The Orange Tree

by Martin Ganzglass

  Must be something to it, Mitch thought, trusting to his wife’s honesty and judgment.

  “I couldn’t make this decision without you.” He stared out the window, thinking this was a view Aunt Helen would never see again. What a silly, maudlin thought, he said to himself. He wouldn’t either. She’ll be dead and he wouldn’t be coming to the Nursing Home anymore.

  “Whatever we decide, it should be what we think Aunt Helen would have wanted,” Judy said. “You’ve been closer to her this past year. So you’d know better.” She walked to the head of the bed again careful not to disturb the monitor lines, bent down and stroked Aunt Helen’s white hair. “She had such beautiful hair when she was younger. Mom once told me she was envious of it.”

  “I don’t have any special insights, just because I’ve been here more than you have.” He didn’t want it to sound like he was doing a guilt trip on her. “She didn’t tell me anything this last year about what to do if she was…” His voice trailed off. “ended up in a coma,” he added. “She wasn’t with it most of the time anyway.”

  “So we’re on our own,” Judy said, more as a conclusion than a question.

  “We both know she lived most of her life by herself. See that wolf painting?” He pointed to the wall. Judy nodded. “Molly, Ms. Bernstein, called Aunt Helen her lone wolf shortly after I brought her here. I can’t see her wanting to live like this.” He waved vaguely toward the bed, the wires, the monitors, the clear plastic bag dripping liquid sustenance through the narrow tube that disappeared under the blanket into his aunt’s thin vein. “She’s gone from us already. Her mind’s gone, she can’t talk, she can’t swallow, she hasn’t opened her eyes since the stroke. She’s still breathing on her own and she’s bed ridden. That’s it. Judy?”

  He waited for her to respond. His sister continued to gently push her fingers through Aunt Helen’s hair. “You talked to the Rabbi?”

  “I did. After Dr. Teitelbaum told me she was brain dead. Rabbi Silver came by on Tuesday. We talked. He said, for the Orthodox, brain dead is not the end of life. Just like brain activity is not the beginning. I told him Aunt Helen wasn’t Orthodox. Do you ever remember her belonging to a Temple in New London?” he asked his sister.

  “I don’t remember her being religious at all. I mean she sometimes celebrated Passover with us in New York, when we were kids. That was it,” his sister replied.

  “The Rabbi’s advice is that since our Temple is a Reform Congregation and we, meaning you and me are Reform Jews, it is morally acceptable to remove a loved one from life support, if,” he paused waiting for Judy to focus on him. She turned but kept her hand on their aunt’s forehead. “if we believe that’s what she would want us to do.”

  Judy didn’t answer. The only sounds in the room were clarinet music on Amy’s Mozart disk and the steady beeping of a monitor.

  “So, Judy,” he asked quietly. “Do we ask them to remove the feeding tube?”

  His sister didn’t respond immediately. “I remember her visiting just after you were born,” Judy said. “Mom just wasn’t herself. She cried for no reason. She said she was worried that she hadn’t had an infant around the house for nine years and didn’t know what to do. She was afraid to carry you while she walked, afraid that she would drop you. She lay in bed for most of the day. Pop couldn’t help because he was at work and he didn’t understand why mom wasn’t her usual upbeat and cheery self. Aunt Helen stayed for several days to help out. You know she taught me how to change your diapers.” Judy seemed lost in her recollections. “I think she came to New York for the next several weekends. To make sure mom was fine. Once, several years later, after my own son was born, I had post partum depression. Mom was down visiting me in Charlotte. She told me how she had felt after you were born. The way she described it, her case was far more severe than anything I was experiencing. She told me then, it had been Aunt Helen who had saved her from herself. This tiny little woman, who never had children of her own.”

  It had gotten dark in the rest of the room. Mitch switched on the floor lamp next to the armchair and the light on the dresser. He sat down on the bed next to his sister. Aunt Helen lay motionless under the rectangular fluorescent lamp attached to the hospital bed.

