Evelyn's Final Project for Ling & Lit

Evelyn Stanley
Dr. Hallen
Final Project
Summer 2009

Bathroom Bear—the Sonnet
A fear lies hulking, skulking in the night
And travels with me on appointed rounds
The bear was lying wait beyond my sight
And yet his very thought my fear propounds

A haven off’ring, proff’ring safety’s light,
The campground restroom gives an eerie glow,
But now I cannot stay nor cans’t take flight,
The bear’s without—my black, unchallenged foe.

I listen to my wond’ring, thund’ring heart,
It tells me that I must confront the fear,
Imbued with courage as ‘twere heaven’s part,
I burst my prison door and left the bear.

Unbeknownst to me, the bear had left,
And so it was with fear that faith had cleft.




Alma 26:8

Blessed be the name of our God;
Let us sing to his praise, yea,
Let us give thanks to his holy name,
For he doth work righteousness forever.

I praise the name of my Almighty King,
I sing of all works under Heaven,
His is the name by which I am saved,
The name of Salvation given.




I Stand All Amazed

My second great grandmother, Mary Magdalena Mauchley Wilson, was a teen when her family heard the gospel preached in Switzerland in the 1860s. There was persecution of outside religions in Switzerland at that time. The family sneaked away on New Year’s Eve of 1862 to be baptized. Perhaps when worshipping in their new faith, the broken bread would also serve as a reminder of the broken ice of their baptismal water, necessary shattering of old lives so that new life could begin. Later, those same steps of faith led her across Europe, the Atlantic Ocean, past settled America, across the Great Plains and over the Rocky Mountains. Her life did not get any easier, but her faith did. A part of me desires to find the part of the family that stayed behind—a message and work left to me by mothers and grandmothers now guiding the gathering from the other side of the veil. Another part wants to know the place she left when she set her heart towards Zion. I want to go there and feel the foundation of my heritage between my fingers. I want to stand where she stood—a sacred pilgrimage of faith returned. Then the whispers flow into my thoughts: No. Do not stand where she stood. She left there to stand here. Make your stand of faith here where her faith brought her.

I love to sing the hymn which so reverently states, “I stand all amazed at the love Jesus offers me, confused at the grace that so fully he proffers me. I tremble to know that for me He was crucified, that for me a sinner he suffered, he bled, and died. Oh it is wonderful that he should care for me enough to die for me. Oh it is wonderful, wonderful to me.” The first line repeats in my mind: “I stand all amazed at the love Jesus offers me.” Then, I realize, “I stand all amazed at the love.” I continue to the simple truth: “I stand all amazed. I stand all. I stand.” Because of His sacrifice, I stand. I stand up; I stand out; I understand; I take a stand. I stand where Mary stood, and I stand for what she stood.




Commute

I leave those temples of learning spoken of in vision,
To make a weary way home after a day of seeking.
The still of twilight fills my soul with peaceful thoughts,
As I follow the chain of mountains that ring my travel home.
My breath still catches as I enter Salt Lake Valley from the point,
My eyes caressing the majestic view of the valley home I love.
My commute feels guarded by mountain sentinels,
And as evening falls I see more: one, two, three, four, five
Mountains of the Lord.
A string of light between school and home.





