How could we stand it?
The wiping incident happened a few years later. Due to arthritis in her hip, she was having trouble going to the bathroom on her own, so I accompanied her to the toilet. Still fastidious about hygiene, she said it was difficult to get to the proper angle to do a sufficient job of cleaning herself. As I unspooled a two-foot section from the toilet paper roll, I had a flashback: I am a nervous four-year-old sitting on the pot, crumpling the toilet paper into a tiny ball. Mom comes into the bathroom, saying, “Oh no, no, that’s not how we do it! Don’t crumple it up. You must leave it flat, fold it carefully to give it some layers. See? This way it has more surface area.”
I smiled at the memory. I doubt that at four I understood the concept of surface area, but Mom never dumbed anything down for us. Though she wasn’t formally educated beyond her senior year of high school (except for studying interior design briefly in New York), she was one of the most inquisitive, intellectually curious, naturally intelligent people I’ve ever met. She knew, or would quickly discover, how to shim a door, replace the glass in a window, build a bench, tear apart a Kirby vacuum to replace the impeller. She could perform taxidermy on a fallen sparrow, make a three-tier-covered-in-roses waterfall wedding cake, sew a pleated skirt without a pattern, and reroof a house (with the help of my brother Greg).
But now, she couldn’t wipe herself. The truth slugged me in the guts. It’s where many of us may be headed; all the accomplishments of a brilliant, full life, reduced to this.
But then again, maybe it’s fitting.
When my youngest son, Michael, took a philosophy class in college, he came home wanting to discuss ontological questions. How could one know one existed? Mom, who was visiting at the time, had a terse answer. “Well,” she said, “that’s easy. If you poop, you exist.” Laughing out loud, I questioned her typically matter-of-fact reasoning. “Mom, what are you talking about, I don’t follow your logic.”
“It’s common sense,” she insisted, raising her eyebrows as if any child could understand. “If you eat, and your body processes that food into excrement, it’s proof that you are a living, breathing being.”
My son laughed, too. “You may be onto something, Grandma,” he said. “You may know more than my professor.”
Though I resisted her common-sense wisdom when growing up, I now long for the days when she offered it up so readily. This woman who bore eight children and changed thousands of diapers must now accept our help after she proves she exists by the most basic act of humanity: defecation. But time reduces us all to the elemental. It’s the natural state of things.
We have since saluted Mom’s brand of wisdom, and even considered making t-shirts that say, “I shit, therefore I am.” We laugh to ease the sting of losing her.
Surface area is defined as the uppermost layer of something, the measure of the total area that the surface of an object occupies. How do we measure the surface area of a life? My mother stretches across my horizons, her love and influence too vast to quantify by a formula. All I know is, she’s our North Star. That star is dimming, and one day will flutter as if from a great wind and flicker out entirely, leaving our universe darkened. Then I’ll remember the act of wiping her the first time for what it was–a loving sacrament.
Author's Comment
My mom, Fern Petronella Vosen, passed away on October 30, 2022. Our beautiful North Star flickered as we gathered around her bedside, and something passed from us as she drew her last breath. Six of her eight offspring circled the mortuary minivan that came to take her away. We watched her profile recede from us, and wept like children, though she was 95. Such was her legacy. She shines on in her children and grandchildren, and future generations, until time is no more.
What We Choose
There were moments
as a country we understood
like now
and looked away
from the shadow knife raised
on the wall
holding what feels like our collective breath
for better or for worse this is still
a democracy
we will get
what we choose
Jennifer Thornburg grew up in the vast, desolate beauty of northeastern Montana. Her family carved a living on the Highline for generations, stubbornly surviving wind and weather. She teaches writing at Montana State University in Bozeman where she lives with her husband, two cats, eight chickens, and a greenhouse full of crazy-looking heirloom tomatoes. She is currently working on a memoir.
A beautifully wrought story that had me feeling deeply. Sacrament indeed.
Thank you for your kind words Susan, the world is not the same without your momma in it!