By Geralyn Tagatac
My mother bet on horses, bought scratch-offs, played the daily and weekly lottery. “What’s Bill’s room number?” Mom asked me when my first husband was in the hospital for stent surgery. She played his room number straight and boxed, covering all possible number combinations. “I won a thousand dollars,” she said when she called.
Casinos opened in Connecticut in the early 1990s, and Mom discovered slot machines. I was eleven years sober when she asked me to go with her. Addiction runs in the family. Active in a twelve-step program, I had watched relatives from both sides of my extended family drink too much scotch, eat mounds of cookies and cake at holidays, steal, cheat, and lie to support habits that qualified for jail time.
My trips with Mom to Foxwoods Casino started in early 1994; my second time there the fifty dollars I brought to gamble with on slot machines doubled, tripled, quadrupled. “Don’t leave that machine,” a stranger, sitting at the same type of red, white, and blue sevens slot machine next to me, said. “That’s gonna hit.”
Those days, coins dropped out of the machines’ mouths and people clutched loot-filled plastic buckets close to their chest. Today, slips of paper with the winning dollar amount are expelled like bills from a bank’s ATM machine. Before No Smoking laws took effect, I wore dirty jeans and an old shirt, left my coat in the car knowing the smell from cigarettes, cigars, and pipes pinched between gamblers’ lips would cling to my skin and clothing. Mom never left the house without performing her morning ritual of applying foundation, lipstick, blush, and brows. “It’s like brushing my teeth,” Mom said about painting her face. She paired matching shoes and jewelry with her outfits as if she were walking a runway, not a smoke-filled casino.
When red, white, and blue sevens stopped in succession along my machine’s bottom row, bells rang and lights flashed. I couldn’t believe it; the guy next to me was right. I pumped my fist as if my skills rather than luck garnered the win. “Mom,” I called over to where she sat. “I won!” A small crowd gathered around me. Thinking I hit for $2,400, I was surprised to learn I won the grand jackpot of $10,000.
Determined to win her own jackpot, Mom played “my” machine and others before winning $5,000 a few months later. “It’s so easy when it hits,” she said. Mom went to the casino so often, sometimes driving up on a Friday night after work by herself, she earned high roller status. She and her guest (me) were invited into a secret room where we were treated to eggplant or chicken parmesan,
pasta, bread, fruit, cookies, and of course, alcohol. I drank water. Mom usually ordered a White Russian leaving half of it untouched.
“Don’t you think you go too much?” my siblings Liz, Pete, Paul, and I asked Mom every so often.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got my slush fund,” she said. “And anything I win will be split between the five of us.” I wasn’t adding her imaginary winnings to my retirement portfolio.
“I don’t want to trade one addiction for another,” I told Mom after I started joining her regularly. When I lost, I’d think next time would be different. It was the same way I thought about my drinking. Once, coming up empty with every bet, my money going fast, I snapped, “Why did you drag me here? You know the house always wins!”
“Let’s not turn on each other,” Mom said. “It’s fun, remember?” At home, I cried in my husband’s lap, admitted to losing more money than I wanted to, knew I needed a break.
***
I did end up going to Foxwoods once or twice more before Mom retired to Florida later that year with her long-term partner, Tom. I was careful, never lost more than I budgeted for.
In Florida it took planning, but Mom found ways to play slots. She and Tom embarked on cruises to nowhere, from the coast of West Palm Beach to international waters where the ship could legally open their casino. They flew to Biloxi, Mississippi, for weekend gambling excursions. When The Hard Rock Café opened in Fort Lauderdale, Mom drove an hour south whenever the slot machines beckoned her. If she was on a losing streak, she’d blame Tom. “He never wins, and it rubs off when he’s with me.”
***
In January 2021 when her only sister died, Mom, widowed four years, moved back to Connecticut to be closer to us. After Aunt Sylvia passed, Mom often said, “Come on, Syl, let me know you’re alright. Drop a penny or a dime.”
In Florida, Mom ate out most nights. In Connecticut she couldn’t; we were still in semi-lockdown from the pandemic. Mom stayed close to home afraid to go to the casinos, afraid of catching COVID-19. Over several months her pants size shrunk from size twelve to eight, shirts from large to medium. “No more eating out,” Mom said about her smaller body. “There’s lots of calories in bar food.”
Vaccinated and boosted, Mom picked up casino trips again. Mohegan Sun had opened and became her favorite. Mom recounted a pull-by-pull narrative of every win and loss. “I hit four hundred dollars right away,” she’d say. “Then I moved around the circle of Wheel of Fortune machines.” Never waiting for our response, we joked Mom had gills behind her ears to simultaneously breathe and speak. “When I hit on one, I’d move to the next one and hit again.”
“So how much did you win?” I’d ask.
“Nothing. I gave it all back.” This was a recurring conversation. Remembering the emotional bottom I hit in those early years, I wanted to curb Mom’s spending, limit her trips. If she saw an expensive ring or pair of earrings in a store, I wanted her to buy them. She never did. She said she had enough jewelry and didn’t want to spend the money. “But you’ll throw hundreds away in the slots,” I said. “At least you’d have something to show for it.” Mom told us she worked with her financial advisor. She didn’t need a summer home or to cruise around the world; she wanted money for an annual vacation and to gamble. Mom didn’t care if winning was a long shot, we knew she secretly thought she’d come out on top. Gambling was her form of entertainment.
***
With recurring, sometimes chronic pain in her side and stomach, Mom had been going to naturopaths, massage therapists, and chiropractors for years. In the spring of 2023, down to a size six pant and size small shirt, her pain constant, Mom began making medical appointments. She started a text chain with Liz, Pete, Paul, and me. Not one to shield us from the truth, she updated us on pills prescribed, blood drawn, tests and procedures performed. At one point, thinking her gallbladder needed to come out, a doctor ordered an MRI, which showed a spot on her liver.