Eddie

I spotted the tall, young man as I was walking back to my grocery cart. I put the cottage cheese down next to the milk and gave him another discrete sideways glace. He was standing with a couple of friends in front of the beer case. Something was very familiar about him. Could this be Eddie? I half-talked myself out of the possibility. After all, it had been years, and he didn’t live in my neighborhood. Then I was sure of it. This was Eddie.
My mind opened up to a view of the second grade classroom that Eddie shared with my youngest daughter so many years ago. I remembered the many hours I spent with him in the hall as a classroom volunteer tutoring him. Eddie was always behind and needed extra one-on-one coaching with his math and reading. I would hold up the math flashcards one at a time and wait for him to formulate an answer.
Eddie was a sweet boy. Perhaps he couldn’t read well, but the teacher seemed to be getting him the help he needed. Surely he would be all right. In the meantime, I held up the little red construction paper racecars with the math facts for him to ponder. I didn’t know anything else about his life, but I could tell he had struggles. I wondered where he would end up. Eddie and my daughter continued to share classrooms for the next several years, and so I saw him quite regularly during grade school. He was always polite but kind of lost. I worried about Eddie. We spent too many hours together in the school hallways learning times-tables for me not to be invested.
During junior high and high school I would ask my daughter about Eddie once in a while. For a short stint, I substituted as the receptionist for the high school counseling office. There I crossed his path again, as he was in and out of his counselor’s office. I knew him from way back, so when he came in I would always greet him and ask about his welfare more pointedly than I would other students. I saw him at graduation—I was glad he had made it that far.
Now here he was standing in front of the beer aisle at the grocery store. Something gave me the boldness to overcome any reticence I may have been feeling, and I found myself walking right up to this young man in the black leather jacket, with a motherly confidence.
“Are you Eddie?” I asked. He turned to look at me. “I’m Esther’s mom,” I continued.
“I recognize you,” he said. I took his hand and gave him a long handshake, and we talked for just a few minutes—just crossing paths again. I looked deeply at him and held up the flashcards of life for him to answer. We talked easily, and he was very open. Some of his story unfolded—still so much about him I do not know. His hair was long and stringy. He was missing some teeth. He said he’d been in trouble, some real trouble along the way. He had two children by two different women. But he was doing better, he said. He was getting ready to start school in a few weeks—a small, private trade school—the kind you see advertised on late night television.
I wished him well, and meant it. He asked about my daughter, his long ago school chum. His friends were waiting. We said good bye and parted. I watched him turn and walk down the grocery store aisle—a little blond second grader with a funny grin, trouble reading, and a kind heart. I hoped he would find himself—soon. I wished that I had told him to never forget that there are people who care about him, but I didn’t think of it until he had walked away—just about the same time I remembered his last name.






