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Doug Clark: Gompers’ passing has set me to thinking

It’s the little things that get to you.

I’ve been discovering this ever since the wee hours of April 7, when my mother’s 92-year-old heart gave out.

Carol P. Clark was her name – although for the last six or seven years I mainly called her Gompers.

That was the humorous nickname I dreamed up one day and bestowed upon her. She didn’t like it at first. So after a week or so I went back to calling her Mom.

“Are you mad at me?” she asked in a hurt tone.

“Of course not,” I told her. “Why would you think that?”

She looked like she was about to cry. “Because you don’t call me Gompers anymore.”

It was Gompers whenever I saw her after that, and I saw her a lot. As her informal caregiver, I ran errands, paid bills, picked up her pills, got her to the doctor, talked with her by phone at least twice a day, and tried my best to make her laugh and keep her spirits high.

Now she’s gone and I’ve found myself floating in a strange Gomperless vacuum.

We talked plenty about death, especially over the last few years when her health slipped steadily even though her mind remained as sharp as ever.

“I’ve outlived my body,” she told me more than once.

What I never considered were all of those many small details that accumulated over the years.

Life, I’ve learned, is the sum of a whole lot of moments and habits and quirks that add up to make us who we are.

So in case you’ve been wondering where I’ve been for the last three weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about … 

• The telephone number my mom had for 67 years: 535-5878.

The Clarks got that listing in 1948, the year my mother and father, Ken, built the orange brick homestead on a modest corner lot on Spokane’s South Hill.

And if I had a buck for each time I dialed it, well, you’ve heard that one before.

• Will I ever be able to enter a grocery store again and not think about buying Tillamook raspberry yogurt, the only yogurt my mom would use to swallow her pills?

Ditto on the English muffin bread, but only if it’s Rosauers and only if the loaf’s been sliced thin.

I developed a method to buying bananas. I’d usually get five or six divided into ripe, almost ripe and greener than a seasick sailor.

This system would keep the Gomper banana supply stable for at least three days.

• Colors? My mom liked her azaleas in pink and everything else in turquoise. That was the color of her favorite jewelry, best clothing and the shag carpet she had installed over our perfectly fine hardwood floors in 1974.

• Thanks to my mom I became fluent in the day-to-day antics as seen on those TV game show icons, “The Price is Right” and “Let’s Make a Deal.”

• Meanwhile, I kept her entertained with practical jokes.

Like sneaking into her room when she was asleep, for example, and calling her on my iPhone from the closet or bedroom floor.

“Where are you?” she’d ask.

“Sandpoint,” I’d say.

“Sandpoint? You said you were coming here. What are you doing in Sandpoint?”

“I think I took a wrong turn.”

About then I’d poke my head out and nearly wet myself from laughter while she called me a jackass.

• Mom loved Russell Stover chocolate-covered marshmallow candies of whatever season was handy. Easter eggs. Santas. Pumpkins. Hearts …

I bought them for her by the carload and usually at Rite Aid while I was picking up her prescriptions.

Of course, you can’t just waltz up to a pharmacy window and pick up your mom’s meds on good looks alone.

The pharmacists first want to know the patient’s date of birth in order to cue up the right order.

To which I would automatically utter, “9/22.”

I did this so often that I’m wondering now if I’ll ever be able to pass a Rite Aid again without my mom’s birthday coming to mind.

Speaking of which, my mom loved the numeric flow of her birth date.

“September 22, 1922,” she would say proudly, “and I’m 92 years old.”

• My mom’s amazing memory never left her.

She could name my third-grade classmates, say, and tell me which moms served with her on the PTA.

Or she’d tell stories about John Wayne filming Westerns in the small southern Utah town where she grew up.

Lately, I’ve been kicking myself for not asking her where she hid the rings she intended to give to her granddaughters after her passing.

• My mom had pet expressions for practically everything.

Cash was never cash, for example. “Would you get me some folding money?” she’d ask.

Sunglasses were “colored glasses,” and I always knew when my mom was having a particularly rough day.

“I hurt all over worse than anyplace else,” she’d tell me.

I heard that one a lot toward the end.

One morning last week, a few days after I laid a pink rose on her casket, I dialed her number one last time. Sat there in my truck, listening to it ring maybe 12 or 15 times.

Then I hung up.

It’s the little things that get to you.

Doug Clark is a columnist for The Spokesman-Review. He can be reached at (509) 459-5432 or by email at dougc@spokesman.com.

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