Mary Catherine Treacy Fak about a year before she died.
By Mike Fak
You know the call is going to come. You put it out of your mind as many times as it pops into your head but you always know it will happen one day. Always when the thought crops into your head you ask God, not today. Not next week. Not next year. The call is as inexorable as life itself. It comes in its own time, not ours.
My call came at 6:45 a.m. Sunday May 25th. My sister Patricia made the call to tell me Mary Catherine Treacy Fak, our mother, my mother, had died.
Mary Catherine had not been feeling well for a long time. She was getting around enough to complain about feeling poorly, and since at age 54 I have such days myself, I didn’t give it the import that it seems I should have. I should have called one last time. I should have taken the time from a totally mundane and thus unimportant life to go visit her just one more time. But I thought the call wouldn’t come today, not next week, not next year.
She had been in the hospital. A guinea pig for a battery of tests that showed perhaps she had a mild stroke somewhere along the line. Nothing too serious the doctors said. Not good was the prognosis, not bad either was their determination. 76 years old carries its own medical baggage. Nothing to get too worried about I surmised. Not today, or next week, or next year.
She had just come home from the hospital the other day and was getting ready for a grandmother’s bonanza of family pride. Grand daughters and grandsons were about to graduate from grammar school as well as high school and she was determined to be there in person for all of them. She had birthed five children, Michael, Mary Ellen, Ann, Patricia and John, but her ten grandchildren were what was truly important in her life. None of the five children ever minded that of course. Somewhere along the line she had become grandma not Ma and her five children accepted the change as the natural progression of life.
In the past few years, my calls or my mothers calls to me had always ended in I love you. I don’t know why it started, but somehow that ending phrase became more important than the conversation did. Such a simple thing to say. So hard for some of us to get out of our mouths.
Mom, always one to just talk on and on, had developed a true love for Sharon and Tim, often I would see Sharon just hold the receiver in the air and ask me if I wanted to talk with mom. Too many times, I waived her off, mouthing silently I wasn’t home right now. I always thought I had tomorrow, next week, next year. I will now live with those failed chances for as long as I go on.
I told Patricia I would make the call to Mary Ellen. I remembered sitting there looking at the phone. I rationalized that I should wait until I was sure that I would not awake her and Mark with such sad news. I knew all along she was an early riser, but as long as I didn’t make the call, one of us believed mom was still alive. One of us didn’t have to plan a funeral for their mother. Finally I called. I was quiet and Mary Ellen was as well. Then what happened, when, what are the plans, kept us from becoming emotional. Quickly she said she would see me the next day and I hung up without a thought to really talking to my oldest sister about what we felt. Perhaps tomorrow, next week, next year.
My sister Ann who had to make the call in 1983 that my father had died, called around 9:00 a.m. She started out fine and then she lost it. I found out right then that I had a very short fuse regarding mom’s death. I was fine just as long as you were. You lose it, and so will I. As I hung up I regretted not telling her I loved her and how much I appreciated all that she and Mike and Michelle had done for mom over the years.
I talked to my sister-in-law Audra that afternoon, and as she handed the phone to my brother John, she blurted out that she loved me. I replied in kind immediately. It’s so easy to tell someone you care. It gets ignored so readily. We always think we can wait until tomorrow, or next week, or next year.
John was solid and stoic but I could tell that if one of us lost it, we both would. His conversation told me that he regretted being ten minutes late to the hospital. A 2:00 a.m. drive trying to see your mother before she dies probably set off a series of demons in John’s head. I will talk to him about those thoughts. I need to find the symbiosis between his thoughts and mine. He was just a few miles away from talking to mom one last time. I was just the pickup of a phone away. Neither of us made it. As the conversation ended, I blurted out that I loved him. He snapped back the same and I wondered what terrible stigma is there to telling someone you care or that you appreciate them. What makes it so hard to say affectionate words to someone you care about that you decide to wait until tomorrow, or next week, or next year.
I find myself walking around the house today talking to mom. That makes sense doesn’t it? I could have talked to her every day for hours if I cared to, but I waited until she was dead and now I feel the need to tell her everything. I feel like an idiot, but I know, although she is listening, she isn’t judging me. That just wasn’t her style.
I have always been angry at my father’s death. Just 63, he never lived to enjoy the fruits of retirement. He never had the opportunity of seeing 8 of his grandchildren become and then grow before his eyes. I’m also angry that I really don’t know the day he died. The date his body died is December 16th, 1983, but his life force was gone long before that. How long was the body, curled in a fetal position, with no cognizance of life just a body. How long before that last day did my father actually die? I will never accept Dec 16th as the day my father died.
With mom, I feel more sadness. The suddenness, the unexpectedness, the if you had a brain you could have figured it out. it will always be in my thoughts. I fear that I feel more sorry for myself than I do my mother. Today you see, I don’t have any parents anymore, in a way I am an orphan, and the thought makes it very hard to see the keyboard right now.
Sharon asked me to feed the digital camera pictures into the computer today. She had taken a picture of Tim’s award wall, with all the ribbons, and plaques and trophies he had won in speech these past two years. It was apparent that it was important to her to have a print of that picture today. When I asked her why, she said she wanted to place it in the casket with ma so she could show it to my dad and her dad who also was cheated out of so many good years. I told her that was a lovely thought and enhanced the photo to get a really good picture for mom to show off in heaven. When Sharon went back downstairs I went into the bedroom and blubbered like a baby. All three of them, my dad and mom, Sharon’s dad should still be here. At least for one more day, one more week, one more year.
I will be going up to Chicago tomorrow. A couple really long days are ahead for a lot of the people I care about. I have made a promise to ma that I won’t be afraid to tell everyone how I feel about them.
I find myself dreading the thought of having to discuss mom’s estate in the next few weeks. A house to sell, as well as 40 years worth of grandma stuff filling the rooms and walls needs to be removed. Not really an estate I suppose. But it was her stuff and it should be dispersed according to who thought something had special meaning to them. I really don’t want anything. I want my mother back instead. For just another day, another week, another year.
Ma loved St Bartholomew and I’m sure there will be a lot of priests and nuns visiting her at the wake. I’m sure that out of affection they will lead us in prayers for ma many times these next two days. They will be doing it out of respect for ma and how active she was in the parish. Rain, snow, sleet, hail, you name it, a little old chubby lady who couldn’t walk worth a damn was in that same side pew almost every Sunday.
I will keep quiet but I wish I could tell them we don’t need to pray for Mary Catherine, instead we need to pray to her for ourselves. That little old lady doesn’t need any help from us to get into heaven. Mary Catherine wasn’t a saint, but she was damn close and I will miss her today, next week, next year, forever.
Ma, tell dad happy father’s day for me. I’m not sure if my messages have been getting through.
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Mike Fak, is a freelance writer from Illinois.
Published in U S Legacies Magazine May 2005
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