“Right now, everything is speculative,” Mom texted. “I’m taking one step at a time. We don’t have cancer in the family, I’d be surprised if I had it. I feel fine.” I knew all about taking one step at a time, living one minute, one hour, one day at a time. But Mom was sick. This was hard.
By early June, Mom read in her online chart she had cancer and told us by text. She had a rare form of liver and bile duct cancer caught early and contained. Her oncologist recommended five rounds of radiation to keep it from growing and spreading. Mom agreed to treatment, said again not to worry, she felt great. I thought about her shrinking body and wondered if we should have suspected sooner she was sick.
When anyone asked how I was, if I was scared or worried, I’d automatically respond “It’s one day at a time.” If Liz asked me what I thought after one of Mom’s doctor’s appointments I’d say, “I’m not going to worry, there’s nothing we can do.” I woke up in the middle of the night, every night, unable to fall back to sleep wondering where we go when we die; who else am I going to lose; how
will I survive without Mom. I repeated the Serenity Prayer over and over, not always finding comfort in the words.
At eighty-seven, Mom looked and acted at least fifteen years younger. Despite her diagnosis, we were positive the deck was stacked in her favor, and we liked her odds. Like thinking a fortune hid beneath the shiny silver veneer of every scratch-off ticket she bought, Mom told the doctors and convinced us she’d live another five years, the very high end of her cancer’s survival rate.
Mom was dating Robert, a ninety-one-year-old widow, who took her to lunch or a movie two or three times a month.
“I’m going to end it,” she called to tell me. “It isn’t going anywhere.”
“You’re eighty-seven and he’s ninety-one. Where do you think it’s going?”
“I want more,” Mom insisted, ending their courtship.
Two weeks later in mid-October, less than four months from her diagnosis, Mom was admitted to the hospital. Tests revealed metastasis in her liver. Although contained, her cancer had multiplied and grown. Like winnings multiplying and growing at the casino, in the end, the house—her cancer—was going to win. Told there was nothing more to be done besides keeping her comfortable, Mom adjusted her bet, hoping to live one more year, a reasonable compromise. Mom went home to my sister’s with palliative care.
“Mom,” I said sometime during that last week, “I think you have one more trip to the casino in you.” Fully made up, glamourous as always, Mom sat propped up on my sister’s couch.
“I don’t know,” she said. Mom never passed on an opportunity to gamble, ever. I was scared, felt the familiar burn in my throat. I wanted to hear one more story, how she jumped from machine to machine, trying to find “the big fish,” as she called it. I wanted to hear what they served in the high-roller’s room for lunch. I wanted her to live.
I cried alone in my car, called my sponsor and asked her if I’d be okay. No matter what she said, I wasn’t going to be okay. My stomach ached constantly.
Days later it became clear; no more talk of living another five years. Or one year. Or six months. The stakes had been lowered; all bets were off. We were in funeral-planning mode.
“Syl,” Mom said, arm reaching toward the ceiling. “You better be right there to grab my hand and show me where we’re going.”
“Thank you for everything, you’ve been a great mom, had a great life,” I said on her last day at home, sitting next to her bed, holding one of her hands in both of mine, the familiar soreness coating my throat from holding back tears. “Don’t worry about us.”
“I don’t want to leave you, but I want to see my sister,” Mom said, eyes closed. I laid my head by her side, openly sobbing.
“You can’t leave us,” I said. “You’re part of us and we’re part of you.” I climbed into bed with her as she scooched over to make room, hugged her gently, afraid of hurting her.
“You better fucking drop pennies all over the place,” I said. “Send us signs. Lots of fucking signs.”
I went to meetings, tears rolling down my face in black mascaraed streaks. “What if I don’t have what it takes when the rubber hits the road?” I shared. “What if I think I’ll be okay but won’t be?” I silently prayed for strength and courage, hoped my prayers would be answered.
Drinking looked good. Watching Liz sip a glass of wine or Pete nurse a beer, I knew my drinking would be a frantic race to oblivion. And when I came out of the inevitable blackout, I’d see Mom’s disappointment, her still impending death. I knew I couldn’t survive that.
The odds against her, Mom was admitted to hospice on a Friday. Sunday morning with the four of us and my niece flanking her bed, talking to her, telling her she was beautiful, that outside her window the sun shimmered on the water, we realized her labored breathing had stopped. She was gone.
***
The last photo I have of Mom taken six days before she died captures her wrapped in a black-and-white blanket on Liz’s deck. Her pink scarf matches her smiling lips, her sunglasses barely hide the laugh lines around her eyes. She looks healthy and happy, not terminally ill with days to live. I saved it as my phone’s screensaver, say “Hi, Mama,” every time I see her smiling at me, and kiss the glass.
Wednesday after Mom died, I woke up crying, same as the previous four days. “Mom,” I said out loud, “show me a sign, let me know you’re okay.” I stared at my screen saver, searching for something in her beautiful smile. “Please!”
At lunch that day, I climbed into my car and reached for a protein bar from my bag. The bar slipped between the console and passenger front seat. “Shit!” I said out loud. I inched my hand between the hard plastic of the console and the soft fabric of the seat. With my thumb and
forefinger rooting around for the wrapper’s edge, I saw a plastic rectangular card peeking out from under the seat. I thought it was my Big Y or credit card.
I reached down and grabbed the plastic card between my fingers and pulled the orange Mohegan Sun casino card with my mother’s full name printed across it in white letters. Crying, I thanked Mom for letting me know she was okay. I kissed the card and tucked it in my wallet.