Die like a Movie
By Evelyn Stanley
Perhaps Mom’s love of movies came from growing up with Shirley Temple during the Great Depression. Talking movies, the Depression, and Shirley Temple were sensational in the 1930s, when my mother was a child. It could be that Mom spent Saturday afternoons at the matinee watching Shirley lift the country’s morale to the tempo of her tap shoes. Perhaps Mom’s love of the movies matured when she did—during the War years. Mom was a teenager, young woman, then bride when the world was at war. This was the era of big name studio stars who, when not plugging war bonds on-screen, distracted movie patrons from the lists of war dead posted to the notice board outside the local post office. Maybe Mom simply loved the big-screen drama. From the plush, gilded theaters to the adrenaline-filled newsreels to the character-rich plots with the “I love you—don’t ever leave me—I beg you” dialogs, everything about the movie experience was dramatic, and so was my mother. She could get lost in the movie moment and become completely absorbed in the intense emotion on the screen. We children would laugh and tease whenever we caught her pursing her lips as she watched the on-screen lovers kiss.
Going to the movies was expensive, and my family didn’t watch movies at theaters very often. However, once each summer, Mom and Dad packed us kids into the station wagon with blankets and pillows, and we went to the drive-in movie. Dad maneuvered the car along the rows of parked vehicles filled with the Saturday night movie-goers already watching the movie on the giant outdoor screen. We crept along in the dark—the car headlights were turned off so as not to interfere with the on-screen lighting. We kids cranked our necks to watch the playing movie through the car windows, hoping that we would not be relegated to the back of the drive-in as Dad drove slowly up one row and down the next. Though we couldn’t hear the sound yet, the movie was exciting, and we could hardly wait for Dad to park the car. It always took Dad several tries to get the car situated. He spotted an empty space and we, his anxious passengers, chanted “Yeah, yeah, this one! This is perfect—no wait, that one over there is better! Come on!” The only other family enterprise that required such skill and effort was our yearly trip to the Christmas tree lot each December, where the hunt for the perfect Christmas tree was just as laborious. Meanwhile, Dad pulled the car into the spot of empty asphalt as close as possible to the metal pole that held the speakers. He eased up the man-made embankment that positioned each car so it pointed up towards the screen, then he backed out a little, then up again, then back, then over a bit, then back until we had the best view. He rolled down his window and unhooked the speaker for our parking space from where it hung on the pole. When it was securely hung on the inside of Dad’s window, he rolled the window back up as far as it would go while carrying the speaker, then he turned the sound up so we could all hear—unless—the speaker didn’t work. Then we realized that was why that “good” spot had been unoccupied, and we started the entire process over again.
In spite of this annual adventure, most of our movie watching was on the small screen at home. Long before VHS or DVD, this is where Mom passed down her love of old movies to me. It didn’t matter that the movies were in black-and-white, so was our television—everything we watched was in black-and-white. As we watched the Afternoon Movie Theater on Channel Four, Mom talked me through the plots, shared her admiration of the stars, helped me appreciate the suspense or sentiment, and made sure I knew who were the heroes and villains. Old movies and Mom went together like popcorn and butter.
Life in the movies was glamorous and exciting, so it followed that death in the movies would be just as exciting and glamorous. The movie death-scenes I watched from the living room couch in the afternoon haze seemed to blend together into one familiar scene: the soon-to-dearly-depart lied pale and peaceful under the satin bed covers. Last wishes were promisingly tendered and tenderly promised in return. Devoted family members brimmed about the bed while holding hands and dabbing brimming eyes. With a fond last look at each adoring child and a final fare-thee-well, the beloved mother’s eyes closed and her head turned to one side. The sobs momentarily rose while the women sorrowfully buried their faces in the men’s chests, and the men put their arms around their wife or sister while they, themselves, stared off empty and trancelike, overcome with grief. The doctor announced, “She’s gone,” as he pulled the sheet up over her perfectly made-up face, and the devoted husband followed up with, “And to a better place.” The assembled nodded in resolute agreement and dried their tears as they walked each other from the room, resolved to be better people—the kind of people Mom wanted them to be.
Years later when my mother played out her real-life death scene, nothing about it resembled the naïve death fantasies I remembered from the old movies we watched together. Mom didn’t die like in the movies. Hers was an awful, ugly, two-year fight-to-the-death with metastatic breast cancer that left me physically exhausted, emotionally traumatized, and in the end, motherless. There was no doctor at the scene—insurance didn’t provide for that. We, mostly my two sisters, were the caregivers while Mom labored to die at home. No satin bed covers. At the end, as she lay in a brain-tumor stupor, all covers and even nightgowns were removed to provide for ease for the many procedures that were needed. To preserve some dignity, even though she lay unconscious, towels were strategically placed to cover the most private areas.
As we cared for our dying mother, we grown children watched our father “die” emotionally alongside his wife of nearly fifty years. We became caregivers to him as well as her, as throughout the ordeal he ran through the house wringing his hands and crying, crumbling as he watched his lover and sweetheart die one piece at a time. He wasn’t ready to let her go, he never would have been, and he never did. Until her last breath, he held out for the miracle that would restore her cancer-riddled organs, remove the tumors throughout her body, and return his sense of security and self.
Throughout her life, Mom had never been a physically strong woman. Her strength was in her mind and will, and that became more evident as she held on throughout each turn of her disease. So it was frightening to me when she went through a short, yet acute, depression when the word “terminal” first became part of her life. She was bed-ridden and wasn’t able to escape from her sickbed-prison to ever retreat from the cancer that was her constant companion. We stood by helplessly as she found her own way to run away: she “left” emotionally for a few days. She sunk deep into her soul to fight the battle inside, but when she re-emerged a few days later, she was ready to face what she could not change.
