It's a fine autumn morning, the air blue and crisp and there are fingers of mist lifting up and away from the lake, remnants of a fog that never quite happened. Yesterday I noticed the leaves, large pancake-shaped maples that have finally begun to yellow with the frost. Autumn is usually a welcomed time for me, suggesting reflection, assessment--a figuring out of where I have come from and what this might mean for me. But this year is different. I have no urge to go out into the day and kick up leaves with my boots, no urge to walk the Aboretum in search of that damp-musk earth of a smell that suggests the year's hunkering down for winter. These all seem redundant. There's loss enough for me, death that's right here in my face without going in search of life's lessons, or of vestiges of life's meaning.
Walking down the wide corridors of the Mirabella towards Mom's room, HC201, there's pain enough, evidence enough of irrevocable loss. Often the doors are cracked open, and, while I purpose to not look in, I can't help but notice things out of the corner of my eye--a patient in room 207 laying in bed, face slack and chin staring straight up at the ceiling with CNN blaring out of the TV set. Or another patient in room 209 sitting propped in a chair, spindly blue-veined legs sticking out from under a hospital gown like a child's stick-drawing of what legs ought to look like: no music, no TV, no visitors, just silence or as silent as one can get here in a busy medical facility.
One can't help but gain perspective on the arc of life from such a stroll. It's unavoidable. Room after room of patients, all of them elderly, all them crippled in some way by ill health, all here as one stop on their further journey towards death. They are like Mom, not sure of how much more time they have, not sure of how much more time they even want, considering their incapacities. I mean, how does one make meaning out of a day when all of one's needs must be met by a nurse's aid--eating, bathing, brushing one's teeth, getting one's Depends changed, sitting up in bed, transferring to a chair, turning on the TV set to watch CNN. My mom can't even push the call button when she needs something, she's that helpless. In fact, she may not even know that she needs something, like to get her Depends changed or take pain medication--she has no idea! Surely, this is a redefinition of "living in the present" as the present is all one has and it isn't much, according to standards of the work-a-day world outside the Mirabella. When was the last time you've thought about what it would mean if you couldn't read a book (or even listen to a book-on-tape) because your brain won't let you process that intake of information? What if the only meaning of your day is who comes to visit you and then, by the next day, you can't even remember who that visitor might have been? And worse yet, what if you aren't even aware that you can't remember who came to visit you?
Mom's had a few better days recently--she's cognizant and good humored, not like the dour days earlier in the week. When Lisa, the speech therapist, comes to see her, Mom is able to perform better on the tests than she has ever. "Fill in the the rest of these sentences," Lisa tells Mom. "It has been snowing for____He put salt and pepper on his____They are followed by____The boy took his dog for____." Mom easily gets all but one out of ten. She rocks and Lisa tells her so--"You've improved a lot," Lisa says. "It seems like it's easier for you to think and talk." Mom says--"Yes...yes it is. And I don't want to let it go!"
"I'm very happy with the progress you've made," Lisa continues. Mom replies with--"I am very happy" and then adds--"I appreciate you, even if your husband doesn't." This is a remarkable statement from Mom, as not only does it reflect Mom's return to civility (something that's been missing for a very long time)--being able to thank people for kindness rendered--but also indicates that she's remembered previous conversations with Lisa where they've talked about husbands and wives and the difficulties of marital negotiations. And, there's a spark of Mom's good humor there, particularly as she quips "I'm here a lot" to Lisa's parting statement that she will see Mom soon. Mom wows both Lisa and me!
By the time I get up to leave, it's 8:30 pm and Mom is visibly tired--not the yawning kind of tired but rather the kind that suggests utter exhaustion: she is having a difficult time attending to what's around her. The highlight of her day was a visit from her nephew Mark (Marguerite's eldest son) and his friend, Nancy. I meet them in the belly of the garage at the Mirabella as I come to visit Mom. We stop and chat for a moment. Nancy is a lovely woman--soft brown hair pulled back from an open, intelligent face and an astounding paisley scarf wrapped tight from shoulder to shoulder--Mom would love her sense of personal style. Nancy is someone I'm sure Mom would like to know better; I wonder if she will have the chance?
Nancy has brought a charming bouquet of fresh flowers from her garden--Mom shows them to me with pleasure as soon as I get into her room. Immediately Mom says (with regret), before I even have my coat off--"I just wasn't...you know...my best." What do you mean Mom?" I ask her. "Not clear...you know" she explains. And I feel inexplicably sad, knowing Mom knows when she can't follow what's being said, when she can't make her sentences make sense. And knowing all this in relation to a woman who has spent her entire life invested in words--books, writing, conversation, debate--these were what gave Mom's life meaning.
As I pull on my coat--it's frosty outside at last--Mom says: "We are one...and...one."
"What do you mean, Mom?" I ask her.
"You know...one for one."
I struggle for a moment, trying to deduce what she has on her mind. I've gotten good at this. I say--"Do you mean you and me Mom...that we are here for each other?"
"Yes" she says, shaking her head vigorously, or as vigorously as a stoke-victim can. "A team!" she adds with enthusiasm.
I come over to her bed and say--"Yes, Mom, we are that. I'm here for you." Mom smiles and then adds--"Everyone needs...you know...the one."
"Yes, Mom, they do" I tell her, all the while thinking there won't be "the one" for me, when I get to where Mom has arrived. No daughter to hold my hand, check my medication, make sure I get the UA that the doctor's ordered. No one to see me through in this way.
"I want you to..." Mom says then. "Want you..." she repeats but then her voice fades off. Concentration is difficult by this time of night.
"Want me to do what, Mom?"
"You know...he needs his one...he needs someone."
