstain Bear book we could find, scanning the library’s shelves again and again, hoping for something new. And while we indeed learned a lot about cleaning messy rooms and visiting dentists, those bears remained mum on the subject of dead mother-in-laws. Surely the solace we sought resided somewhere down that sunny dirt road deep in Bear Country. But despite our best efforts, Henry and I could never quite find that road, that country. Instead, we took refuge in the only country we had. The terrain was rough, the route unmapped, but we walked every step of it together.

Author’s Note: The week before Caryl died, Henry and I walked into the living room where her bed had been moved. “Grandma, how was your day?” he asked. “Good,” she told him, glancing at me “I received a nice letter in the mail.” Later, I’d find that letter folded on her bedside table. No one’s spoken of it since.

BJ is the author of several books, including the forthcoming From The Mouths of Dogs: What Our Pets Teach Us About Life, Death, and Being Human and a collection of essays, This Is Only A Test. He is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

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