Goodbye Maria

M.  died last night. The call came around seven thirty this morning while we were having our wake up coffee. Sergio answered and M’s son told us the bad news, which alas, we were expecting, but not quite so soon. We had been to the hospital to see her just a few hours earlier, around six- thirty, that same evening.  I had called her around lunchtime  to let her know we were coming for a visit. Italian hospitals generally let patients keep their cell phones on in their rooms, since  the  patients’ rooms are  rarely equipped with extension phones.  She sounded alert, but gaspy. Weeks before she entered the hospital, her abdomen had become swollen with fluid, and in the last phase, this condition had made it hard for her to walk, move about freely, and then at last, breathe. She had no trouble recognizing me on the phone, though I had some difficulties understanding her speech.  Her mobile reception wasn’t good – her voice kept breaking up, and despite our long acquaintance, some of her speech mannerisms still baffled me.  M. was a country woman, from a town in the mountains outlying Rome.  Her speech was always peppered with dialect, and it always made her laugh when I couldn’t understand. She was able to tell me what room she was in, and what floor.  I asked her how she felt and she said she was in a bad way –  and that day she felt particularly nervous.
My husband came home as usual around three from the office and we had a quick lunch, and then we were off- along the Via Prenestina to the hospital where she had been admitted just three weeks ago.   The 542 bus trundled by – a line that runs through my neighborhood, and I thought I could visit her again sometime by bus.  We went in and followed the arrows to her ward and found a small crowd of people outside the door to her room. We had never personally met anyone in her family, except for one of her daughters-in-law – so they looked at us in surprised as we approached the door.   The curtains were drawn and the lights were dim – a priest stood by the bed administering her last rites.  We were just in time to approach the bed, touch her cheek, say  goodbye.  Her face was sunk in her pillow and she wore an oxygen mask. Her eyes didn’t open, but she was aware of what was happening in the room. I think she recognized us.  Her son told us that her condition had suddenly worsened in the early afternoon.
M. was a special presence in our home  -- house-helper,  seamstress, nurse, handywoman.  She could fix or mend just about anything, and when faced with a problem she had never dealt with before, she relied on her natural, practical intelligence to suggest a possible solution. She could rewire a lamp or a burnt out wall socket, mend a hole in the wall,  cut and sew a tailored suit,  – and had numerous remedies for household disasters: stains, rips, tears, leaks, drips – she knew how to make things new again. She was an expert seamstress.  I liked to design clothes for myself and my husband – and she made those ideas real – sewing him linen slacks and shirts – and for me woolen jackets, trousers for work, linen shifts for summer, and silk dresses.   Occasionally she baked for us – a wonderful Genovese white cake for a birthday celebration or jam tarts when someone had given us a jar or two of  homemade jam.   Always cheerful and companionable –I wouldn’t have called her motherly – but caring and sensitive – and she loved a challenge. Let’s make a slip cover for this chair, I’d say – and though she had never made one before, she figured out a way to do it. We always had a project going – and ideas for future ones, yards of upholstery and dress fabric stashed in the closet.  In this,  I suppose, I was reliving part of my bond with my mother: sewing projects of all kinds for clothes and for the house.   
M. lived in a village about an hour and a half from Rome – half way up the mountains – once known for its salubrious air.  For years, she worked in Rome, coming in daily by bus – then by metro or city bus – to reach the homes of the several families where she was employed a few hours each day.  That day in September I realized what a sacrifice it must have been for her for all those years, decades, to leave her home, and go to Rome every day to work, threading down the narrow mountain road on a bus that was often late.  Sometimes in bad weather, the road washed out and there was no getting through.
  When she told us that she had decided to give up working or coming into Rome, I was disappointed.  How would we get along without her?  I had also just recently transferred back to Rome after 22 years of commuting to Viterbo for work.  I had planned my schedule around M.’s weekly visits –her invalid brother lived not far from our neighborhood -- I hoped to organize a sewing lab with her on my free mornings off, so that we could finally get to work on some of those projects we had talked about.
Our last project was a series of curtains now decorating nearly every room in our flat.   Dark cherry velvet in the bedroom – fiery satin brocade in the living room and studio, crisp printed cotton in the kitchen.  All made with remnants, inspired by drapes I had seen in Paris at a friend’s home—we had recreated something similar for a few well-spent euros.  While we sewed in the little studio, I asked her about her life.  Though we often chatted and recounted stories to each other when she  was about, I had never asked her about her childhood and youth.   After fifth grade, she had been sent out to work for a seamstress, and had quickly distinguished herself from among the other girls as being quick and precise with her needle. As years passed, she realized though that the seamstress wasn’t going to teach them how to make patterns or cut clothes.  She kept her eyes opened and learned by watching – assisted by her extraordinary knack for anything manual.
Shortly before M. was admitted to the hospital where she died, we  drove over one September afternoon to visit her in her village.  She had been in and out of the hospital over the summer and was suffering from what seemed to be circulatory problems that had swollen her feet in an alarming way and created a layer of scaly eczema all up her leg. She was happy to be at home, cheerful, and though impeded in her movements by the circulatory problems, she was in good spirits and hopeful that her ailments would improve now that the summer heat was fading.  Her apartment was as expected, quiet, polished and neat. The balcony of her bedroom was crowded with potted plants, and herbs – a whole row of basil plants.  She served us coffee in her little kitchen – where she was especially proud of two things: the old treadle sewing machine she still used –and a small woodstove with oven. The building, and her apartment were equipped with city gas – she had an ordinary gas cooking range in the kitchen, and radiators throughout the apartment. But there was nothing she liked better than to light the woodstove on a cold winter afternoon, open the sewing machine, and sit there sewing till late in the evening – maybe keeping an eye on a batch of cookies in the oven, or stirring a pot of tomato sauce simmering on the stovetop. 
M. laughed and talked loudly, wore garish clothes, hennaed her hair at home in an unattractive way, and  had become grossly overweight in the last few years.  She was not chic. Yet she had beautiful blue eyes, full pink lips curled in a pleasant half smile. One thing I used to notice when I’d come home before my husband, and M. had been in and gone to help with the cleaning.  There was a silence throughout the rooms, a sense of order and peace.  Not that everything was spic and span, dustless, smudgeless,  for it wasn’t. Yet the quality of attention she brought to household chores left a trace my husband and I could feel. 
On this unseasonably cold October day, the sun is shining, but there’s a chill wind. The noon sun filters in through the drapes M. made, filling the room  where I sit with warmth and rich color.