The power was back on, finally, and the house was toasty warm.  We had moved the bed back away from the fireplace, I don’t remember if we still had a fire.  I was tired of fires, and it still seemed strange to have fires in the North room; the fireplace there wasn’t one that we used while I was growing up.

When I was little, the North Room was where the television was, and a sort of divan bed where my Great-Aunt Berry spent much of her time when she was down from Maine for the winter.  I don’t remember if she watched television, mainly she played endless games of solitaire with miniature cards, and did crossword puzzles too.  And she rolled her own cigarettes, and took her dog for walks, and always had her special package of bologna in the refrigerator, and bottle of gin in her bedroom.

She had endless patience for games of cards with my sister and me.  Only one of us girls at a time, though, the eight year age difference between us tended to limit our desire for the same thing at the same time when we were little.

Great-Aunt Berry slept in a little room downstairs next to the North Room, her room was known as Berry’s Room, even long after she was dead.  It was really only big enough for a full-size bed and a bureau.  I think there was a bookcase, too, but the bed was so close to it that it was very difficult to get the books out of the bottom shelves.

Berry went to sleep early, and got up early, and liked to be downstairs so she could easily let the dog in and out.  Her little room was right off of the Dining Room and so she could always hear what was going on in there.   Once it got cold we had fires every night in the Dining Room fireplace, but not too late, because someone had to stay up with the fire as it burned down – to make sure no stray embers escaped.

The status of the fire was particularly important Christmas Eve, because Santa used that chimney for entrance into the house, and that is where we all hung our stockings.   We were lucky that Berry and her dog slept downstairs, because once they actually heard Santa.

Berry wasn’t sure it was Santa, but Sammy – her Samoyed – had woken up in the middle of the night, and was listening very intently, but she didn’t bark the way she would if it were a squirrel.  And Berry thought she might have heard something moving too – in the house – really she didn’t know what might have been making the noise.

Actually, I’m the one who suggested that Berry had amazingly been lucky enough to hear Santa. Berry was doubtful, said, “You really think it might have been him?  If I had known it was him I would have gotten up to meet him, I’d like to meet Santa.  All I know is that Sammy was very excited and wagging her tail as hard as she could.”

I explained that our stockings had been filled, and the cookies and beer we had left out for Santa had been consumed, so he must have been there, and logically, Berry & Sammy had heard him.  I vowed that next year I was going to sleep downstairs, too.

*    *    *

Of the fours stations available on the television, there was only one with good reception, but it was CBS, and there were football games televised on CBS, and my father liked to watch football on television.

Unfortunately, my father – although not noticeably fragile and sickly like my Uncle Bob – had a lot of allergies, and the North Room of the house was a place where they particularly acted up.  The North Room – as well as upstairs – was where he had “breathing problems.”

So on those fall weekends, and over the holidays, when there were games on that he wanted to watch, my father would put on his fur hat and heavy parka, his muffler and lined gloves, and go outside to watch the television by looking in through the window.  Even as the weather got colder, and even in light snow, he would press his face against the window – looking in – as his nose & ears got redder, and the cold-tears ran from his eyes.

As far as I know, the idea that the television might be moved to another room – he had no problems in the South Room or the Big Room – was so completely foreign it was impossible to conceptualize.

I love that memory of him, and I had forgotten until just now how much he did like to watch football games – I can’t imagine he ever actually played it.  His athletic prowess was from before I knew him, and reserved for games that required a fierce competitive spirit and a measure of individual cunning – like squash – rather than group dynamics and a certain powerful physical athleticism – like football.

I wonder if he would have liked the football drill I had in gym today.  I was practicing being still – in 3-point stance – while ST#1 tried to fake me out and get me to move before he moved the ball.  But the moment he actually moved the ball I was to slam the dummy – my beloved opponent who was directly in front of me – into the wall and then get quickly back into stance.

I adore this exercise.  I love it when part of me gets faked out and the rest doesn’t – like when my leg will twitch forward when ST#1 shouts “Move!”  I love it when all of me gets faked out, I love it when he can’t budge me, and I love it when I hit the dummy so many times I have to give up and just pant.

When my father was alive, the idea that I would do such an exercise – much less “adore” it – was even more impossible to conceive than that of moving the television, and yet here I am.  Kind of makes you wonder what lies ahead!

So I don’t remember why we decided to put my mother’s hospital bed in the North Room, maybe because the North Room was by then a kind of odds and ends room – with no inherited formalities of structure and appearance.  The South Room would have been better, in a way, because it had the nice wide “casket door” exit directly outside.  The South Room was where bodies were supposed to lie – but then the arrangement of the South Room furniture would have been “messed up” – and my mother would not have liked that at all.

So she was in the North Room, in her electric powered hospital bed, during that massive power outage in November of 2002.  I think the power was out for four days, and it was cold.  Every now and then someone would call the power company and complain, “there’s a dying woman here, we need the power back on.”  And the electricity did get back on, the day before her power finally all slipped away.

I remember telling her – at some point in November – that she could go, and that my father was waiting for her.  Even as I said it I wondered why I had, because I didn’t really think my father was waiting some place.  At that time I thought death was “it” – the end of everything.

And we had moved her bed closer to the fire during the power outage, and turned it so she could look out the window – the same window he used to look in – during the holidays when he was watching football on television.

I hadn’t realized until just now, that maybe that’s why she had to go when she did – because she saw him looking in.     She had been missing him for a long long time, and the weather was very cold, and since he still couldn’t come into the North Room, she had to let go of her breathing to join him someplace where they could be together.

She might have had to give him a little tug to get him away from the window.  Sometimes it is hard to stop looking at the things you love, especially when you can’t see how to get any closer.  In this case, though, love was right there.