what are you thinking?

Mom's third day at Mirabella. More rain in the am--the roads are flooded with it. Felt like a journey to get to Mom, like I was traveling thousands of miles rather than the hour drive it usually is (except in traffic). Despite being an adventurous driver, the puddles of rain and the way they made my Miata skate and shimmy reminded me of how little separates me from Mom's near-death state. Just one breath or not, just one accident or not. The assumptions we make, we the living. How life can just go on, without thought or intention. For Mom, everything is intention--the decision to continue her strange struggle of a half-life, the decision to not give-in to what must seem easier to her...death. Just stop trying to talk, she might say to herself. Stop trying to think straight, to move the muscles in her paralyzed legs. Just stop. And wait and see how soon the end comes.

"What are you thinking Mom?" I ask her. It's 6:00 pm and she is staring into the space above my head, her neck cocked right, like she's craning to see something but really it's just the result of her stroke, how her muscles involuntarily tighten and twist, distorting the normal alignment of her body. Yesterday she was better in this respect, moving her neck, lifting her head from the pillows. Today her head seems like dead weight, something too heavy to carry.

I can tell she's heard my voice, because her eye lids flutter open, pupils milky with partial non-sight--the cataracts she has systematically refused to attend to for the last twenty years. And now, of course, what's the point?

"Mom," I say again. "Tell me what's going through your head?" I want to know, I tell myself, because I can't imagine this for her. What does an 85 year old woman with mid-stage Alzheimer's and a recent stroke think about when the room has gone silent?

Silence from Mom, silence and the closing down of her eyelids, the shuttering, closing of her mind. Then nothing but her breath.

I have learned not to be surprised, learned to let Mom be as she needs to be, absent my expectations. Her Alzheimer's has been coming on for years, bringing irrationality, emotional tantrums, confusion, incontinence, memory loss. "This cannot be my mom"--I struggle to stop saying this, thinking this. A year and a half ago, Mom fell and broke her arm...we exerted our collective will, my brother and I, or at least this is how she sees it, requiring her to have a 24 hour caregiver. Too many burners left on and power bills left unpaid and utilities turned-off. Even Mom could see the wisdom of our plan, eventually. She was scared. From here, it's been mostly downhill--strokes, UTI's, C-Diff. Each event brings her functioning to a lower level. She fought back ferociously from her first stroke in October of 2008, but the repeated infections and hospitalizations over the last 6 months are stealing her hard-won recovery from her.

So, I have become a woman of few expectations. What else can I be?

But then there was today, the hour between 5:00 and 6:00, just before dinner, just before my question to Mom about "What are you thinking?" This precious hour is why I must ask this question, why I must know the inside of her head. Mom and I lie toe to head, head to toe on Mom's bed. Mom's upper body is elevated, so she can see out beyond the rise of her ribcage and chest. My head is tucked on top of my bent left arm and I can feel my fingers lightly digging-in below the curl of my jaw. We've been talking about Julia, Julia Child, that is, as we took Mom to see Julie & Julia last month. At first, we are simply looking at Julia's recipes from "The Way to Cook"--I read a few words and then turn the book towards Mom so she she can look at the pictures; she doesn't have her magnification glasses so I don't know for sure what her eyes actually take in. We talk about cheese souffles and timbales and about something called "The Provencal Beehive Cake." I read to her what we'd need ingredient-wise to bake that souffle or knead that brioche dough required for the Beehive Cake--eggs, milk...and lots and lots of butter. We giggle for a moment, as I remind her of the scene in the movie where Julia luxuriates in the necessity of butter--cubes and cubes of butter. I don't think Mom remembers, but she laughs along anyway, happy in the moment of our shared glee. And then suddenly, from my tongue, comes information I had no intention of relaying to Mom--about how "movie rights" and "foreign rights" work and how they make money for an author of a book like Julie and Julia. I tell her about how agents work, how they make their money, how one finds an agent. I tell her about my own search for an agent for my novel, how much representation matters to me. I don't know where these comments are coming from because it has been years since I've been able to have a serious, self-revelatory conversation with my mom. When I pause after every sentence or so, wondering whether to continue, Mom looks me in the eyes and asks me things, things that make it clear she is comprehending the complexity, intimacy of what I am saying.

"There's layers," she says at one point. And I say in return--"Yes, yes, you're right, Mom. There's many layers to this process of publication."

I am so startled by her comment that I stop here, take in a yoga breathe and let it out very very slowly, trying to make this moment last, prevent these minutes of cognition from deconstructing. Mom can't speak her mind in full sentences, as word finding has been an issue for over a year. But, during this conversation, she is following along well enough. We are engaged in a secret language of our own--each one of her ideas, her words, expressed in shorthand, waiting for my translation. It's exhausting, this exchange, as I struggle so, struggle to be sure to listen right, to hear her words without putting my own spin on their content.

So we stop here, with Mom's idea about the "layers" and with my disbelief. Neither of us says anything more right then, so there is silence, for a bit. I look at Mom and then am startled as I watch in wonder. Her face has gone blank and her eyes lose the focus they had as they move up to stare above my head. I almost see her shed her skin, her body--the thinking, cognoscente body has walked out the door, leaving some other body behind. I stare at her speechless...until I think to ask--"what are you thinking Mom?" What I want to say is--"Who are you?"

Then Mom's dinner comes, chicken in an olive tapenade, baked potato on the side.

I feel the urge to weep, just then, like I can't cry enough tears, like there can't be enough grief. How long has it been since my mother has wanted to know me in this way? How long since I've trusted her, trusted her cognition enough to let her see the inside of my head?

How I have missed her, the one person who has known who I am, who I can be. Where has she gone? Yes, I have missed her like none other. Where is the woman who stood with me at graduation just six years ago? It's 2003, and, in my photo, her face is bright with pride and comprehension.

So Mom "eats" her dinner, her agitation growing as she tells me she won't eat this food. She can't tell me why. I lift her fork to her mouth and each time her lips close shut, refusing to accept what will make her regain her strength. What bites I do manage to get between her teeth, she allows to slip out of her mouth and they are strewn there across her bib like debris. Soon, the woman-of-the-"layers" comment has vanished, replaced by a disagreeable, incomprehensible woman who is battling with her chicken. The juxtaposition must be more than I can bear. It must.

"What are you thinking?" I want to know. "Who have you become?" I want someone to tell me.

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