Caviar

When my mother knew what it was, she used to love caviar. Not necessarily Beluga, Ossetra or Sevruga. Something less pricey out of a lumpfish would do. When Mother knew what it was, she also loved champagne, although it certainly did not have to be Dom Perignon. And when Mother could dance—not so very long ago when she knew what dancing was and could do it really well—she loved dancing with my father. Mom and Dad would sometimes go away on their anniversaries, to someplace where a good band was playing. When they danced, people would watch them and applaud.

When my mother was young, she was very beautiful. Today well-meaning people are always saying, “My, what a pretty, sweet, nice lady!” Perhaps she does possess another kind of beauty. My mother was once Phi Beta Kappa at Vassar, the captain of her lacrosse team, a good amateur golfer. After she married my father, she shared her life with him completely. They wanted to be their own warm, self-contained world. In a certain sense, they cut themselves off from their extended families in the east and moved west to California. They struggled for a bit, but they eventually became successful and popular business people together. Eternal lovebirds, they believed in that sadly vanishing code of commitment: “To death do us part.”

Dad still holds this credo, and no nurse has ever attended to a suffering patient with more devoted attention and care than my father has attended to my mother. But a few days ago, just after one of her innumerable trips to the bathroom, my mother collapsed in my father’s arms. He hardly had the strength to carry her to the bed. Hospice people had been coming to the apartment for several weeks by this point, and when they showed up, Dad said, “It will break my heart if she suddenly ‘wakes up’ and asks, ‘Where’s Frank? Where’s my Frank? Where’s Poco?’ But I think it’s time you take her to the home.”

The first day at the home she surprised us all. She was the archetypal sweet, smiling, pretty little lady—happy to see or greet anyone. Signs were hopeful for June 30, the 67th wedding anniversary. Dad had dreams of caviar, champagne and a dozen yellow roses. Of course, mother wouldn’t know what day it was. She wouldn’t know if it was Perrier-Jouët or Sprite, sturgeon or codfish, roses or chrysanthemums. But Betty and I wanted to achieve some small victory over fate, and together we somehow came up with the wine, the flowers and the fish roe—good Ossetra. The Sevruga is still waiting in the La Jolla store for Donald Trump.

Mother, however, was miserable when we arrived at the home, and she remained in pain and distress throughout the entire anniversary celebration. She seemed to be saying. “Help me. I’m hurting.” Her words, when they came at all, were slurred. She gasped for air and her gestures expressed a kind of desperation. Her face was hollow. She may have smiled once. Dad, who never cries (and who gave his two sons strict orders to obey his example), confessed to wanting to break into tears. We assured him it was permitted.

Outside it was about 91 degrees Fahrenheit. The piercing shriek of an alarm kept going off as patients with encoded armbands tried to roll out the wrong doors. Mother’s bed was immediately between two others, and their occupants went cheerfully to and fro, one of them with her son and a dog. The son, a strange man with a broken nose, talked a blue streak and shared some of the champagne. Nurses went in and out. Mother struggled with a half teaspoon of apple sauce and a couple of pills. She would not eat her pureed turkey, pureed broccoli and pureed potatoes. She would not drink her high-energy vanilla milkshake. Perhaps if it had been chocolate? The rest of us, sipping from plastic cups, managed two bottles of Piper-Sonoma brut before leaving.

Dad doesn’t like or eat caviar. Betty and I ate it somewhat sullenly much later that evening, with sour cream on Carr’s water biscuits. “It’s just something rich people think they need to have,” said Betty. But I think Mom knew how to enjoy life—when she knew what it was.