  “She was a strong woman, Mitch. She fought tooth and nail to live the way she wanted to. But it’s over now. If she could speak, she’d say this is not living, being fed through a tube. Unable to see us. Or talk to us.” Judy leaned forward and kissed Aunt Helen on the forehead. “I think we should tell them to take it out.” She looked at him, her eyes watery.

  “Yeah,” Mitch agreed. “That’s what I think too.” He put his arm around Judy’s shoulder. “The doctor at the Home has to certify that Aunt Helen is unlikely to come out of the coma. Once that’s done, Molly said they’d honor our instructions.”

  “We’ll stay here with her, right Mitch. Together? Until the end?” She started crying. He handed her his handkerchief. She gave him a brave smile and wiped her eyes.

  “Of course, we will” he said, thinking to himself that if Aunt Helen died in the middle of the night, she would die alone. He didn’t think he and Judy were going to sleep in the room with her.

  “I am just checking on Helen before I leave,” Amina announced from the doorway. She immediately noticed the beeping. “This is the alert to change the IV. It is almost empty.” She quickly replaced the oblong plastic bag and made sure it was dripping. “Let me see if she is clean,” she said, as both Mitch and his sister stood up and waited in the hall. When they returned, Amina was sitting on the edge of the bed, putting cream on their aunt’s face. “It keeps her skin from cracking,” she explained.

  “Amina. You’ve been so wonderful with my aunt. I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “There is no need Mr. Farber. I wish I had known her sooner, when she had her hat shop. I try to see her as a woman, a businesswoman, independent, strong and healthy.” She kissed Helen’s cheek. Mitch thought he heard Amina whisper good night before she stood up.

  “Do you need a ride to the Metro? Judy can stay here and I can drop you off and come back.”

  “No. Thank you Mr. Farber. I will walk. It is a nice evening. Good night.”

  “She’s a sweet person,” Judy said, after Amina had left, perching again on the bed and warming Aunt Helen’s hand in hers.

  “We should go soon and come back after dinner.” Judy nodded but didn’t move.

  “How will Amy and Josh react?” she asked.

  Mitch thought about the conversation with the kids when Aunt Helen had been released from Georgetown and returned to the Home. He and Ell had sat down with them after dinner and had told them the coma was irreversible and Aunt Helen was dying. Josh had listened somberly. To Eleanor’s surprise he had asked whether it would scare Grandma because she and Aunt Helen were closer in age. Eleanor had responded that Grandpa’s death had shaken her but Grandma had been strong and resilient enough to overcome his passing.

  She was in good health and had her grandchildren. While she would be sad when Aunt Helen died, she would not be afraid.

  Amy had tried not to cry but was overwhelmed. With the tears running down her face, she sobbed Aunt Helen was like the matriarchal link of the family to its past and she loved her so much for what she had been through and there would be this tremendous void when she died. Mitch had held Amy in his arms as she sobbed that Aunt Helen had been through so much, it wasn’t fair that her great Aunt should die now, when she had only been with them for a year. He had told Amy the brief year had been a blessing for all of them. Amy and Josh had learned more about his mother, a grandmother they had never known, and Amy had even heard about her great grandmother. So, he told Amy, even when someone is not all there mentally, there can be surprises, little kernels of insight and knowledge, moments of humor and fun. We should be thankful we had those times with her. But she was an old lady and her body was wearing out.

  Eleanor had directed Amy’s grief in a different direction, speaking
frankly about Helga feeling left out of their lives on weekends, taking some of the blame herself, and urging all of them to pay more attention to Grandma when they were with her. She had said, looking at Mitch, that when old parents are set in their ways, we should try to accommodate to them instead of either arguing or ignoring them.

  “No,” he responded to Judy. “We talked with the kids. They understand. They both want to come and say goodbye to her. Let’s talk to Molly and see when they’ll take out the tube. Amy and Josh will probably come tomorrow after school.” He stood up and hugged his sister. He bent down, kissed their aunt on her forehead, seeing the pale blue veins beneath the tautly stretched skin. Judy did the same, but her kiss was more like a blessing, a gesture of thanks for Aunt Helen having been who she had been.

