As my mother lay dying of congestive heart failure in her ninety-third year, she started talking to her own mother, who had passed away long ago. Her mother would come to visit as the sun began to set, and they would talk about old troubles and sorrows. I was my mother’s caregiver for those last few months of her life. Of course, I only heard my mother’s side of these conversations. One late afternoon as the last rays of the sun slanted through the venetian blinds of her bedroom, mom perked up and said “Oh mother, I’m glad you came today. Remember when Timmy came to visit you out at the home in New Brighton? Remember he did a show, just for you!”
I couldn’t stay in her bedroom any longer -- for I, too, remembered that performance. It was the last time I saw my grandma Daisy alive.
It was back in 1973. Finished with the season at Ringling Brothers Circus as a clown, I was staying with my parents in Minneapolis, making final preparations for my two year proselytizing LDS mission in Thailand. There was my passport and visas to get processed; dental work to be done (all LDS missionaries at the time were required to have every one of their wisdom teeth extracted prior to arriving in Salt Lake for indoctrination); banking details to work out at the Farmers & Mechanics Bank; and sober white shirts, dark slack pants, and plain black ties to purchase -- along with a pair of Red Wing mailman shoes, guaranteed to last a minimum of five years (they only lasted me six months in Thailand, and then turned green with mold and disintegrated.)
Poor grandma Daisy was already in the nursing home by then. She was unable to walk up the single flight of stairs to her attic apartment and had gone to live with Aunt Ruby in Edina. They had a very big house. But once there she kept turning on the stove to make tea and then forgetting about it, or wandering out into the street in her bathrobe looking for the vegetable pushcart or fish vendor of seventy years before. Aunt Ruby had no choice but to take her to the nursing home in New Brighton, where she cried herself to sleep every night until her mind mercifully dried up. She became immobile and unsmiling, and my mother took the bus to see her every other day and hand fed her, since she refused to feed herself.
I went to see her with mom a few times, this lovely little lady who used to eat Old Dutch Onion & Garlic Potato chips with me when no one else in the family would touch them with a ten foot pole. Her hugs smelled like lavender and Lipton tea bags. She had a big wobbly smile; her dentures were never too securely anchored. Her false teeth had flown out of her mouth into the punch bowl while laughing at a joke at my brother Bill’s first wedding.
I wanted to reach through that veil to let her know I still cared for her and needed her love in return. It was very hard being the only LDS member in the family; not to mention being a baggy pants buffoon for a living. There was little approval -- but I knew grandma Daisy would have not only approved but given me steady encouragement in that soft, Kentish accent of hers. She was born in Swanscombe, Kent, and sounded for all the world like Stan Laurel.
So I decided to visit her nursing home to do a clown show. I’d done plenty of hospital shows with Ringling. There was an outdoor patio where I set up my props and ran my music -- I used a cassette tape called “E. Power Biggs Plays Scott Joplin Rags on the Pedal Harpsichord.”
That day grandma Daisy lost her glasses -- mom said they were stolen and sold for their silver frames by one of the nursing staff. No one had combed her hair that day. And she was getting a goiter. She and a dozen others were wheeled out onto the patio, where I started into my schtick.
I worked like a Trojan for thirty minutes; juggling, doing pratfalls and a dozen other standard slapstick gambits. The old people sat in their wheelchairs, mummering and grim. One lady kept whimpering “I want to go home -- please take me home -- they’ll be hungry -- I have to go home -- please take me home . . . “
I was covered in flop sweat -- a terrible feeling of drowning when you don’t connect to the audience.
Then I took my musical saw out of its trombone case and began playing. Suddenly the old folks sat up a little and began to smile and nod. Here was something at last that was getting through to them, although in a rather high-pitched and quavery tone. I played “Toyland” by Victor Herbert. Then “Aloha ‘Oe.” I ended with “When You and I Were Young, Maggie.” Now even the staff, who had hitherto been busy smoking and gossiping in the corner, were nodding and smiling their heads.
And grandma Daisy . . .
I thought I saw a glimmer of recognition in her eyes. Was that a smile just for me? Could she, would she, say something to me, just to me? I put my saw down and ran over to her, kneeling by her wheelchair.
“Grandma” I whispered, breaking character completely. “Grandma, it’s me -- Timmy. Can you hear me? Tell me you liked the show, grandma. Please . . . “
But the glimmer was gone, if it had ever been there. Her mouth hung open. Her dentures hadn’t been cleaned in a long time; they were yellow and grimy. She stared out into a gray nothingness -- feeling nothing, thinking nothing, being nothing.
I took one last pratfall before bowing and loping away to a smattering of applause from the staff. Then everyone was wheeled back inside. I used the public restroom in the lobby to take off my costume and makeup. I couldn’t bear to go see grandma Daisy again, so I got the bus and went home, where my Letter from Salt Lake had finally come, telling me to be at the Mission Home by next Monday. Dad drove me to the airport, shook my hand, and told me I was a fool for going.
And while I was knocking on doors in the Kingdom of Thailand, Daisy Ellen Bedelle finally took flight back to that welcoming Home that awaits us all.
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