PLAYA DEL REY, Calif. – It is nearly 2 a.m., and the night isn’t getting any darker.
A stone’s throw away from the Pacific, in a shack of a house I share with three other people, sleep does not come. Three years since my journey west, from the flatness of Indiana to the E-ticket ride of Los Angeles, I’ve wrapped up a master’s degree, gotten a job with a solid company and am lying in my bed, amid the fragrant flora and soothing warmth of the South Bay.
Yet my thoughts are of a small, disinfected room north of Anderson.
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Just before my departure in 1995, preparations made, enthusiasm high, the diagnosis was delivered. Loss of balance, slurred speech, addled thoughts, the symptoms were at last comprehensible.
Progressive supranuclear palsy, or PSP, is a distant cousin of Parkinson’s disease. Difficult to diagnose, it can be confused with many ailments. It moves quickly, ravaging the body, even of one who is strong and resolute.
Like my mom.
Here I was, mid-30s, mind dazzled with thoughts of Hollywood, and all of it disappeared into vapor in one second. Lois Richey, widow, mother, grandmother and indomitable force of nature, wouldn’t recover.
Obvious what had to be done. All three of my older brothers were married, had families. I was the oddball, the misfit, no responsibilities, no pull of family. It was why I could pack up and leave for the West Coast without any thought at all.
Any thought at all.
This would be my duty. I had always wondered what my purpose was, why I was here. The diagnosis had made that clear. I would stay and care for Mom.
It wasn’t as though I hadn’t any experience. When I was 7, my oldest brother, John, was crippled in a traffic accident. The middle two brothers, Mike and Jim, would soon be old enough to move out. I helped, as much as I could, with John. Wasn’t much, but it allowed Mom and Dad to get out of the house once in a while.
So I went to my brothers, each as different as kennel mutts, all working men with families and homes of their own. I was the oddball. The youngest. The spoiled one. The writer. They all had actual jobs. My main occupations were movies and books.
Therefore, I reassured them, I’d put away those childish things and take care of Mom in her final years. Not to worry. I’d be there.
And then, the oddest thing happened.
My brothers, each in his own, quiet way, informed me that they would beat the life out of me if I stayed.
That reaction, I wasn’t prepared for.
They wouldn’t elaborate much on why, but I kind of knew. I’d sacrificed parts of my adolescence to helping Mom. Now it was their turn. I’d just have to get used to the sunshine and ocean and palm trees, that’s all.
Over the years, my gratitude for that gesture could only grow. Such times unite people, help us brush aside our differences and sort things out together.
You don’t forget that easily.
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In the early morning gloom of Aug. 23, 1998, the call comes. No need to answer. Last night, as the phone was held up to Mom’s ear, I told her what I needed to tell her, and she had said the same to me.
So there is no surprise. After three years, why would there be? I make some noise going out to the kitchen, in the middle of the night. Wake up my roommates, who are irritated until they find out why.
I slump at the table, in sweat pants and T-shirt, a bottle of Coors Light in my hand. The lights of L.A. twinkle in the distance, and the sea breeze wafts in gently. I take a sip and toast what is, at once, one of the best and worst moments in my life.
It is nearly 2 a.m., and the night won’t be getting much darker.
Rodney Richey, columnist for The Herald Bulletin, can be reached by e-mail at rodney.richey@heraldbulletin.com.
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