Phone Calls and Pink Slips

“So, do you still have a job?” For six years, that was the cheery opening to nearly every phone conversation I had with my mother, who would have celebrated her 90th birthday two weeks ago.

After bouncing out of college teaching in 1996, I had taken a position with Broderbund Software in Novato. It was a pretty big change for me, but I slotted in well, first as an administrative assistant, then as a dealer sales representative.

Unfortunately, we were the victim of a hostile takeover by The Learning Company in 1998, but I was kept on, moving first into public relations, then into managing our trade shows. A couple of years later, The Learning Company was sold to Mattel for 3.8 billion dollars and, less than a year after that, was literally given away for no money to a holding company, Gores Technology Group. We had experienced the largest U.S. corporate failure in history, until Enron claimed that dubious title. We were eventually re-sold, this time to an Irish company, Riverdeep, and I became a senior brand manager in the Educational Software Division.

Five companies in seven and a half years. I’m not sure how many supervisors I had over that period, because I lost count at fifteen. Needless to say, our periodic layoffs were featured in the local paper, thus prompting my mother’s regular query, “So, do you still have a job?”

Having survived for so long, I was considered by most of my co-workers to be “bullet-proof” when it came to cuts. But my number finally came up in March 2003. For the first time, I had to tell my mother that I did not still have a job. From that point on, her conversation starter became, “So, have you found a job yet?” The question was always light-hearted, but there was a definite undertone of motherly concern.

Out of a desire to stay local, the better to take care of my daughter, I applied for a substitute teaching license and spent the next six months bouncing around Marin County schools, subbing everything from kindergarten to high school French. I know my mother was worried, but my family was getting by, just.

Then, on Christmas Eve 2004, we came home from church to a late phone call from my father. My mother was in hospital. She had been diagnosed with lung cancer the previous spring and concern was that it had spread to other organs. Over the next few days, the diagnosis was confirmed and she was brought home, since there was nothing the doctors could do.


My father and mother at the
radiation treatment center

 It was clear that she was ready for the end. In fact, during previous doctor visits to evaluate her progress from the various strokes she had suffered over the previous three years, she had responded to questions about how she felt with a simple, “I want to die.” She had lost most of her memories, could no longer play golf, had little or no sense of taste or smell and was, clearly, done.

Because she had been a doctor, and despite her stroke, she was sharp enough to know that if she starved herself, she could die sooner and, as long as she kept hydrated, she could mitigate some of the pain. Hospice was brought in and my father took over most of the nursing and helping with day-to-day functions.

Final Christmas

Our belated Christmas celebration was melancholy at best. Over the next few weeks, my mother deteriorated rapidly. Yet, she still occasionally asked me if I had found a job yet. Unfortunately, I hadn’t, and sub assignments were few and far between at that time of year.

Finally, I got an offer from a local charter high school, the Marin School of Arts and Technology, which was looking for a drama instructor. I jumped at the opportunity.

That afternoon, I drove to Mill Valley to tell my mother the good news. As I entered her room, I knew that something had changed. There was the characteristic smell of stale urine on the bed pad, but there was something else. I couldn’t tell what it was, but it turned my stomach in a way that I had never experienced before.

My mother was beyond frail at this point, and barely conscious. I hugged her gently and whispered into her ear that I had gotten a teaching job and that she didn’t have to worry about me anymore. Then I kissed her for what I feared would be the last time. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I couldn’t wait to get out of that room. The smell of what I can only presume was death lingered in my mind for the rest of the afternoon.

The next day, I went to MSAT to sign my contract for the semester. No sooner had I inked my name than my cell phone rang. It was my father with the news that my mother had just passed away in his arms. It was barely a month after her initial diagnosis and she had been successful in her final act as a physician: hastening her own death.

Of course I can’t know if she had held on to see if I would finally find a job, or maybe I had redoubled my efforts to ease her worry, but the coincidence has stayed with me. Over the years, she was the one who always knew every detail of my life, mentor and confidante right to the end.

The teaching position didn’t turn out as I had hoped, but I moved on and continued to find my way over the next five years, ending up in, of all things, loan servicing at Tamalpais Bank.

In a curious parallel to prior events, we were taken over by the FDIC in April and bought by Union Bank, for whom I have become a “transitional employee.” For better or for worse, I am scheduled to be laid off at the end of next January and will again join the ranks of the unemployed.

I will be expecting to receive a call from my mother soon.