  After telling Molly of their decision, they walked to the car in silence, Mitch thinking of Ell’s comment about how they should be more attentive to Grandma. She was right, of course. Death has a way of focusing your attention on how to be a better person toward the living members of your family.

  “How are things going with you?,” he asked Judy, as they moved slowly down the long driveway, the lights of the Home, winking at him in the rear view mirror.

  “I’ve learned a lot since Passover, if that’s what you mean,” she replied, catching his eye as he glanced over. “I’ve learned that being alone is not the end of the world. That I can survive, that everything doesn’t revolve around Ed and what he is doing or whom he is with. I’m getting on with my life but it hasn’t been easy.” She hesitated. “I don’t know Mitch. I make decisions on my own. I can’t bounce them off anyone, like you and Eleanor can. I think I’ve made the right choice and then, when I don’t expect it, up pops the wrong reason for doing what I’ve done and I have second thoughts.”

  “I’m not following you,” he said.

  “Well, I got this brochure from UNC for a tour of southern Spain, with lectures by faculty members. It’s in December. I’ve always had a secret desire to learn more about that area, you know Granada, Cordoba and Seville and how Christians, Moslems and Jews got along. It could give me a better understanding about today’s events. The Middle East and all. So I signed up.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Yes and no. That’s what I’m trying to explain. After I sent in the deposit, I found myself thinking, I might meet someone on the trip. Someone I could get involved with.”

  “So. What’s wrong with that?” Mitch asked, looking over and smiling at her. “You’re still young. And attractive.”

  She snorted derisively. “I’m over 60. But that’s not the point.” she replied exasperated. “Did I sign up because I want to learn more or did I sign up to try and meet someone. I can’t live my life chasing after the right guy to fill the emptiness left by Ed.”

  “Judy,” Mitch sighed. He wanted to provide wise brotherly advice. “Maybe you chose to go to Spain for both reasons. It doesn’t have to be an either or. And there’s no reason for you to make these decisions alone. You can call me. Or if it makes you feel more comfortable, call Eleanor. She’d be happy to talk to you.”

  His sister waved him off. “Maybe Eleanor,” she said. “But you. You’ll always be my little brother. I can’t think of you as my sage and sober advisor. Not after I changed your diapers. And wise men don’t turn their pet snake loose in their older sister’s bedroom. I still remember that. I was studying with this boy, my senior year in high school.

  “Making out with him, was more like it,” he said laughing.

  “How did you know what we were doing?” Judy replied, blushing slightly.

  “Judy. It was more than, what, forty five years ago. Why are you embarrassed now? I peeped through the keyhole.”

  “You spying little brat. How could you?” Her face reddened.

  “I guess this means that if you have a need for a sounding board, you’ll talk to Eleanor.”

  “Damn right,” she said emphatically as they pulled up to the house. “Eleanor is terrific. But you know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do. And I thank my lucky stars every day.” He took her arm. “I’m also lucky to have you as my sister. I need you here for this.”

  The next morning, he and Judy drove Eleanor to the Metro and returned to the Home. Aunt Helen was lying in the large bed, the feeding tube gone. There was only the small metallic thumb clip hooked up to the monitor, the steady graph line with its peaks and valleys and a much smaller intravenous plastic bag for administering of medicine. Painkillers, Mitch assumed.

  Mitch replaced the five CDs in the Bose with others Amy had made the night before and marked in her clear small print, “More of Mozart’s Hits for My GREAT Aunt Helen”. They sat in the room, Mitch in the chair by the window, Judy by their aunt’s bedside. They reminisced about Aunt Helen and her weekend visits from New London when they were children and then about their parents, how they had aged, become infirm and died.

  “I feel Mom is here with us now,” Debby said.

  “Not Pop?” Their parents had been married for so long before Mom died, it was hard for him to think of them except as a couple.

  “No. Even though Helen was Mom’s older sister. I know it’s foolish but I feel Mom is watching over her now.”

  “It’s not foolish if it helps you get through this,” he said. “We’ve been lucky, Judy because the deaths in our family have been chronological. Our parents died when they got older. No one died before their time in a plane crash or early of some disease.”

  “Mom died way too early from cancer,” Judy corrected him.

