Before the First Glory Be

Apologies for the relative radio silence, mi gente. As indicated in the last post, it’s been a helluva year so far. I’d hoped to be posting regularly, recording new podcast episodes, announcing a new album release, a web store full of merch to peruse and the availability of the Jinetero 2.0 memoir in hardcover and E-Book formats. But, hey, we plan and God laughs, no?

Right about now all I really want to announce (or say) is something that so many folks my age know all too well: taking care of an aging parent or, in my case, arranging for a parent’s long-term care, is as exhausting as it is painful, beautifully bittersweet and revelatory.

My 94-year-old mom suffered a subdural hematoma back in mid-January. She face-planted on her way to the bathroom at 3am. The ER doctors sent her to ICU on January 23, and she stayed in the hospital for 3 weeks before being admitted into a rehab facility. And as of last week, she’s in a long-term care facility. 

She won’t be going home.

Many of you know her as “Rita,” my ¡Ay, Jorge! Podcast co-star and reluctant, often horrified recipient of my off-color, decidedly NSFW humor (check out pretty much any episode to hear what I’m talking about!). Those of you who know me personally have heard at least one story about her Cuban exile experience: be it her working three jobs as a single mom with two kids, trying to keep it together for us, her mom and grandmother in one small house or about her career as translator for a joint NSA-CIA surveillance operation in South Florida. Rita translated drug lord wire taps, aghast at how often narcotraffickers commented on how hard it was to buy jeans for their mistresses when visiting Miami. It got to the point where Rita and the agents became convinced that ass and hip size references were some form of code! Podcast listeners may recall her side hustle as a theater critic while serving as the publisher’s Executive Assistant at Diario Las Américas, a once-formidable Spanish language daily.

She’s lived a great, long life.

She helped countless Cuban exile friends and relatives secure jobs in Miami, while also managing to send me and my sister to Catholic schools and college, buy and sell two houses on a single income before moving up to the Orlando area to help my sister raise her daughter (my niece, now a HS art teacher and mom in Macon, GA of all places).

To me, Rita was and is the person who gave me everything: unconditional, boundless love and support, a great education, a love of language and art, imparting an array of values (hard work, patience, sacrifice, humility, service to others, survival, etc.), advice, providing shelter, essentials, and then some. She bought me my first Telecaster when I graduated from college.

Yet neither memory nor life history can help me overcome the sight of her now.

Maybe it’s the odd processional, room after room occupied by the old and dying – of someone’s grandparent, someone’s mom or dad or aunt or sister laid up in a hospital bed, mouth open, staring up at the ceiling or nowhere in particular. Maybe it’s the range of distinct yet ever comingling, geriatric ward smells: disinfectants, urine, feces, denture soaking solution, stale food and the subtly pervading smells of imminent death.  

Or maybe, for you, it’s the sight of Bingo being played in a large, common area: a big room full of old people, 4 to a table, sitting in wheelchairs in various states of disarray and wakefulness, some staring blankly, mouths open, some totally asleep, chin down, spittle or food stains on their gown; one or two, at every other table, relatively engaged in the game, staring up at you, smiling slightly, as you walk by with a booming voice in the background yelling “B5! B5! Who’s got B5?!” drowning out, refocusing your emotions, the sadness of it all, of so much life reduced to this.

For me it was the Rosary. I’d never prayed the Rosary with my mom before. She’s a devout Catholic, and I’m a Revert (having returned to the Church in 2024). When she was still in ICU, I asked her if she’d like to pray the Rosary with me. She agreed, and I wrapped her Rosary’s beads around her hand, placing her fingers on the Crucifix to begin.

I’d managed to keep it together before then – seeing her hooked up to tubes, wires, looking gaunt, trying to communicate through slurred speech (the brain bleed having caused stroke-like symptoms), sighing and napping throughout the day, letting me feed her, place straws in her mouth, wiping it gently afterwards.

But I lost my shit before the first Glory Be.

She was quietly mumbling most of the initial prayers. There are only five prayers and 4 beads up to that point, considered a prelude of sorts to whichever Mysteries fall on any given day: The Apostles Creed prayed while ‘on’ the Crucifix, followed by one bead for an Our Father, then three beads for Hail Marys and, lastly, one bead for a Glory Be.

We were on the third and last Hail Mary when I noticed that her fingers had stayed on the Our Father bead. I took her hand and moved her fingers up to the prayer bead we were on, then went back to praying, looking down. I was trying not to look at her; all wired up and maybe dying, my mom but now almost someone or something else.

I started crying when I got her hands on the Glory Be bead and couldn’t stop the tears throughout each Sorrowful Mystery. Never once did I liken my mom’s suffering, her condition, my fear and sadness to the suffering recounted by Christ’s Passion as embedded in that day’s Rosary. I’m not sure if that would’ve helped.

All I kept thinking about were her hands. Alternating from the sight and feeling of them, as I had to reposition them every three or four prayers, to those of babies.

If you’re a parent, you know precisely what I mean. Even if you’re not a parent, or even if you happen to hate kids, there’s no denying baby hands. Beyond mere delicacy, they typically evoke a strong sense of wonder. If you are a parent, I’d go so far as to label it awe or, at least, a sweeping fascination when you hold your newborn’s hands for the first time; when they touch you or grip your finger.

I’m not sure why I thought of baby hands but should note that I was thinking of my kids’ hands. Her grandchildren’s hands when each was a baby. The thought took me to through the cycle of life, of Rita’s, mine, the kids’ (now 17 and 20), redirecting me through or from abject sadness to a place as quiet and loving as a first or last breath.