"Who are you talking about Mom?" I ask her.
"Can't wait," she adds. And I look at her, trying to decipher what she needs. It's a challenge to keep up with the strange twists and turns of her conversation--how one idea links with the next but without an obvious connection. It's like Mom's speech is a verbatim translation of how everyone's mind works, a stream of consciousness--one thought that leaps slit-second to the next, without even trying--only there's none of the internal editing we do, the way that we modulate out speaking selves so that speech appears smooth, linked, logical. She can't perform these editorial functions and hence must let her words escape on wings, flap away as they may.
And then it comes to me, what she' asking for, though Peter's name hasn't come up in days and days--not since out chat several weeks ago.
"Do you mean Peter, Mom?" I ask her.
"Yes, yes," she says, annoyed almost that I have been this dense, taken this long to figure out what she has on her mind.
"You want me to find him?" I ask, sure now that this is what she needs.
"Yes."
"But you know he won't come."
"No...no...not that," she says, waving me away with her left hand, the hand that now can lift and wave and move with some ease, despite the stroke, due to the marvels of OT.
"What then?" I ask, frustrated that I can't perform my interpretive wonders on demand.
She lifts her left hand again, waving it like she's holding a pen, and I finally get it--she wants me to help her write to him, to write to this brother of mine who left and was left. She wants me to be her scribe, her interpreter...to resurrect Peter and help her find her way back to a time when she and her eldest son were close enough to talk, to write, to laugh, to hug.
"Sure Mom," I say without hesitation, though inside I'm full of dread, fear even. "We can do that. We'll start tomorrow, okay?"
She looks relieved with my easy assent, glad that finally she's made herself known, finally that her long lost son will be found. To myself, I am thinking--how will I find him, do I even want to find him? The only time Peter makes himself known is when he wants something--money. Is there an expiration date on love, on how far one's willing to stretch to meet another's hands? Does blood only go so far, despite the old aphorism that "blood's thicker than water"?
"Tomorrow," I repeat, "I'll bring a pad and pen."
Mom smiles then, and as I lean in to kiss her goodbye she says with a bit of cheek--"See you, my darling."
"See you too, darling" I quip back at her.
As I move out into the hallway, I can hear CNN headlines escaping though the cracks of her door--Mom's link to the outside world. She's taking her nightly dose of news before drifting asleep amidst tsunami flood disasters and presidents who get awarded the Nobel Peace prize. Meaning in a world devoid of meaningful thought and action.
Deeply, a mother's daughter
--this is alifewithmom--
6 comments:
Your journey with your mother resonates so closely to my mother's journey with hers. You both take care of your mothers who are very sick, tho they stay someplace else because they can't be at home anymore, and the family including them depend on you to take care of everything (which you have). You also both have brothers named Peter. Your brother Peter sounds exactly like my mother's brother John. John (I call him Damien) screwed my gramma over big time and hasn't seen her in years. He basically told her to her face he wants nothing to do with her. Stupid SOB (and the devil's the bitch ;). We don't see much of Peter either. In the last 8 years the only time I've seen him is when someone died. However, I know he makes little money from his business and lives in San Diego. On a more positive note, I saw on the news that a college professor is the 3rd best job in the country. Hopefully that will make you feel a little better. Just remember this song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmExAiCcaPk
Dear Amanda: Yes to all and yet I wonder--there's a part of me that just longs for Peter, misses him terribly, wants to forget all the trash of the past, is willing to forgive anything just so as to have a relationship with him again. C.
I'm sure you do. I think Carmen would love to have John back, her baby brother, and of course Gramma would. He was her golden boy. It's different when it's your sibling. John was just my uncle. He was around when I was a kid, tho we never had a close relationship, and basically disappeared into the ether when I was around 12 or 13, only to surface when he needed money from his family or in a newspaper. He did horrible, unforgivable things when he was young, early 20s, and much older directed at his mother. I don't know what happened to make him do that, other than he's just evil. My biological grandfather who died before I was born was a very mean man, so maybe he's just the evil side of Al. Did you watch the youtube video?
Amanda: Interesting about the concept of "evil." I have given this some thought. Part of me thinks that very few people are actually "evil" and that instead we all can be located on a spectrum of damage. My brother Peter is damaged...perhaps also your uncle. At the same time, we need to be/are responsible for our actions--usually society requires this. And then I wonder how much of this is explained by terribly different perspectives and motivations in life; one thing I have learned again and again is that what I see as "fact" is not someone's "fact." I am sure Peter has a very different rendition of the events. So what does one do with this? C.
PS I haven't looked at it yet but plan to soon. Thanks for sending it.
When John was in his 20s, he beat Gramma. I mean actually beat her with his fists. He beat his own mother. Right before my Grampa died, Rey, the one I grew up knowing as my grandfather, took out a lien against the house for $30k for John to start a business, which failed. In about 15 years he paid only interest and nothing on the principal, and then he just stopped paying. He was fully aware he almost got his 80-some year old mother evicted from her home of almost 40 years and he didn't give one small damn about it. The rest of his family had to try to come up with the money to keep their mother in her house. He conned Peter into "lending" him $25k, and Peter never heard from him again. I've given the concept of "evil" a lot of thought too. Maybe evil isn't the right word, but it's something like it. Carmen is damaged. Cecilia (her sister) is damaged. Peter is damaged. John is....something else. Everyone lives in their own reality, I think, just as everyone knows their "facts." My reality may not be the same as your reality. I guess when I say reality, I mean how we each view our lives and other lives that interact with our lives. Usually, our realities coincide fairly nicely, then other times, someone throws a fork in it.
It's only 3 min. long.
Amanda; You are right, there is beyond damaged. C.
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