  “Yeah, you’re right. But she didn’t die really young. What I’m saying is that we’re all at the age, you, me, Ell, where we assume we have another 15, 20 or 30 more years. I mean Aunt Helen’s 84. That’s another 24 years for you.”

  “Is it ok to eat one of these oranges?” Judy asked.

  “Sure. Amy will bring another few with her today after school.” He watched her examine several oranges before selecting one. She always had been sort of fussy about her food. “What I’m getting at is there are no guarantees. We think we have a lot more time but we may not.”

  “So. The profound thought you’re about to come up with is?” She deftly peeled the orange, using her fingernail to start, until there was a continuous connected coil in the tissue on her lap. “That we have to live each day as if it’s our last, because you never know,” Judy said, answering her own question.

  “No. Not that. More like, instead of waiting for Rosh Hashanah to reflect on how to be a better person, we should do it more often. Aunt Helen’s death,” he said lowering his voice as if she could hear him, and glancing over to make sure she hadn’t, “has made me think of how I treat Ell and Helga and the kids. And you. And what I should do differently.”

  He was about to say something else, when Amina knocked softly. She immediately went over to the bed and felt Aunt Helen’s forehead. She unfolded a washcloth, poured water on it and wiped Helen’s lips.

  “I came in to see Helen first thing this morning when I arrived,” she said in an agitated tone. “I saw the feeding tube was removed. Mr. Farber, please do not do this. I beg you. It is wrong.” Her tone was firm but she spoke softly. “I know I am not supposed to interfere in a family’s decision. I have prayed this morning. I remembered the verse from the Holy Koran. ‘A soul cannot die except by Allah’s leave. The term is fixed as by writing.’” She quoted the Koran. “Please forgive me. I do not mean to be disrespectful but I must speak out for Helen who made me feel like her sister.”

  At first, Mitch didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t expected anyone outside the family to object to the removal of the feeding tube. And Amina of all people who wouldn’t want Aunt Helen to suffer.

  “Amina,” Judy said. “Our mother was Helen’s younger sister. Mom told us how Helen looked after her when she was a young child. Yesterday, I was telling my brother how Helen helped mom when he was born, when mom was really depressed and wouldn’t get o
ut of bed. This morning before you came in, I said to Mitch, I feel mom is here in this room with us, watching over Helen.” She paused, with tears in her eyes. “And us. Her children. God, I miss her so much.”

  She took an embroidered handkerchief from her jacket pocket and blew her nose. Mitch moved to stand next to his sister, placing his hand on her shoulder. She reached back and placed her hand over his. “I know you love our aunt. I can see it in everything you do for her. Just as you know we love her, too. Mitch and I, the way we practice our religion, we believe that God acts through us, as human beings on earth. If Aunt Helen could have talked to us before her stroke and we asked her, would she want to continue to live attached to a feeding tube, with no hope of ever speaking again to us, or seeing us, or thinking about us, or even feeling us touch her, what would she say? Mitch and I know she would say, don’t put the feeding tube down in the first place. Let me just die in peace without suffering. She would be choosing how to die, just as she fiercely chose how to live her life the way she wanted. And God knows she had a tough life. We’re respecting her choice.”

  “Amina,” Mitch said still standing, feeling Judy’s hand on top of his. “I really appreciate your telling us how you feel about Helen.” Over the course of the past year, he had never seen Amina so distraught. She twisted the washcloth in her hands. She was on the verge of crying. She stood next to the bed, hesitating, her lips moving slightly as if she was rehearsing what to say. Or maybe she was praying. He didn’t know. One of Mozart’s vaguely familiar piano concertos played softly in the background.

  “Mr. Farber. Please. I should have kept my thoughts to myself,” Amina said more calmly. “This is the first time I have ever loved a resident, as I have loved your aunt.” She gripped the washcloth more tightly in her hands, realized what she was doing and almost lost her composure. She quickly put the cloth down on the stand beside the bed. “In Somalia we have a proverb,” she said, thrusting her hands into her jacket pockets. “On the day you are born, a leaf falls from a tree on the moon. It means the day of your death is determined on the day of your birth.”