It was September when we learned that the cancer was incurable. The doctor told Mom she would survive from six months to ten years. We found out later that that was a pleasant platitude, designed to protect the medical community from a wrong guess. Her cancer was vigorous and advanced. Much later in the course of her suffering, we were to learn that the results from the surgery an entire year earlier had read like a death sentence—twelve out of eighteen lymph nodes were cancerous—a lethal percentage. Mom gave me the assignment to call the “short list” of friends and relatives she thought should be informed—loathsome duty, but I could never refuse Mom. She told me where to locate her personal address book, and I sat next to her bed and made the phone calls. First on the list was her only sister: “My mom asked me to call you and—let you know—that—her cancer—is—terminal.” I could not believe how difficult it was to choke out the words. It was one thing to academically understand that the cancer was going to take her life. It was quite another to hear the words come out of my mouth. Especially now—she was stronger and healthier than she had been in months. She had recovered through the summer months from the long winter of chemo and radiation. She was living her life again; she was feeling better, not terminal. I didn’t think that I was that tied to my mother, and I am the older and more mature daughter, I thought. But repeating that sentence out loud brought uncontrollable tears, and the catch in my throat gave me away.
As her time became shorter and her needs more critical, the family spent more and more time gathered at home—taking turns through the night or just standing watch over both of our parents. Some nights, every couch, chair, or spot of floor within earshot of Mom was filled with a family member—either too tired to drive home, or too worried to leave. The little room in the back corner of the little house had become the center of our lives. It was where our mother still reigned over her court: her throne—the sick bed where she lay propped up; her scepter—the IV dripping the morphine; her ladies in waiting—my sisters who did most of the procedures and washing and medicating; her courtesans—all who gathered near to offer a bit of solace to her and to each other.
There were moments of humor that lifted the oppressive cloud of sorrow that hung over us. One day before the disease robbed Mom of her mind, we were sitting about her bed offering useless clichés—searching for anything that might bring comfort. I reminded her of all the beloved souls from her life that had already gone on before. These were people that she adored and missed and included such family luminaries as her parents, her grandparents, and beloved aunts and uncles. When I finished my (what I thought was convincing) speech, Mom was quiet for a moment. When she spoke again she said, “Well, in my life those were the people that bossed me around. I would rather stay here.”
Another day, after the cancer had affected Mom’s brain, when one particular sister was the only one home with her, Mom produced an entire program—a dramatic talent that she was well-known for. This day, in spite of the curtain of cancer clouding her mind, Mom put on an entire “West Jordan Days” program. Though her married life had been lived in Midvale, Mom had grown up in West Jordan, and her roots were there. At the end of the “program,” Mom made an announcement (to the bedroom wall) in her best professional voice: “As you all know, Mrs. Sharp has been quite ill, so her daughter will now say a few words in her behalf.” What makes this incident especially hilarious is that the daughter in question is the extremely shy daughter—who never performs or speaks anywhere for any reason. My sister hesitated—even for an imaginary public speech. Mom would have none of it. “Go on—get out there. The audience is waiting.” So my sister gave a proper speech (to the bedroom wall) excusing my ill mother and speaking a few words for her. After the “program” ended, my mother leaned over and whispered to my sister: “I’m worried about the Japanese people in the audience—they look depressed.” We wished we wrote down the funny, poignant, and profound things that happened during Mom’s illness. We knew we would want to reflect on them later, but the immediate crisis consumed every effort we had.
I do remember how shocked I was when Mom calmly told me, after I had escorted one of her visitors to the door, her perception that they had come to say their “good-byes.” The thought was too vulgar, too brash, and hadn’t even occurred to me—probably because I wasn’t ready to say my own “good-byes.” I was taken aback to think that people were starting to send her off, and I was stunned by her own self-awareness. Her brother made a special trip to see her and flew in from New York City, in his words, to see her “before she got all sloppy.” They had a long and good visit about life, death, West Jordan, growing up, growing old, and—they said good-bye. A friend of many years came by one day to check in on her. It was a bad time. Mom was in tremendous pain and needed several urgent procedures. The household was in a dither (as Mom would have said) as everyone dashed to and fro taking care of various needs. On one hurried pass down the hallway, I stepped into the living room where her old friend was patiently waiting out the crisis so he could have a moment with her. I hastily apologized and explained the situation. He said words I have not forgotten. I can still see him in my mind sitting in the big chair next to the front door, his arms resting along the arms of the chair and his hands gripping the ends as he said, “Well, it’s hard getting into this world, but it’s even harder getting out.”
I felt cheated when the cancer took Mom’s mind. Her “terminal” status meant no more expensive tests, but it is safe to surmise that a tumor or swelling or both finally reached a point where the pressure affected her cognitive abilities. She was now semi-conscious and no longer recognized her world. I did not know this would happen; it came on abruptly, and I was not prepared for it. I had planned to say my good-byes when it was time, and though she was still here, it was too late.
It was now summer, and as the long, hot days wore on, so did Mom’s fight. We watched and waited as she outlived every prediction for the duration of her illness. On the Fourth of July, my sister shared Mom’s last lucid episode. It was a joyful, peaceful interlude. The late afternoon sun shown in through the bedroom window, where the hospital bed had been positioned and from where the two of them watched my sister’s five-year-old daughter dance with sparklers and play in the grass. Without any prior indication, Mom had “awakened” and spent a perfect, lovely evening with a daughter and granddaughter. It would be the last time. She lapsed back into a coma for eighteen more days.
Mom’s “limited engagement” closed too soon. The last week—an entire week—was filled with horrific grand mal seizures as the cancer took dominance over her brain. The seizures got closer and closer together until they were happening every seven minutes. In spite of the morphine, I never saw my mother completely relieved of her pain. I wanted to scream, “Give her more! Give her enough to quit the pain. She’s already unconscious. So what if she gets ‘addicted.’ She’s dying!” At one point she hallucinated that she kept giving birth. We realized later that that had been her only way of communicating the intense pain in her tumor-filled abdomen.

