CONTENT WARNING
dental pain, death/suicide
First of all, yes, I do still have my wisdom teeth. And no, I do not plan to have them removed. I’m thankful that the last two dentists I’ve had weren’t bothered by this fact, since the teeth don’t bother me. And they haven’t for quite some time.
Thirty-five years ago, I woke up on a Friday morning and my wisdom teeth were achy. Not enough that I couldn’t go to work, though, so I got myself up, showered, dressed, and ready to go. I was running a bit late but stopped to give my mom a hug goodbye (I moved back home about six months before to help with expenses and such) and headed to the office. In the car, I thought that the hug seemed to last longer than usual.
The cafeteria at the Child Development and Rehabilitation Center (part of Oregon Health Sciences University) where I worked had my favorite breakfast item: roasted potatoes smothered in country gravy. I definitely needed something to eat so I could pop a couple of ibuprofen for the tooth pain, so I got the potatoes, some water and a cup of coffee and headed back to the office I shared with two other department admins.
I immediately felt better after eating breakfast because potatoes are the most magical of comfort foods. But my wisdom teeth were still throbbing, so I tossed two ibuprofen pills down my throat and chased them with a swig of water. Usually, with headaches or back pain, I get relief within half an hour, so I had high hopes.
I also thought being active might help, so I went down to the basement where I had a workspace set up to package and ship the publications our department produced. (We had a pretty sweet little side business going with CDRC Publications. Our jobs were all grant-funded, but we were allowed sell the publications we produced from the grant projects. I pretty much handled all aspects of that side hustle from ordering copies of the publications to marketing to taking the orders and shipping them out.) If nothing else, the activity would distract my mind and body from the discomfort.
On the way back up to my office I noticed that, not only had the ibuprofen not dulled the pain, but it was actually getting worse. It affected my ability to focus on my tasks, and my officemates started commenting on how quiet I was.
About mid-morning, I decided to call the OHSU dental school to see if they could get me in to extract these teeth the following week. I’ll note here that my mother had worked at OHSU before her position was eliminated six months prior. She was very respected and adored around the campus because she had trained just about everyone on The Hill on the new computer system that every clinic used. She was an outstanding educator, and would always stay until every person who had to work with that system felt comfortable using it, even if that meant staying hours beyond the training session.
So, being her daughter, if I needed to get into a clinic quickly, the staff would make it happen because they loved my mother that much. Generally, I’m uncomfortable asking for such favors unless it was truly urgent: I felt like this qualified.
Before making that call, though, I thought I should call mom and find out what her availability was the next week. Even though she was unemployed, she was still actively looking for work (and was a finalist for a job that she was very excited about). I didn’t want to just assume that she would be available to get me home from the dental school, post-surgery. I reached for the phone to call her, but one of my bosses came into the office to go over some edits on a grant proposal we were writing.
After she left, I tried to call my mother again. The phone rang, but I had to hang up because one of our office lines was ringing and my officemate was on her break. I was beginning to get sweaty from the pain, so I took three more ibuprofen, hoping that would file down the sharp edges so I could concentrate on my work. Combined with the pair of pills I had taken two-and-a-half hours before, they finally moved the needle from an 8.5/10 pain to about 7/10. It wasn’t a whole lot, but just enough to let me focus on the document I was compiling (combining multiple versions of documents and edits in a DOS-based word processor took a fair bit of concentration back in the day–if you know, you know).
I rang home again around lunchtime. Four rings, then the answering machine picked up. I didn’t leave a message. I thought about just making the appointment at the dental school, but as I looked through the campus directory my gut just told me I should make sure mom would be available next week: I decided I would try calling her again before I wrapped up my lunch break.
