I went for a power walk a few weeks ago.  A -real- power walk.  No ankle weights, no spandex, no pumping, swinging arms and not even a single bead of perspiration excreted.  Yet with this brief walk on a Saturday afternoon I asserted a strength and solitude to shake Olympus - a veritable antithesis of Donne's, 'No Man is an Island'.

And as I walked backwards down the road facing oncoming traffic with my going numb in the cold wind I was taken back to my childhood.  Softball games were family affairs, both my brother and I played and at certain years we played on the same team.  After one such event we boarded our boxy, red aerostar minivan with popsicles in hand and headed home, hopefully with nintendo and hotdogs in my very near future.

You know that intuitive tension you feel as a kid when adults fight or disagree?  My prepubescent spidy sense sent tingles up my spine as soon as I got in the van; mom and pops were fixing for a tangle.  So I left my seatbelt undone, they were too occupied to notice and seatbelts were a drag on an evening of baseball, popsicles, nintendo and hotdogs.

The tension in that humid little tin box with wheels escelated and soon my mother, exhasperated and frowning had my stoic father, with a sophisticated smugness pull to the curb so she could walk home.  I always took mom's side, even if we were having one of our own frequent fights, no matter what.

'I'm going with mom.' I said, crawled out of the back seat and went to take my mothers hand.

'You should have stayed in the van, I'm too angry to talk, go ahead of me, Reid.  I'm serious.' And I could tell she was serious so I stayed about a block ahead, craning my head back now and then to make sure my cranky little mother wasn't falling too far behind in her short, poorly balanced gait.

Well Ma, thanks for the tips.   I was ready for Beth when she pulled the ever scorned 'silent treatment'.  Thirty seconds and I bailed like a paratrooper on V-Day.

'Answer me please.'  I looked over at my fiance in the driver seat awaiting a response.  My chest was knotted - as with my mother, silence is the one tactic, the one weapon which ignites rage, anger and humiliation.  For her then and for me now, the silent treatment is an unparelelled degradation and insult.  This was the first time I could remember approaching a fury I couldn't easily tether.

'Pull over the *&%@ing car, I'm not going to ride with someone that won't speak to me.'  She quietly pulled over and I stepped out of the car and walked the opposite way. 

VICTORY!  Half way between Guelph and Cambridge on a country highway I had made my point!  With a single action I showed my self-reliance and control.  A brilliant combination of my father's passive aggression and my mothers dynamic showmanship.  A true craftsman in the art of interelational feuds, I had said so much with so little; I don't need motor vehicle - remember my dear, I hitch-hiked across this damn country and I did it alone - I am above petty bickering, let me out and we'll talk when we're both rational and most regrettabley, when I'm honest with myself now I see that I was saying, 'I'm Reid Harkness and I can cut anybody loose because I roll like that, biznatch."

A mere ten seconds and I was enjoying the weather, the cool wind, the bright sun and the peace and quiet of the countryside.  I began musing on human narrow-mindedness and the quirkiness of our social and relational idiosyncrasies.  I made clever jokes to myself about the penis size of the men in large trucks with mud-tires that drove on past, the tough guys never stop. I greeted the balding, plump middle aged man in the orange toyota versa that pulled over to pick me up.  I told him why I was hitching and he shared an insight into a fight he was having with a colleague at work, a fight he had forgotten the cause of.  We chuckled at human nature and parted ways.

The shitty part of pulling a power move is how shitty you have to be to someone.

"All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

---Meditation XVII: No Man is an Island, John Donne---

“Don’t you think it’s strange, using your dead mother’s tooth brush?”.

My fiance was questioning me, perhaps even accusing.  My mother had only passed earlier that very day, but, I didn’t think it was weird and I had what I feel are some very good reasons to be scrubbing my dentures with the pink, extra-soft bristles of my passed matriarch.

Reason number one: she’s dead and can’t stop me.

Second: She was always on my case, pestering and nagging me about personal hygiene practices, tooth-brushing being very high on her list.  Yet, at the same time I must concede that she was staunchly opposed to sharing tooth brushes while she lived, claiming that the bristles left microscopic lacerations over one’s gums, tainting the instrument with the user’s blood, a fluid she felt shouldn’t be shared or passed.  I never shared this hang-up with her, however, and coming back to my first point, there was no danger of her using it after me anyways.  I’m positive that her desire for her boy to have clean teeth would have overcome the stigma of brush passing.

Third: A very practical observation; I needed a tooth brush.  My fiance and I were at my Dad’s place, and had been staying there much loner than intended.  I came for an overnighter, but as dear mother’s condition worsened… which it did rather suddenly, I prolonged my stay.  I’m not proud of it, but no, no I don’t bring a tooth brush for an overnight visit, don’t judge me.  All this to say, I hadn’t brushed my teeth in three days and it now felt like they were wearing little yellow wool sweaters.  Decisive action needed to be taken.

I didn’t think I had the audacity, but now, after a few drinks I’m feeling brazen enough to say how it is I really feel about the thing, the statement, the snide comment made about the use of my mother’s tooth brush.  Point four!  She was my damn mother and I’m the oldest.  When someone dies the loot gets divided amongst the family.  I had a blood claim to that brush.

So back and forth, up and down I vigorously worked the pink plastic tooth cleaner, the minty paste foaming pleasantly in my mouth, washing away the stress and taste of the hospital of the last week.  I don’t want to be pretentious, or to sound contrived.  The fact is, I don’t even appreciate sentimental expression, but standing over that porcelain bathroom sink, periodically spitting light green froth down the drain I had a surreal, profound moment.

The bristles were soft, too soft.  I could see my mother in the mirror looking back at me, the feeble little brush in her feeble little mouth.  Leaning on the counter with her free hand to keep her balance, weak shoulders sagging with each weary, ragged breath.  The brush in her mouth, her eyes half closed, her delicate hands, delicate, blue-veined hands arduously manicuring one of the tiny, final intact pieces of her decrepit self.

I saw tufts of her curly brown hair sprouting from my own scalp.  The same abrasive, dogged spirit doing what we wanted how we wanted, whether it was considered strange, unclean or not.  I thought of everything she left me, made me.

And then I remembered that morning and I saw her grey skin.

Her last breath.

Her lifeless eyes.

Fresh white hospital sheets tousled around her freshly cold, dead body.