One sister lived just around the corner from Mom; the other sister was a professional nurse. Both were closer emotionally to Mom than I was, and I was crazy raising four teenagers at the time. But my sisters needed me—I needed—to help somehow. I approached Mom as to whether she would like me to make her burial dress. She was excited to choose her last dress. I brought pictures, patterns, and fabric samples to her bedside, and she selected a simple white satin with an iridescent lace bodice overlay. I was thrilled to offer something unique, needed, and personal. The cares of that summer were overwhelming and didn’t leave much free time for me to sew. And then she was “gone” before she actually passed on. I felt so bad that I hadn’t finished her dress in time for her to see it. I brought it to her bedroom the night it was done and hung it on her closet door where she could see it if by some chance she became cognizant. I stood there alone in the subdued lighting and looked at the cards, flowers, and pictures of Christ about the room. I approached her unconscious body and whispered, “Mom, here’s your dress. I’m sorry I didn’t get it done sooner. I wish you didn’t need it, but I hope you like it.” Then, having been told the sense of hearing is the last to stop working, I continued: “I love you, Mom. Thank you for everything. Good-bye.” I left a kiss and half-expected her eyes to open. I strained to hear her say, “I love you, too,” but all I heard was her heavy, unconscious breathing. The dress hung there, specter like, until it was delivered to the mortician. However, it also hung there hopefully and beautifully: hopeful, for as long as it was there it signified that she lived, and beautiful, as if to represent the new life waiting for her in the arms of her Heavenly Father.
When her body finally came to terms with the cancer, the violence of the seizures ceased. Though the house was filled with loved-ones, she peacefully took her last breath with only one son-in-law in her room keeping watch. Mom had dictated a portion of her obituary to me several months earlier. There was to be no trite “after a valiant fight with cancer” in my mother’s obit. Her first paragraph reads: “Donnabel Spratling Sharp died after a rip-roarin,’ snortin’ battle with metastatic breast cancer. She lost.”
It wasn’t a movie; it was life.