As fortune would have it, that was about the same time the admin for the psychology department decided to take her lunch break, which meant busy phones and the—jagged agony of moving my mouth to talk—for another hour because I was her backup. By the time the psychology department admin returned from her lunch (and an extended trip to the copy room), it was late enough in the day that I knew I trying to coordinate dental surgery with mom’s schedule would be hopeless, so I decided I’d just live with the persistent throbbing and the pain spikes that kept making me break out in a sweat.
I dug an old granola bar out of my bag and dipped it in my afternoon coffee to soften it and make it easier to chew. That made it possible for me to take two more ibuprofen to prepare for the commute home.
Because parking was limited at the hospital campus, I parked in a satellite lot located just under the east side of the Hawthorne Bridge. I stepped off of the shuttle and wished the driver and a couple of “shuttle buddies” a nice weekend and accepted their wishes for a speedy recovery. The ache was still around 7/10, and I was looking forward to just getting home and going to bed.
Fate had other plans, which were only slowly being revealed to me.
I slipped behind the wheel of my maroon Hyundai Excel and started the engine. “Radio Song,” from R.E.M.’s new album Out of Time was cued up in the stereo and blasted from the speakers (I had been playing that cassette nonstop since it came out a week or so before my birthday). After a full week of rain, the sun was out and I took a couple of moments to feel its gentle warmth coming through the windshield, easing the tension on my face.
Then, I noticed something that I had never seen before in the two or three years I had been using the satellite lot. There was a train stopped on the tracks about a block or two from the parking lot.
I knew that was a busy railroad track, but I had never seen a train just stopped.
The world is collapsing around our ears
I turned up the radio, but I can’t hear it
That track was a little over four minutes long. The train hadn’t moved.
That was just a dream
Just a dream
Just a dream, dream
I turned the engine off but kept it on ACC so I could keep listening to the cassette. Song after song…
Those creatures jumped the barricades and have headed for the sea
She began to breathe, to breathe at the thought of this freedom
Stood and whispered to her child, “Belong”
She held the child and whispered, with calm calm, “Belong”
My wisdom teeth continued to throb: the ibuprofen I had taken on my afternoon break was already wearing off.
The storm, it came up strong
It shook the trees and blew away our fear
I couldn’t even hear
Any other day, I would have just kicked back and enjoyed the treat of simply listening to this album, but the pain was making it impossible to focus on the music, and I really needed to get home.
It’s crazy what you could’ve had
Crazy what you could’ve had
I need this, I need this
Nearly an hour later and that fucking train was in exactly the same spot it was when I arrived at the lot, and it showed no sign of moving. Then I had an idea—and, really, I should have thought of it after about 15 minutes. (The wisdom teeth definitely were not living up to the “wisdom” part of the name.)
I started the car (again).
I knew what you were saying, you were saying to me
Baby’s got some new rules, baby said she’s had it with me
For those not familiar with Portland, Oregon, well, there are a lot of bridges, and that gave me options. The train was very long, and was essentially blocking every outlet heading east from the lot, but I realized I could get back on the Hawthorne Bridge, zip a few blocks through downtown, come back across on the Morrison Bridge and I’d be home in just a few minutes.
The “Memory Side” of Out of Time switched back over to the “Time Side” as I started across the Morrison Bridge. The blood pounded through my jaw in rhythm with the bass line in “Radio Song.” I took a shortcut through my old neighborhood to get to get to E. Burnside. and was pulling into the driveway in just under 10 minutes.
As I drove the Hyundai around to the garage I noted that the curtains in the front window were closed. Odd. Mom craved sunlight, especially after having so many days of rain. No way she would keep the curtains closed, unless she was going somewhere and didn’t plan to be back before nightfall.
I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try
But that was just a dream
Try, cry, why try?
That was just a dream
Just a dream
Just a dream, dream
As Peter Buck’s mandolin faded, I turned off the engine and exited the car, unaware that I would be returning to the garage a few minutes later.
I unlocked the side door and dropped my bag off in my little basement “apartment.” Then, I went upstairs where Tina and Reggie, our beloved Boston Terriers, greeted me. I heard the radio playing in the living room: we turned it on whenever we left the house to keep the dogs from barking at every noise.
