Neebish Island Day 3

Sunday July 21, 2013

I am writing you on Sunday night from Neebish island.  Sunday is its own day here in Michigan—the church pews are filled, the WSJ is not delivered, and families sit around the table to share Sunday brunch.  Most Sundays would be similar at our cabin, Grandma would rock in the rocker her mother had upholstered by hand, turning the volume up and down unconsciously as her head bobbed in front of Fox news, Brent and I would work on a 1000 piece puzzle or I might play a round of Hearts with my Aunts.  But this is not a typical Sunday on Neebish Island.  Rather than spend the days in the throws of creating and remembering six generations of family traditions, Kelly, Santi, and I nap at the main house and wait for my mom to return from the hospital.  Kelly naps on the mallard duck couch upholstered, again by hand, by my great Grandma Lovejoy, I nap with Santi on the porch over the water, each time the water laps against the rocks we all fall deeper to sleep. 

We toggle between believing this is simply island sleep, island air, island trees that are sending us into daily naps at 5PM and hoping it isn’t a symptom of C-dif, the infection that keeps my grandmother in the hospital a few more days.  Kelly, with all the optimism of an Enneagram seven is sure none of us are sick or will get sick and enjoys the afternoon.  My nap is interrupted by my sisters calling for island updates—Kari wants to know if we have been swimming with the May Flies and Julie wants me to run to the ferry (we have no car), get on line (we have no internet) and order roller skates so we can show off our T-stops this weekend in Boulder.

I am watching both my grandmother and mother age as the hours pass on this first stop of the Santi-dedicated Sabbatical.  My mom can’t keep up.  She is trading off with her sisters by spending the nights in the hospital with their mom.  We can’t go help as she is contagious, and while we didn’t get it when directly exposed, we don’t want to take any chances now.  Our commitment is to our own health first, then Santi’s, then my relatives.  My mom is so tired, exhausted really, that she has nothing to give Santi or me in terms of attention.  I squeeze in 15 minutes here and there, I force her to sit in the orange rocking chairs with me and tell me about her day.  She is so worried and so dead tired.  How will she take care of her mother for the remaining three weeks of the summer?

“I can do shifts, but I can’t do 24/7, I just can’t,” she declares.

I encourage her to tell her sisters that she needs weekends off, that she could go to my Great Aunt Fae’s on Monocle lake, another familiar family home, and spend the weekends to recuperate.  I offer to pay for her hotel on Saturday nights to just get away.  Her sister Linda plans to come this weekend with her grandchildren—who are apparently four times more rambunctious than my brother's daughter, who is like her dad, a daredevil.

I feel sad to be alone on Neebish island with just Kelly and Santi.  I feel more sad that my mom is so tired.  I also feel sad that my grandmother’s life is visibly coming to an end. 

Kelly sits on the floor in front of me working on a 500-piece puzzle in our cabin.  Santi is asleep on my bed, and my mom, curled up like a little girl at Neebish, went to sleep at 7PM after her hospital shift.  I went back to check on her at sunset.  She didn’t roll over to look at me.  “Please take the phone downstairs. I can’t talk to anyone,” she whispered.  A Nora Roberts novel lay beside her.

When we left the cabin, the 40-something year-old neighbor and his 17-year-old son invited us all for a boat ride.  Given that we have been sleeping for three days, how could we say no?  We finally pulled out the famous Meyer yellow and red child’s life jacket, laid Santi on the fish cleaning wooden stand, zipped him in, climbed down into the boat, and entered the channel to watch the moon rise.