missing: part one

"Do you miss Peter?" I ask Mom.

I wait for her reply with careful attention as I honestly don't know what she'll say. We are sitting together in her room at Mirabella--I'm in a straight-backed chair with arms that's pulled up snug to her wheelchair, close enough that I can wiper my fingertips across the creases on Mom's face, in case she gets the weeps. It's late afternoon, and dinner will be brought in about a half-an-hour. Mom's having "Spencer Steak with Pomme Frites and zucchini saute." So there's about a thirty minute span of time here to do what we collectively call "talking stories" before Mom's attention shifts to her eating. Usually we look at pictures, concrete articles that prompt her memory. But lately these photos haven't produced much of anything but tears. So, we are talking without pictures, instead. I am writing furiously, not wanting to miss a word.

We've been talking about my dad, Paul Arnold Schuler, as I've asked her about his growing up. "Didn't he live in the poorest part of West Seattle?" I ask Mom, hoping to prompt her into a story about Dad's hard-luck beginnings. I already know one of these stories--how he started his own paper route when he was seven and never stopped being the entrepreneur ever since.

When all she says is "yes" in reply, without further explanation, I think of a new tact. "What was he like when Peter (my mother's first child) was born? Did he help you with caring for Peter?" Again, I have no idea what she will say, as Mom and I have never talked about Peter as a young boy.

"No," she says quickly, "not at all...but he loved Peter all the same." I fill in a few details here, knowing that Dad was bonkers about Peter--he loved that boy as much as Mom loved me: a disproportionate attraction that, in retrospect, did more harm than good.

My questions to Mom come at the end of a discouraging day--Mom's speech seems to have slipped backwards, as she's having significant word finding problems once again and her body has given in to a major slump, so much so that her shoulders and torso are nearly horizontal as she leans into her right side. Lorna and I keep reaching to straighten her neck and shoulders but to no avail. At PT today, Mom gave little assistance to her therapist, Kim, someone new Mom has never seen before. Why Mirabella can't keep Mom seeing the same therapists has become a point of frustration for me--learning to be comfortable and work with new people takes a lot out of Mom; it's one of the reasons why today's therapy session doesn't go so well. Mom is unable to demonstrate her ability to sit for one-and-a-half minutes on the edge of the therapy bench. The most she can do is several seconds before she slumps to the the rear of the bench. Is Mom tired? Is she unable to follow directions? Are her core muscles so flaccid that she cannot consistently keep herself erect? Kim asks me at some point--is this the way she always is? And I don't quite know how to answer her--there is no "always" as each day varies. But I can say that today is not one of her best performances.

So, when we return to Mom's room after therapy, Mom sits for a while in her chair--I read her the Seattle Times. Together we read the titles in bold print and decide which articles sound interesting. There's something about Boeing's termination of its "anything goes" education policy...and something about the Andrew Wyeth exhibit at SAM (Mom loves Wyeth). We talk about maybe planning an excursion to SAM, if Mom feels up to it--the exhibition ends October 18th. Mom's voice picks the vowels and consonants in the titles--her reading is still intact, if we are patient enough. Her thinking, however, seems a bit off, sentences that start out of nowhere, others that go nowhere. I have to think on my toes, trying to figure out where Mom is going, where she has been with her words.

The topic of my brother Peter is something I want to talk to Mom about--I came here today interested in generating a discussion about what Peter means to Mom, but not sure of how it might come up. My brother was born in 1953 to a mother who wanted nothing more than to start a family. Her career as a fashion advertiser at Frederick 'n Nelson paled in comparison: she quit this soon enough. When I ask Mom whether Dad was excited about the baby, she replies with--"He was very excited because he had yet to find meaningful work."

This last comment is a bomb shell--I never thought of dad as not having worked out the issue of meaningful labor. He was a planner and successful strategist--whatever he touched turned to platinum.

As we talk about my father and then Peter, however, M0m's words miraculously become clearer, without much hesitation--like an engine warming itself before shifting into gear. I am surprised how her consonants and vowels come tumbling out, despite the fact that I know this discussion has the potential to add to her anxiety and unrest. Conversations about the past tend to have this emotional effect of late.

"I can think more clearly now," Mom blurts out all of a sudden, "in this place," she finishes with a broad gesture to her surroundings...more clearly than when I was...home." Mom's revelation is stunning, as this is one of the rare times when she is cognitively able to look at herself with perspective and comment on what she sees. I haven't asked her about this--she's offered it to me.

"What did it feel like Mom, to not be clear-thinking?"

Mom raises her eyes then, and looks at me directly, making sure I am listening, which I am. Her eyes are black-brown, so dark in fact that it's hard to read the language of her eyes...but her words say it all. "It's terrible," she says. "like being buried inside...inside one's own body."

I don't know what to say to Mom--her words make my spine shiver, my skin crawl with nerves, expectation.

"I thought I'd lost them all," she continues. I'm thinking--what's "them"? And then she explains, without my even asking--"All those memories, you know. But here...here they are again." She sighs then with relief, a smile working up the corners of her lips where before there had been tears or at least the rumor of tears. "I'd thought they'd gone missing," she emphasizes again. "Poof!"

So many ways to lose oneself, I think to myself.

Deeply, a mother's daughter
--this is alifewithmom--