“Did mom go somewhere?” I asked the dogs. They just danced around, partly because they were happy I was home, mostly because they wanted to eat and needed to pee.
I let them out the back door to do their thing while I looked in the cupboard for more ibuprofen. I noticed a large wad of cash and an ATM slip sitting on the kitchen counter. Usually she would take $20-60 at a time, but according to the ATM receipt, mom had withdrawn the daily cash limit. Was she planning a trip? Did she get that job and wanted to update her wardrobe? I reckoned I’d find out when she got back.
Now relieved, the dogs ran zoomies up the back steps and through the house as I got their favorite treats (Cheez-its). I spotted several sheets of paper with mom’s handwriting scattered across the lemon-drop dinette table in the corner of the kitchen. I divided the handful of Cheez-its between Tina and Reggie and went over to the table to look at the papers.
“I’m sorry to ruin your weekend but I can’t go on…I’m in the room at the back of the garage. DON’T GO IN THERE call 9-1-1”
I ran to the garage, but I didn’t fully grasp what was happening/what had happened/what was about to happen. The room at the back of the garage was where mom kept all of her yard care equipment, so somewhere in the back of my mind I must have been clinging to the idea that she had hurt herself with the lawnmower or something.
Slowly, I pushed open the door. Mom was a few inches away, just to the right of the door. Unresponsive. Cold.
How did I get to the phone in the living room so quickly? Did I run? Did I leap over the fence and come in the back door? Did I teleport? My hands were shaking. It’s hard to dial a phone when your hands don’t work right.
Would I even be able to tell the operator what was happening? I suddenly felt like I didn’t know any words in any human language. You know how when they do the lottery draw, all those ping-pong balls with the numbers on them are getting blown around in a chamber? My brain was like that, only the balls had letters instead of numbers, and organizing those damn balls to form a single word, let alone a full thought, was next to impossible.
The recliner was right next to the phone, but, for some reason, I wouldn’t let myself sit in it to make the call, and instead kneeled on the floor next to it. Reggie was curled up on the other recliner. Tina, one of two familiars I’ve been blessed with in my life, knew I was in trouble and sat on the floor next to me. The way she positioned herself, it was like she knew I was having difficulty holding the phone receiver and she was steadying the left side of my body.
A voice came on the other end of the line.
9-1-1 what is your emergency?
I pulled as much air into my lungs as I could to try to soften the screaming that was threatening to explode out of my body. I switched the receiver to my right hand and rested my left hand on Tina.
“My mom is in the garage…not moving…shot herself…”
Okay, does your mom have a pulse?
“What the hell do you mean? Of course she doe…”
Well, to be honest, I hadn’t really checked THAT. Between the coldness of her body and seeing her little handgun underneath her legs, I just put two-and-two together and…
“I don’t think she does, ma’am. She is cold.”
As much as I have tried to piece together the images into a coherent picture, what happened immediately after that—and for the next several days—remains a somewhat blurry hodge-podge of police, coroner’s office personnel, family, friends, co-workers, cards, flowers and plants. Beer cans in the sink. The gut-punch when a relative asked me if I saw “this” coming. People coming. People leaving. Dozing for a few minutes at a time on the couch because I was terrified to sleep in my bed. I was terrified of sleep, period.
And there was crying. So much crying. The crying created loads of extra pressure in my sinuses, and that kept reminding me how fucking much my wisdom teeth were hurting. I didn’t even bother taking pain meds anymore. What was the point? No amount of ibuprofen would ease the pain I was experiencing.
I don’t remember exactly when or how it happened, but at some point over the next few days, the wisdom teeth just stopped hurting.
So, I never made the appointment to have my wisdom teeth extracted: it turned out my mother wouldn’t be available to help me get to and from the dental school after all.
And, somehow, I always knew that would be the case.